Ange Branca’s Kampar Has an Opening Date – And It’s Soon!

Ange Branca in front of a mural by Jared Bader and Rashidah Salam. The mural is upstairs in the Kongsi. / Photograph by Kerri Sitrin

Kampar, Ange Branca’s new restaurant on South 7th Street in Bella Vista, has been a long time coming. We’ve been talking about it for a while, and she’s been working on it for a while, but a lot of the details have been up in the air. We knew it was going into the old Nomad space at 611 South 7th Street, but not when it was going to open. The original estimate from Branca was January, but then January came and went and there was no opening. February, too.

It wasn’t unexpected. Branca told me when we talked that everything — literally EVERYTHING — was taking longer than she expected, but back in December, she’d been semi-confident that January was far enough off that all the work could be done.

It turns out, that was too optimistic.

We knew it was going to be two floors and incorporate both an a la carte Malaysian restaurant and a kind of food hall/tasting menu/guest chef program. We knew that she was going to be using Nomad’s old pizza ovens as a way to cook over live fire, over wood, over coconut shells, and over charcoal, but not how that would all come together on a menu. And we knew there was a liquor license in the works, which, other than the size, was maybe the biggest departure from the straight BYO vibes of the original Saté Kampar.

“The space,” Branca told me the last time I talked to her, “kinda dictates the food you’re going to serve.” And that is absolutely true. But that was also a few months ago, and so now that she and her crew have had some time to figure out what the Nomad space is saying to them, we finally have some real details — and an actual opening date.

Ange Branca plans to use Nomad’s old pizza oven for some of Kampar’s dishes. / Photograph by Neal Santos

Big news first: March 22nd will be opening day. Or opening day for half of Kampar’s new home anyway.

On the 22nd, Branca and crew will open Kampar Kongsi — the upstairs, a la carte, social club-style part of the new Kampar. Upstairs is where Branca’s new, casual menu will be served. It’s where the now fully licensed bar is. And it’s named for the places the workers in the Malaysian tin mining towns used to eat and drink at the end of the day. Here’s the official description:

“The upstairs Kongsi is named for the social clubs that existed during the tin mining era in the town of Kampar, Malaysia. Today, people who speak Chinese might think of the word ‘Kongsi’ as meaning ‘company,’ but its original meaning refers to a Kongsi house in the tin mines, where workers would gather to eat, drink, rest, and socialize. These Kongsis always had an excellent chef, and Branca remembers hearing stories of her family’s favorite dishes at the Kongsi. She wants the upstairs space to capture the history and stories from her family’s background as generations of tin miners in the town of Kampar.”

Which sounds awesome. Because what you’re basically talking about is a Malaysian diner. Or a blue-collar neighborhood bar with a really good menu. And having something like that translated onto these streets by someone like Branca? That is why I’ve been looking forward to seeing what she does next for so long.

The upstairs bar at the Kampar Kongsi. / Photograph by Kerri Sitrin

The menu will be a mix of Saté Kampar classics, some new dishes that Branca has been working on (and testing out during her pop-ups and Muhibbah dinners), and a wild streak of Hakka Chinese cuisine that speaks directly to Branca’s family’s history as tin miners in one of the towns where Hakka cuisine was preserved.

Hold on. Time for a cool historical digression:

Because the Hakka were largely nomadic, much of their cuisine and culture have been lost. For generations, they moved around, mostly to avoid persecution and genocide. But while constantly being on the run might’ve kept their people alive, if you never set down roots anywhere, there’s no one left to remember you after you’re gone. But once they made it into Southern China and, eventually, Malaysia, the Hakka also became heavily involved in tin mining, and the Kongsi in these Malaysian tin towns were one of the few places where Hakka cuisine persisted. So from China to Malaysia to Bella Vista — that’s where Branca’s inspiration is coming from. From her family’s memories of great Hakka dishes in Kampar to a former pizza restaurant on 7th Street where, now, you (and I) get to taste them, too.

Okay, back to the restaurant now.

On paper, the upstairs board will cover everything you remember loving from Saté Kampar — the achat (pickled vegetables), the beef rendang with its sweet coconut cream sauce, and the nasi lemak wrapped in a banana leaf and split open at the table. There’ll also be ayam goreng berempah (which is essentially spicy fried chicken), a Malasian street burger (double patties, wrapped in an egg crèpe, topped with cabbage, and mounted on a sweet-potato roll), and maggi goreng, which, as I understand it, is instant noodles, fried in a wok, then bulked up with a house-made sauce, vegetables and egg. Classic Malaysian street food, according to Branca. And the instant noodles are an important part of getting it just right.

A few items from Kampar’s a la carte menu. / Photograph by Neal Santos

On top of this, there’ll be Hakka-style wagyu suen poon chee — stir-fried Japanese wagyu beef with taro pearls, fermented veggies, shiitake mushrooms and house-made oyster sauce — and chili pan mee, which already sounds like something I want to eat every day. I mean, dig this, from the menu:

Pan mee is a Hakka style noodle traditionally hand cut. In Malaysia, these noodles are served with a delicious pork topping, a soft boiled egg, and a spoonful of spicy shrimp chili crisps and crispy anchovies. Mix the soft egg and toppings to create a gravy for the noodles.

Seriously, if you don’t want to eat that right now, you and I just can’t be friends any more. Because second only to this Hawaiian roll lemon cheesecake crème brulée recipe I saw on TikTok the other day, this sounds like the most delicious thing I’ve heard about all month.

The upstairs space will have a bar and a cocktail program (developed by GM and former bartender Sam Pritchard) based around ingredients being used in Kampar’s kitchen, and that will be in place by the March 22nd opening, too. But downstairs, where Branca’s chefs-in-residency program will be happening, that’s going to take some time yet. That space is being called Kampar Kopitiam, and it will serve tasting menus done by Branca’s resident chefs, collaboration menus, one-off menus from Branca and her team — whatever makes sense in the moment. The chefs-in-residence haven’t been announced yet, but Branca did talk about how she would like to see Kopitiam utilized and received.

Beef rendang at Kampar / Photograph by Neal Santos

“The concept is adopted from Malaysian corner eating establishments called ‘kopitiam’ or ‘kopi cha poh’, open stalls lined with small independent vendors.” She explains. “The kopitiam is the neighborhood eatery [that] the everyday Malaysian frequents. These restaurants are very community-focused, supporting a diverse group of small food businesses from the neighborhood in a sustainable way that enables them to exist for generations. Kampar’s service will be more curated than the bustle at such establishments in Malaysia, but will nonetheless stay true to a vision that a food establishment can bring diverse communities together in a sustainable way. All of my work for the past eight years, from putting my first restaurant on the map with a James Beard nomination and numerous accolades, to launching Muhibbah Dinners, a charity dinner series for immigrants, to starting the Kampar Kitchen platform during COVID to support underrepresented cuisine, comes together in this brick and mortar location — Kampar.”

As of now, Kongsi will be open Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. (with the bar serving until 11 p.m.), and Fridays and Saturdays from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. (again, with an extra hour at the bar). There are no reservations being taken at the moment, so it’s first come, first served. In the meantime, keep an eye on Kampar’s Instagram for more news about the menu and Kopitiam’s opening.

I know I will be.