FOOD & DRINK
“I started to cook
in earnest when I came to the UK. I had to
fend for myself.”
four or five, I started with the easy jobs like peeling onions. Mum, a Nonya (a Chinese- Malaysian wife), cooked at least half a dozen of dishes for lunch and different dishes again for dinner.” In early 1980s, Suan-Neo and her hus-
band entertained a great deal at home. Bowled over by her food, their friends ad- vocated opening a Singaporean restaurant. Very few south-east Asian restaurants were around and even fewer had female head chefs. In 1982, their first restaurant in Fulham
was open and their eldest daughter was born. On this Suan-Neo says: “[She] was born the day before the opening. I had to go into hospital. So I missed the opening night. Everyone was so busy with the restaurant they didn’t even have time to come and see me in the hospital.” Her restaurants captured the zeitgeist of
excesses in the 1990s and noughties. Suan- Neo recalls: “In the City, in the early days
before the expense account limitations, people were drinking very heavily. Tey would have aperitifs, liqueurs afterwards and lunches would go on for hours, espe- cially in Leadenhall Street. Tey would be there from 1pm till 5 or 6pm, drinking away.” After 20 years of successful trading,
business took a tumble following the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001, with world- wide stocks taking a freefall. “Tings started going downhill, things became very difficult”, Suan-Neo says. She and her hus- band wisely decided to switch their busi- ness model at Suan Neo Restaurant from fine dining to the more affordable, mid- priced Singapura restaurant concept. Te global economy took a seismic downturn after the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy in 2008. Tey closed their flagship restaurant in St Paul’s in 2009. Suan-Neo recounts: “Te banking crisis made it all change, expense accounts were
12 FOCUS The Magazine November/December 2019
cut and we didn’t get the spend. I heard that if they spent more than £25 a head, they wouldn’t get their expenses paid.” She adds: “Tings started changing.
Lunches became shorter and shorter, 1 hour, 45 minutes, then lunch at desk. We had to serve everything in minutes.” To accommodate City workers’ shorter
lunch breaks, the couple turned half of the Broadgate restaurant into a take away in 2004. “We kept half of it as a proper restaurant. We didn’t really know what we were doing,” Suan-Neo says. By 2006, it became a take-away-only site and was re- branded as “ASAP Deli”. “Tere were queues round the building. It was a huge success,” she says. In 2009, they dared to open another branch in Holborn, despite the turbulent economic climate. However, “the margin on take-away
food is a lot smaller than restaurants where you would make money on the wine. So, we decided to wind it all up” when the
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