Fourteen years, six rooms, three markets
A fine-dining flagship, an everyday brasserie and a family diner, cooked to the same standard for three very different sets of guests.
This page covers my six restaurants in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya, from BadBoyCooks Diner at Oasis Square (2013 to 2018) to the chef-led rooms that came after it. I have set them out by market instead of by date: fine dining at the top, the brasseries in the middle and the casual diner at the foot. The point is that the same cooking, sourcing, kitchen standards and care for the guest can work at three price points and for three kinds of guest without giving ground on any of them. All of this is in the past tense now. By the close of 2025 all six restaurants had been handed back, and I turned, deliberately, to the cultural diplomacy work that Serumpun Sarawak now anchors. The rooms laid the ground. Setting them side by side shows what they proved.
The flagship rooms
Tasting menus and rooms built around the maisons, at the top of the market.
The everyday-elevated rooms
Bistro and bouchon rooms, run to chef's standards at neighbourhood prices.
The everyday-affordable rooms
Comfort food for families, served all day, run with a chef's care at prices people could afford.
The continuity model: build, train, transfer, assure continuity
The four stages that run through Serumpun Sarawak were first worked out in these rooms. The restaurants were schools as much as businesses, and every team that ran one passed what it learned to the next.
Why by market and not by date
I have set the rooms out by market because what they show is range across markets. A timeline would suggest a steady climb from bistro to flagship, and that is not what happened. Over fourteen years the work moved between fine dining, the everyday brasserie and the casual diner, and ran all three to one standard. A timeline hides that. Grouping by market makes it plain.
The three tiers in brief
Tier I, fine dining. Three rooms carried my flagship cooking. Enfin by James Won (2016 to 2019/2020) at Menara Hap Seng was the room of the Krug Chef’s Table and the Hennessy Salon. Shin’Labo by James Won (1 February 2022 to 2024) at Mitsui Shopping Park Lalaport KL was the yōshoku salon Robb Report called Ryoutei Shin’Labo. MeatMore (October 2023 to 2025) in Bukit Bintang was the SoHo-format steakhouse with its own Mortlach Room. These three carried the chef-led standing, the maison ambassadorships and the international press that the wider work earned.
Tier II, the brasserie and everyday French. Two rooms did this work. Brasserie Enfin (2014 to early 2016) at Oasis Square, Ara Damansara, was the first bistro, where the maisons first met my cooking. Bouchon Enfin (late 2020 to 2021) at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur was the Lyonnaise bouchon that opened nine weeks before the second MCO, and where our Be Kind approach to hospitality began. The care and the cooking were the same; the prices were for every day.
Tier III, casual and family. BadBoyCooks Diner (2013 to 2018) at Oasis Square, Ara Damansara, was my first room, open a year before Brasserie Enfin took its own space in the same complex. It was an American diner reworked for Asian tastes, with comfort food at fair prices and queues all day, young and old. It showed from the first day that the same standards could feed every generation at one table.
Three rooms inside restaurants
In the fine-dining tier, three dedicated rooms within restaurants set the tone of my work with the maisons: the Krug Chef’s Table at Enfin (from April 2016), the Hennessy Salon at Enfin (November 2016, the world’s only) and the Mortlach Room at MeatMore (October 2023 to 2024). Each was built around the maison it served.
The 2025 turn
By 2025 I had decided the restaurants had done what they could. Turning to conservation and culinary diplomacy through Serumpun Sarawak took my cooking to the level of cultural policy: the indigenous food of Sarawak’s thirty-four communities, the conservation of edible medicinal plants and seeds, and the teaching and mentoring that my Adjunct Professorship at Taylor’s University now puts on the academic record.
The four stages that run Serumpun Sarawak (build, train, transfer, assure continuity) were first practised in these rooms, over fourteen years. My first conversations with Sarawak’s indigenous communities also began in the early restaurant years, and over a decade they grew into the conservation work. The restaurants and Serumpun are one body of work. The rooms taught me; Serumpun is where I use what they taught.
The rooms are gone. What built them, across three markets and fourteen years, goes into everything I do next.
If you came here looking for a table: I still cook privately, and for occasions that call for something particular. The restaurants have closed, but I have kept cooking.
Questions answered
Are James Won's restaurants still open?
No. All six of James Won's restaurants have closed; the last, MeatMore, closed in 2025. He now cooks for major events, pop-ups and catering, and through Serumpun Sarawak.
Which maison rooms were inside James Won's restaurants?
Three rooms within the fine-dining restaurants were built around a maison: the Krug Chef's Table, begun at Brasserie Enfin and at Enfin from April 2016, the Hennessy Salon at Enfin from November 2016, the world's only, and the Mortlach Room at MeatMore from 2023 to 2024.
Why did James Won turn from restaurants to Serumpun Sarawak?
By 2025 James Won had decided the restaurants had done what they could, and he turned deliberately to conservation and culinary diplomacy through Serumpun Sarawak. The four stages that run Serumpun Sarawak, build, train, transfer and assure continuity, were first practised in his restaurants.
What the rooms taught me (patience, sourcing, care) is what I now use to look after something much older than any of them.
Across fourteen years
Adjacent chapters
I cooked to the same standard at the Krug Chef's Table at three hundred ringgit a course, at the Lyonnaise bouchon at neighbourhood prices, and at the BadBoyCooks counter at ten ringgit a plate. From the start, the work was built to keep its standard in every market I cooked for.