KUALA LUMPUR, June 23 — Before there was a second outlet, there was a first attempt that never happened.

Kenneth Lee, founder of RAYs, will tell you that Mont Kiara was not a new idea at all. It was the original one. 

Years before the café first landed in PJ’s Section 51A, Mont Kiara was the location he and his partners, Samantha Yeo and Jolene Goh, first scouted for what would become RAYs.

“At the time, it simply wasn’t feasible and the opportunity didn’t work out,” Lee recalls.

So they went to PJ instead, into a modest shoplot with a kitchen the size of a small bedroom. 

Today, RAYs has finally expanded with a second outlet at Steppes @ Mont Kiara. Here the menu offers cafe food classics — steak frites, burgers and milkshakes among them — alongside the specialty coffee that started it all. 

Lee considers the original rejection a stroke of good fortune: “That turned out to be a blessing in disguise because PJ taught us everything we know today. It helped us understand our identity, our customers, our strengths and, most importantly, the importance of community.”

It is a roundabout origin story, fitting for a brand that has spent the past two and a half years quietly becoming something larger than the sum of its sandwiches. 

The first RAYs outlet opened in November 2023 with an unfussy premise: specialty coffee, comforting food, a neighbourhood feel, and an orange-hued shoplot in Section 51A best known for its Chicken Katsu Sando and French Toast.

Underneath that early simplicity was a steady accumulation of lessons. 

“Running our first outlet taught me the true meaning of community,” Lee says. “It taught me to be more humble, more patient and to listen more carefully. A neighbourhood café is not built by a business alone; it is built together with the guests who walk through its doors.” 

That listening, hours of conversation at the counter, fed directly back into the kitchen, with the menu revised multiple times along the way.

The PJ shoplot, however, came with a ceiling. During the morning rush, the small space filled up fast, with little room for larger groups or events. 

“There were limitations in terms of acoustics, seating flexibility, workflow and overall capacity,” Lee says. Every one of those constraints would later resurface, in reverse, as a design brief for Mont Kiara.

Ask Lee when he knew RAYs was ready to expand, and he resists a tidy answer. “It was more a combination of things coming together over time,” he says. 

One factor mattered more than the rest: his staff had grown up alongside the brand, and a single-outlet café offers limited rungs on the ladder. “In many ways, Mont Kiara is as much an opportunity for them as it is for the business,” he says. 

By the time the opportunity resurfaced years later, the team had a clearer sense of its own identity, and Mont Kiara’s community spirit aligned closely with what RAYs had been building since day one.

If PJ was an exercise in working around constraints, Mont Kiara is what RAYs looks like once those constraints are removed. 

“The larger footprint allows us to create a more comfortable dining experience with improved seating arrangements, greater flexibility for larger groups and the ability to host community gatherings and events more comfortably,” Lee says.

Months of renovation followed. Lee cleverly documented every step of the process on the RAYs Mont Kiara Instagram page, keeping regulars from their PJ café updated while drawing interest from potential customers.

The kitchen was rebuilt from the ground up to improve efficiency and reduce bottlenecks during peak hours, while acoustics got the same attention, a direct answer to PJ’s liveliest hours: “We wanted the space to feel warm, inviting and comfortable regardless of whether someone is dropping by for a coffee, a family meal or an evening gathering with friends.”

That bigger kitchen has given the menu room to stretch. The signature RAYs’ Classic Cheeseburger is the anchor, an unfussy patty-and-cheese affair built for the diner crowd RAYs is courting.

Quack & Mashed Potato pairs creamy mashed russet potatoes with crispy duck bacon, a comforting, slightly unexpected match.

On the drinks side, the Berries Matcha layers strawberry and raspberry purées into a house-blend matcha, while the Mont Blanc — yuzu cream, filter coffee and a touch of grapefruit zest — is a quiet flex of the specialty-coffee instincts Lee built his name on.

None of this was meant to dilute what RAYs already stood for. The terracotta tones that have become shorthand for the brand carried over to Mont Kiara, deliberately. 

“Those colours represent warmth, comfort and familiarity,” Lee says. “The same values that guide our approach to hospitality, food and coffee. We wanted returning customers to feel that same sense of home the moment they walk through the doors.”

For most of its existence, RAYs has been a brunch café and nothing more. Lee put the question to himself plainly while planning Mont Kiara: “Would I come here for dinner?” 

His honest answer, at the time, was no — the menu, lighting and overall experience at the PJ outlet were built around brunch. “But as we grew, we wanted to create a space where everyone could enjoy RAYs beyond the daytime,” he says.

That desire shaped Mont Kiara’s dedicated dinner programme, with warmer lighting and a menu built specifically for evening dining — burgers and milkshakes alongside steaks, grilled dishes, sharing plates and comforting dinner classics.

Alongside the dinner menu, RAYs has added a pet-friendly alfresco section, something Lee says guests have been requesting for years, with pet-friendly menu offerings being explored next. 

A health-conscious thread runs through the menu too, with macro-friendly and higher-protein dishes sitting next to the comfort food RAYs is known for — comfort food and healthier choices, Lee believes, can coexist.

There is also a new mascot greeting customers at Mont Kiara: a burger holding a cup of coffee, with a sun motif worked into the design. Its origin grew out of a Burger Rave event RAYs hosted last year, which showed Lee that customers “weren’t necessarily looking for a specific cuisine from RAYs” so much as food that felt comforting and easy to share. 

Rather than commit to a single category, the team landed on what Lee calls a modern comfort diner, combining specialty coffee with comfort food, burgers, dinner plates and healthier options under one roof.

The mascot carries that duality literally. “The burger represents where we’re heading, while the coffee in its hand represents where we came from,” Lee says. “Together, they tell the story of a brand that continues to evolve while staying true to its roots.” 

The sun, meanwhile, is the reason the café is called RAYs at all — a name inspired, he says, by sun rays and the warmth, positivity and good vibes they bring to everyday life.

Despite the scale of what their new shop in Mont Kiara represents, Lee resists framing it as RAYs moving on from where it started. 

“I still love our PJ outlet,” he says. “It has a warmth and charm that will always feel like home to me. Mont Kiara is not about replacing that identity. It is about building upon everything we have learned and continuing to improve. Proving to our community that we remember, we listen and we care.”

For Lee, the two outlets are less rivals than different passages in the same story, one picking up where the other left off.

“Mont Kiara isn’t simply a second outlet,” he says. “It’s the next chapter of a journey that started in PJ.”

RAYs Mont Kiara

Steppes @ Mont Kiara, 

32 Jalan Kiara 3, 

Mont Kiara, KL.

Soft launch: June 23-26, 2026

Official opening: June 28, 2026

Open daily 10am-10pm

IG: https://www.instagram.com/raysmontkiara/

 

RAYs PJ

Lot 8. 2, B.LAND. Jalan 51A/225, Section 51A, PJ

Open daily 8:30am-5pm

Phone: 012-879 6878

IG: https://www.instagram.com/raysgotchu/

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