Thai Hou Sek is a contemporary Thai-Chinese restaurant that serves succulent “pork-licious” meals and local fusion Thai cuisines. Most of their cuisines are inspired by the Thai street food and they are bring it up a notch by presenting it fine dining style.
Even when it comes to the restaurant’s name, it is rather imaginative. For those who comprehend the Cantonese dialect, they’d find that the restaurant’s name of Thai Hou Sek would directly translate to ‘Really Delicious’.
Discover KL recently caught up with the founder of Thai Hou Sek, Andre Shum, as he shares about how he got into the business, which are his personal recommendations off the menu, and much more.
1) What is your backstory before getting into the business?
Andre (A): Prior to being in the F&B business, I was involved in the financial market. I have been in the F&B business since 2009 till now. My first step into the F&B industry was when I bought over Rama V, Kuala Lumpur’s first Thai fine dining restaurant located in Jalan U-Thant and my journey in the field started from there gradually. I also successfully built up the rapport with another casual Thai dining restaurant, Fa-Ying, in Paradigm Mall.
2) Why did you start this business?
A: I ventured into F&B as I enjoy creating and sharing unforgettable experiences for people, and one of the best ways to do it is through dining as everyone needs to eat. I believe in living to eat, rather than eating to live, where people can experience joy through eating.
3) How did you come up with the idea for Thai-Chinese cuisine?
A: In Thailand, the food is heavily influenced by the Chinese culture where Thai-Chinese comfort food can be found effortlessly in any street, corner and nook of the city, especially Bangkok. Coming from having 2 Thai restaurants in Klang Valley now, we find that most of the offerings in the Thai restaurants in Malaysia are similar.
As Malaysians love good comfort food, I would like to bring an aspect of Thai-Chinese comfort food that is refreshing, different and sinful to KL-ites. Adding these to the common love of inquisitive pork-infused dishes by the Malaysian Chinese, that would be the perfect setting! That is how the concept of Thai Hou Sek came about.
4) What are some of the best and worst moments for Thai Hou Sek?
A: Let’s start with the good moments, it is when I am blessed to have a strong operational team with me where even if the outlet is packed, we aim to deliver the best service quality, food presentation and dining experience to our customers. When customers are happy, it makes us happy.
As for the bad moments, we do not term any moments as bad moments but those are moments for us to learn and challenges for us to improve to serve our customers better. The only moment that I would consider bad is sometimes when business gets good and the restaurant is packed, it is unfortunate that we have to turn customers away, which prevents them from trying out our offerings.
5) Which meal would you recommend to your customers?
A: The dishes that I would recommend – Siu Yuk Tom Yam (because it is my favourite), Super Pork and Pumpkin Green Curry (we have one of the best green curries), and Siu Yuk and Petai Bihun (totally a Malaysian dish!)
6) How did you develop the recipes for Thai Hou Sek?
A: When we develop dishes for Thai Hou Sek, we have two objectives in our mind – comfort food & porkilicious! We utilise zestful herbs and spices in our dishes just like how the authentic Thai-Chinese cuisine tastes like, but the twist is in incorporating other ingredients, to infuse some of the favourite elements of the Malaysian Chinese cuisine.
7) Choose one dish from your restaurant that you wouldn’t mind eating for the rest of your life.
A: It would be the Siu Yuk Tom Yam paired with white rice! Thai Hou Sek = Thai Chinese. Thai = Tom Yam, Chinese = Siu Yuk & White Rice = I’m Malaysian and I love my rice! What more is there to say?
8) What are you looking forward to for Thai Hou Sek?
A: To build an established F&B conglomerate in Asia that brings fresh ideas and fun to dining.
DKL Gets Personal is a series with well-known personalities within the industry, be it food, events, or anything pertaining to lifestyle. It is a way to gain insight into the industry and to learn how these individuals managed to turn an idea into reality.
Feature Image Credit: Thai Hou Sek & Urban_Star
