Twelve Years, Five Rooms

The Restaurant Arc in Brief

Five rooms across twelve years. Brasserie Enfin (2014 – early 2016) at Oasis Square, Ara Damansara — the founding bistro. Enfin by James Won (2016 – 2019/2020) at Menara Hap Seng, Kuala Lumpur — the fine-dining flagship. Bouchon Enfin (late 2020 – 2021) at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur — the Lyonnaise bouchon that opened nine weeks before the second MCO. Shin’Labo by James Won (2022 – 2025) at Mitsui Shopping Park Lalaport KL, Bukit Bintang — the yōshoku salon that Robb Report termed Ryoutei Shin’Labo. MeatMore (October 2023 – 2024) at Bukit Bintang — the SoHo-format steakhouse that housed the dedicated Mortlach Room.

Three rooms-within-a-restaurant. Across the wider arc, three dedicated rooms-within-a-restaurant defined the kitchen’s maison-led editorial register: the Krug Chef’s Table at Enfin (April 2016 onwards), the Hennessy Salon at Enfin (November 2016, the world’s only), and the Mortlach Room at MeatMore (October 2023 – 2024). Each was the architectural embodiment of the maison whose register it carried.

The 2025 pivot. By 2025, the kitchen had decided that the restaurant chapter had carried what it could carry. The pivot to conservation and culinary diplomacy via Serumpun Sarawak was not a retreat from cooking. It was a re-direction of the kitchen’s discipline towards work at cultural-policy register — the indigenous gastronomy of Sarawak’s thirty-four communities, the conservation of edible medicinal flora and seeds, the curriculum work at Taylor’s University, the In Motion mentee thread.

How the Five Chapters Read Together

Each room earned the room that followed. Brasserie Enfin’s early Krug and Hennessy press earned the Menara Hap Seng fine-dining room. Enfin (Menara Hap Seng) earned the Krug Ambassade and the Hennessy Salon, which earned the wider maison-led editorial register the kitchen has carried since. Bouchon Enfin earned the Be Kind precedent that made the post-restaurant pivot possible. Shin’Labo earned the Ryoutei register that placed the kitchen’s Japanese inheritance on the public record. MeatMore earned the Mortlach Room that argued the ageing-as-structural-discipline thesis at fuller depth.

Each chapter has a register the others do not. Brasserie Enfin holds the founding register — the bistro that earned the maisons’ confidence. Enfin holds the fine-dining flagship register — the rooms within rooms, the formal pairings, the credentials. Bouchon Enfin holds the character register — the pivot that proved discipline could leave the room. Shin’Labo holds the Japanese inheritance register — the yōshoku and Ryoutei chapters that Robb Report named. MeatMore holds the fire-and-ritual register — the Mortlach Room, the SoHo format, the closing chapter.

The closures are part of the work. All five rooms have closed by the end of 2025. The closures are not the chapter’s failure mode; they are the chapter’s editorial conclusion. The kitchen made decisions, room by room, about what to carry forward and what to retire. The work that was carried forward — the maisons, the discipline, the Be Kind precedent, the conservation register, the In Motion mentee thread — is the work that earned the cultural-diplomacy chapter the Serumpun Sarawak cornerstone now holds.

What the Twelve Years Built

Read as one body of practice, the Restaurant Legacy cornerstone built three things that have travelled forward from the closed rooms.

The maison editorial register. The Krug Ambassade work, the Hennessy Salon work, the Mortlach Room work, and the wider maison architecture that the Collaborations cornerstone now holds. The maisons did not arrive in 2025; they arrived across the twelve years. The cornerstone is where they were earned.

The discipline of care. The Be Kind programme during the pandemic taught the kitchen that the discipline could leave the room. The lesson — care is operational; the team is the discipline; the room is not the load-bearing element — became the founding precedent for everything in the post-restaurant arc.

The cultural-architectural inheritance. French classical (Brasserie Enfin and Enfin), Lyonnaise bouchon (Bouchon Enfin), Japanese yōshoku and Ryoutei (Shin’Labo), Speyside-Mortlach single malt (MeatMore). Four cultural inheritances carried at register in twelve years. The kitchen’s East-and-West continuity that the Ideology chapter names is the inheritance that the five rooms together built.