The atelier behind the room
A Kuala Lumpur luxury kitchen and wardrobe atelier representing Poggenpohl, Ernestomeda, Porro and Sub-Zero & Wolf, and the inaugural Ambassador appointment that came with it.
The Plan, the Kuala Lumpur atelier for Poggenpohl, Ernestomeda, Porro and Sub-Zero & Wolf, named me its first Ambassador in 2023. Since then we have designed my kitchen together, opened its Poggenpohl studio with my cooking, and hosted its houses at my table.
The Plan named me its inaugural Ambassador in 2023, the first appointment of its kind in the atelier’s history. Each house it represents has its own standing: Poggenpohl, the German kitchen maker founded in 1892; Ernestomeda and Porro from Italy, at the contemporary end of European design; and Sub-Zero & Wolf from the United States, built to the highest standard of residential precision.
When an atelier with this portfolio names its first ambassador, it is saying something about fit: that my way of working matches its own at the level where decisions are made, well before anything reaches a showroom floor.
At The Plan studio, 2024. Photographs by Bonnie Yap.
The most important work The Plan and I have done together is the kitchen for my own home: Poggenpohl cabinetry, Gaggenau 400 Series appliances and AtlasPlan surfaces. We worked through the brief side by side: workflow, ergonomics, appliance specification, and the order of preparation, service and clean-down. It works the way a working chef would build a kitchen from first principles, made with the atelier’s European craft.
On 24 May 2024 I cooked the dinner that opened The Plan’s new Poggenpohl studio at Glomac Damansara. It was my own version of home cooking, so guests would feel they had dined in my home: Kobe oysters, salmon brûlée with wasabi mayonnaise, Miyazaki A5 wagyu with sambal oelek, and a citron tart with handmade gelato. On 15 June I cooked lunch there: heirloom tomatoes, a free-range chicken roasted with lemon, then cake and coffee.
In September 2024 I joined the atelier’s Porro evening. On 29 January 2026 The Plan hosted Ernestomeda, and I cooked for twenty-five guests a menu that met Italy halfway: ulam pesto crostini, Sarawak pineapple agrodolce, chicken percik al forno, laksa-Genovese spaghetti and a kaya coffee tray.
The Porro evening at The Plan, September 2024. Photographs by Bonnie Yap.
Gaggenau is closest to the fire, Mepra to the hand, and The Plan to the room: the kitchen footprint, the cabinetry brief and the wardrobes around the work, the decisions that come before either of the others. Each sees itself as a workshop: Poggenpohl in Herford, Ernestomeda near Pesaro, Mepra in Lumezzane. The Plan brings them together in one brief.
When I moved from running restaurants to conservation and cultural diplomacy in 2025, the ambassadorship stayed as it was. Kitchen architecture matters whether I cook for a public room or a private table, and like Mepra, this partnership never depended on an open restaurant.
Other frames from The Plan studio and the Porro evening.
Open the archive Four frames, photographed by Bonnie Yap
Selected Press
Full archive →- The Plan Our Ambassador Official atelier reference · inaugural appointment 1 January 2023