Old China Hand: Nyonya Kitchen Founders Talk Surviving Beijing’s Tumultuous F&B Scene for 25 Years

Kyle Mullin | Jul 23, 2017 5:00 pm | Add a comment | 1874 reads

Given the number of bricked-up businesses and crackdowns on long-running favorites, simply running a restaurant seems like no small feat in Beijing these days, let alone enduring the capital’s endless changes over decades. Yet Lee Ping Ping and Kim Loh have done just that, and more.

Today the couple – who hail from Kuala Lumpur and recently opened a new branch of their Malaysian-style Nyonya Kitchen in the new China World Mall – look back in near awe at all the tumult they’ve witnessed after 25 years in Beijing’s restaurant scene.

“The biggest change of all is the purchasing power of the local Chinese,” says Kim, who watched throngs of curious lao Beijing line up to buy takeaway roast chicken from their small outlets in the early 1990s, only to see those customers become worldly patrons perusing Nyonya’s current menu at China World Mall. He adds: “I’m so happy that the average standard of living is going up, but these spenders are now also much more demanding.”

He draws out the a’s in demanding for emphasis, as a playful grin crosses his rotund, jolly face. The more reserved Lee adjusts her glasses but nods in agreement, saying that she and her husband have long been up to that challenge, because they strived to establish strong customer service at Nyonya’s original location in Lido when it first opened in 2000.

At the time, it was a humble courtyard restaurant that prepared homey Malaysian nyonya baba-style dishes for Beijing’s then fledgling Southeast Asian community, along with numerous foreigners and some curious domestic Chinese patrons.

Nyonya’s cozy initial setup couldn’t have been further removed from the circumstances that brought Kim and Lee to Beijing in the first place. Before going on to start their own successful small business, they both worked as accountants. Kim’s company sent him and his family to China to help with major investments in 1991, including the opening of a Shakey’s Pizza chain branch near Wangfujing. Just as that project was reaching completion, the entire venture was shut down as a result of Oriental Plaza’s acquisition of the space.

Kim recalls: “We came, spent almost two years building this three-story restaurant from scratch, and then they told us: ‘The land on which you stand has been taken over by another group.’” His superiors then asked Kim and his family to come back to Malaysia and begin another assignment. But he declined because he and Lee “were seeing the way China was developing, and it was so interesting.” So he quickly snagged another accounting job here. Yet he didn’t feel finished with the restaurant game, either. Despite the failure of the Shakey’s Pizza branch, in their spare time, he and Lee opened their own takeout roast chicken business on Huan Jie, which is now Dongsi Shitiao.

Kim still remembers how Beijingers had so little living space at the time, picking up a roast chicken to reheat at home was convenient and novel. Lee smiles while remembering how “during festivals, the queue would go right around the corner.” At the business’ peak, they had 20 such small outlets opened across town.

However, in 2002, China began opening up more quickly, leading to new Walmarts and Carrefours that sold roast chicken and much more, quickly rendering Lee and Kim’s literal mom-and-pop shops obsolete. The couple had more sustained success after turning their roast chicken outlet in Lidu into a sit down Malaysian restaurant, the first proper Nyonya Kitchen.

After that Lido Nyonya restaurant took off, the couple opened another branch in the basement of the China World Mall, which became an even bigger hit thanks to the throngs of CBD office workers hankering after something different for lunch. While the couple spent 2006-2010 in Australia’s Melbourne for their children’s education, they decided to return to Beijing after their young ones graduated in order to get back to running Nyonya Kitchen. And though the subsequent opening of their Taiyanggong branch only lasted a few years before they pulled the plug (Kim says the market there wasn’t yet developed enough), the recent move from the basement of the old China World to the fifth floor of that glitzy new mall is a sign of Nyonya’s staying power. That latest branch proved even more of a family affair than its predecessors, thanks to their son Christopher’s involvement in the choosing and making of the modern décor.

Lee says they were happy to return to Beijing and try their luck in both Taiyanggong and the China World Mall, but not for the reasons one might expect. “Australia was pretty quiet for us, compared to here,” she says, adding: “We didn’t miss the restaurant, I think we missed Beijing, because the city is so vibrant.”

This article first appeared in the July/August issue of the Beijinger.