“We love trial and error”: Eat and Cook’s Lee Zhe Xi and Soh Yong Zhi on managing expectations and staying true to themselves
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 14 – "Shame on you.” Three words that – while uttered years ago – still ring in Chef Lee Zhe Xi’s head to this day.
"My lovely chef de cuisine at the time was Argentinian, he brought buah kulim to the kitchen one day and I, a Malaysian, had no idea what it was,” he recalls.
"A mat salleh brought buah kulim to the kitchen and asked all the Malaysian boys and no one had a clue what it was. But we know all about truffles, we know all about foie gras and nothing about buah kulim.
"It was a wake-up call for me, like, ‘Oh my God!’, to be honest – I have no idea. I’ve no idea about the flavours in our cuisine as Malaysians,” Lee, 27, adds.
"All people seem to talk about are things like apam balik, char kuey teow, nasi lemak but Malaysia is more than just that, the flavours and ingredients can be much, much more.”
Eyes glowing with excitement, Lee touches on another inspiration of his. "One of the chefs I like most is André Chiang. His restaurant, RAW, in Taiwan, creatively reimagines Taiwanese flavours and it’s something that I really love, and think should be done in Malaysia.”
Highlighting Malaysian flavours and ingredients has always been central to the duo behind Eat and Cook, all the way from the pair’s humble beginnings in a 300-square-foot space to the much-lauded current iteration which was named the American Express One to Watch by Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2022.
"I think it’s every chef’s dream to get into the (Asia’s) 50 Best, not even going so far as to get any special awards,” says Soh Yong Zhi, the other half of Eat and Cook. "We were very lucky to get this special (One to Watch) award during a tough time in Malaysia because that year wasn’t really happening for every restaurant.”
"It got us a lot of international exposure, even though we were a very new restaurant, not even a year old at the time,” he continues. "But at the same time, we got a lot of judgment from customers.”
The 27-year-old Soh recalls, wryly, comments from a few diners in the months after receiving the award. "How could you get this award? Your service isn’t perfect, your food isn’t perfect – you don’t even have a signature dish!”
"Eat and Cook is not the type of restaurant where we want to repeat a dish,” Soh explains. "Even if we do bring something back, the technique, presentation or flavour will be a little different because we’re always learning something new from different people, different chefs we’ve collaborated with before.
"Most people think Eat and Cook is a fine dining restaurant, but as we've always mentioned, we are not a fine dining restaurant,” he continues.
"We’re a bit more easy, chill and fairly experimental, and we try to explore Malaysian ingredients and flavour, to do what we like to do.”
Ultimately, Soh speaks positively of receiving the award. "The award gave us the recognition that we are doing the right thing and that we’re doing what we love to do, in the right way,”
Echoing this, Lee adds: "It gave a very firm direction that I’m on the right path, I’m on the right journey in terms of what I should do and need to do, that we are on the right way.”
Restaurants don’t survive on recognition and awards alone, however, and Lee recognises the challenge of juggling customer expectations and their vision.
"It would be easier to fulfil some customer expectations by delivering a slightly premium ingredient from a more well-known country, but it’s more challenging for me to satisfy those expectations with something local,” he explains. "But we wanted to keep the passion of why we started Eat and Cook in the first place.”
Soh, too, welcomes the challenge. "From the start of Eat and Cook, the two of us wanted to highlight Malaysian ingredients, that’s why we’ve maintained this way of thinking,” he says.
"We love trial and error – we really don’t care about errors, we love to try things, and have errors too!” he laughs.
It would seem they’ve more than succeeded. Recalling the early struggles of lockdown-era Eat and Cook, Lee wears a sombre expression. "Yong (Soh) and I had no idea what to do. One of our regulars texted me, ‘Lee, do you have enough money to survive or not? I can lend you my extra savings.’,” he says. "I was like, ‘Shit man...’ You know that feeling? That feeling is just so... your regulars are just like your good friends.”
Lee perks up when talking about an older couple based in Australia that flies in for every new Eat and Cook menu. "I’m so honoured to have this kind of customer. You’ll be very happy to see them in the restaurant, just an old couple enjoying... it just reminds me of my grandparents.”
The Chef’s Table at Barkar KL – Photo courtesy of Barkar KL.
On the heels of this success came Barkar KL, their newest restaurant. While in Bangkok to collect the American Express One To Watch Award, inspiration struck. "We were having a really early breakfast – beef noodles, on the street, and as I looked at the fires in other stalls, suddenly the word ‘barkar’ came to mind,” Lee recalls.
"We had been thinking about it for some time, the concept was something like casual dining but we hadn’t seriously thought about what kind of food,” Soh adds. "We thought it sounded not bad, inspired by the Malay word ‘bakar’, for burning, and he (Lee) suggested a bar where we could do wood-grilled food.”
"We approached Barkar KL with the idea of community, like ‘bakar’ equals barbeque,” Lee explains. "Why do people do barbeques? It’s a communal event, you come, you talk and you grill together.”
"When we set up the menu, we tried to approach it with ‘What is comforting to Malaysians?’, which is why you see egg and toast, ikan bakar, claypot rice and noodles,” He describes these dishes as "unusual in this kind of restaurant”.
Egg and Toast at Barkar KL is emblematic of the comfort food approach at Barkar KL – Photo courtesy of Barkar KL.
The space is cavernous, and it is the last place you would expect to find a kopitiam classic like egg and toast – though, here you dip your toast, which sandwiches a sliver of chicken bak kwa and a spread of century egg kaya, into a luxuriant 63 degrees Celsius Napier egg.
Eat and Cook's Soh Yong Zhi (left) and Barkar KL Head Chef Kevin Ng – Picture by Choo Choy May.
Kevin Ng, 31, heads the kitchen at this pork-free restaurant, while Lee and Soh remain executive chefs at Eat and Cook and Barkar KL respectively.
"I joined them (Eat and Cook) because of Barkar KL in October 2022 and focused mostly on R&D during my time there. Before joining, especially during the pandemic, I had always wanted to do something open-flame,” Ng explains.
"I really like grilling, all throughout my career, I’ve been at the grill station at some point.”
Formerly of gēn 根 and Communal Table by gēn 根 in Penang, Ng has also worked at the Ritz-Carlton in the US Virgin Islands and the St. Regis in Dubai.
"I’ve always loved sharing plates – I think it’s an old and new way of enjoying food. Even though I like fine dining, in my heart I still enjoy sharing plates more.” he adds.
Locally sourced mangrove wood is the heart of the fire that rages here, though the team plans to look elsewhere too.
"We did look at different types of wood, like rambutan, mango and even coconut shells, which carry different flavours based on where they’re from,” Lee says.
Even with firewood, their passion for spotlighting ingredients is apparent. "I do believe wood isn’t just something to start a fire with, it’s also a seasoning,” Ng says.
One of Barkar KL’s most popular dishes: Ember Grill Dry Aged Australian Denver Lamb Ribs – Photo courtesy of Barkar KL.
One of the most popular dishes, the Ember Grill Dry Aged Australian Denver Lamb Ribs, incorporates a black vinegar glaze and finely shredded ginger to evoke the flavours of zhu jiao cu (pig’s trotters in vinegar), a classic comfort food that’s known for its role as a confinement dish for new mothers.
Even the cold plates involve fire. "Something really interesting, we have the ‘Smoke + Raw’ which uses lei cha (thunder tea). We take smoked fish and pair it with a lei cha granita, I think no one has made this before.” Soh remarks.
Smoke + Raw, an inventive dish that incorporates smoked fish and 'lei cha' – Photo courtesy of Barkar KL.
Perhaps bits of Eat and Cook still leak through. Chocolate Lava Cake is as comforting as dessert gets, but Lee isn’t content to just throw any old chocolate into a ganache.
"We’re using Chemor chocolate from Chocolate Concierge, and it is mind-blowing,” he says. "They have to have a booth in any airport in the world. They should be set up in our own airports.”
"The chocolate is from Chemor, which is an early harvest cacao. It’s one of my favourites: you can taste not just chocolate, but it’s fruity and sour – so good.” he adds.
Despite the success of Eat and Cook, Lee, Soh and Ng insist on not getting carried away with lofty ambitions for Barkar.
"As a chef, as someone who is in charge, I want to make sure we do the right thing first. We take care of everything: the food quality, the service, if everything is on point, I believe we can get on the list.” Soh says, referring to Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list .
Ng agrees, saying, "If we can get it, why not, right? We must do the right thing first: customers need to be happy, we need to be happy with what we serve, and our team must be happy too, then it’ll be more worth it when we get it.”
Lee is similarly optimistic, but is more focused on building something "sustained”. "Barkar can really present our approach to comfort Malaysian food. Even though I hope we can get it, we’re trying to just be ourselves, we try and get it naturally, if got then got-lah.”
Eat and Cook
H-6-1, Pusat Perdagangan Bandar, Persiaran Jalil 1, Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur
Website: EatAndCook
Barkar KL
Suites G-06, Ground Floor, G Tower, 199, Jln Tun Razak, Kuala Lumpur.
Open daily, 12-3pm, 6-11pm
Tel: 011-2277 3131
Instagram: @barkar.my
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