All abuzz over The Bee

With its exposed brick walls and hip furnishings, The Bee could very well be Malaysia's original hipster cafe when it was started in 2009.

Long before the myriad of achingly cool eateries aimed at a fashionable niche market made their appearance in the Klang Valley, there was The Bee. The granddaddy of all hipster hangouts, this café – which doles out nachos and burgers as aspiring musicians strummed guitars and banged on keyboards in the background – is the brainchild of Adrian Yap, one of the few entrepreneurial success stories in Malaysia’s F&B industry.

But several days ago, while having coffee at his first ever outlet in Jaya One, the 40-year-old leaned forward and confessed: “I’m terrible in the kitchen.”