Tea-brined fried chicken is one of the delicious, yet lesser-known Thai dishes served during the three-month kitchen takeover. — Photos: Err by Bo.lan
Diners in Malaysia and across the world have a natural thirst for shiny new things. For established F&B operators, coming up with something new once meant revising or updating an existing menu or inviting a celebrity chef to do a one-off collaboration, but increasingly, operators have gotten more creative in their attempts to cater to the growing appetite for new experiences.
Kuala Lumpur’s Grand Hyatt, for instance, has taken the concept of a kitchen takeover and turned it into something very closely resembling a short-term residency with the recent launch of Err by Bo.lan.
A kitchen takeover is when a chef takes over another restaurant kitchen. Sometimes this can be a chef from another restaurant in the same city or country and sometimes it’s a chef from a different part of the world. Because the experience is so one-of-a-kind, these takeovers are often limited to one-night-only special dinners or if time permits, the experience is stretched out over a few days.
This was once the norm and yet, there are now some restaurateurs opting to think outside the box and go against the conventional grain.
Kuala Lumpur’s Grand Hyatt, for instance, has taken the concept of a kitchen takeover and turned it into something very closely resembling a short-term residency with the recent launch of Err by Bo.lan.
Husband-and-wife team Bo (left) and Jones are the Michelin-starred couple behind Err by Bo.lan which celebrates rustic urban Thai food.
Err by Bo.lan is essentially a three-month kitchen takeover by Bangkok husband-and-wife duo Dylan Jones and Bo Songvisava, who run renowned Michelin-starred eatery Bo.lan (an abbreviation of their names) in Bangkok, Thailand.
The kitchen takeover at Grand Hyatt Kuala Lumpur started in early September and will only end on 30 November 2025, giving diners plenty of time to savour an entirely new Thai food odyssey with a Michelin sheen without having to actually go to Thailand.
The endeavour is a collaboration between the hotel and the restaurant and is the brainchild of the hotel’s director of F&B, Steve Ong, who wanted to go outside traditional strictures and do something more long-term.
“Usually, a kitchen takeover is one week or a few days or it’s like a one-night wonder, you know, and there’s so much hard work for that few days. And honestly, a three-day kitchen takeover doesn’t make any money.
“You know – there’s all the ingredients you fly in, the team that’s flown in and the knowledge that is flown in. And of course we want to maximise this and build on it.
“And it benefits both parties. There’s exposure, revenue and our team gets to learn something new. But I also think three months for this collaboration makes sense because it gives the team here time to learn and develop the dishes,” explains Ong.
Ong says he was also motivated to do this for a longer period of time because so often, diners aren’t free for one-night-only dinners.
“People often see the marketing material when it’s too late and then they’ll be like, ‘Ah, I missed it!’ So with a longer kitchen takeover, there’s the opportunity for more people to experience the collaboration,” says Ong.
Bo and Jones are disciples of famed chef David Thompson whose Thai restaurant Nahm in London has become something of an institution.
Upon returning to Thailand, the couple went to antique bookshops and book fairs, collecting over 1,200 cookbooks, journals and magazines that documented heritage Thai recipes. When they subsequently opened Bo.lan, it became an immediate sensation off the back of the regional Thai recipes that Bo and Jones put together.
Err by Bo.lan, meanwhile, is a sister brand of Bo.lan that serves urban rustic Thai food with South-East Asian influences in more casual surroundings. In terms of which brand to bring to Kuala Lumpur, Jones says it was a relatively easy decision.
The hotel simply repurposed their poolside restaurant, updating the decor and lighting to create Err by Bo.lan. — Grand Hyatt KL
“If we bring Bo.lan to KL, the maximum we can do is like one or two days, because we have so many hyper-local Thai ingredients that we have to bring and they don’t keep for long and there’s the carbon footprint to consider as well.
“But with Err, because the food is about shared South-East Asian culture – therefore there’s a lot more flexibility because we can use Malaysian ingredients like chilli and lemongrass. So to come here for three months, it made more sense to use Err,” says Jones.
After four months of discussions, Err by Bo.lan came together in KL, making use of the space that previously housed the hotel’s poolside restaurant, which served standard fare like burgers and chips.
The space has had a minor makeover in the form of revised lighting and updated decor to give it a fresh, colourful chic aesthetic. It’s a clever way to make use of an existing space without investing too heavily in extensive renovations.
Ong is the brainchild behind the three-month kitchen takeover, which he says ensures Malaysian diners have more time to experience the collaboration. — Grand Hyatt KL
When they arrived in Malaysia, Bo and Jones spent nearly two weeks with the Grand Hyatt’s existing kitchen team. They have since gone back to Thailand but have left one of their chefs behind to lead the charge and ensure the local kitchen team delivers their high standards. For Ong, this also means he doesn’t have to hire an entirely new team; his existing team gets utilised and on top of that – they learn something entirely new.
For a Michelin-backed offering, the food at Err offers a surprisingly good value-for-money proposition, with small sharing plates starting at RM22. The eatery serves a range of delicious dishes that diners are unlikely to have tried anywhere else, like Thum Khao Pat, which makes use of Cameron Highlands sweet white corn interspersed with fermented fish and shrimp paste in what proves to be a fiery, combustive offering with a delightful pungent underbelly that simultaneously highlights the burst of sweetness from the corn.
Other more unique offerings include Bik Gai Hat Yai or tea-brined crispy chicken wing with fried shallots and garlic powder, which is, honest to God, a crackly, crunchy slice of avian magic.
Err by Bo.lan also highlights Jones and Bo’s predilection for fermenting and pickling and you’ll discover their culinary masterpieces in dishes like Plao Kao Mak or charcoal-grilled fresh fish marinated with fermented rice. The fish is a fabulous slice of fun – firm to the touch with a charred exterior and a spectacularly addictive funk permeating its core musculature.
Perhaps most important of all is this three-month kitchen takeover is cleverly filling a gap in the market for authentic Thai food that is off the beaten track – at least in terms of the KL market.
Jones says bringing Err by Bo.lan to KL made more sense, as they could make use of local ingredients like Cameron Highlands white corn in this dish of tum khao pat.
“I think the hotel is very clever. They see that there’s a gap in the market for this style of Thai food. And also this product – you can’t benchmark it in this market because you cannot find it. Whatever you have here, I don’t think you can find it easily elsewhere in KL,” says Jones.
So far, Ong says the kitchen takeover has worked so well as a pilot project that there is a possibility it will be extended, although that is still up in the air.
“At the moment, it’s a three-month collaboration, but let’s see where the next couple of months take us,” says Ong.
