PETALING JAYA, Aug 23 — There’s no other way to say it: chef Andy Choy is building an empire.

In the last two months, he’s either revamped or opened four new brands.

June saw the arrival of Mala Bistronome, a fusion malatang spot in TTDI born out of Zaataru, the short-lived collaboration with Ameer Alzalek (Leen’s, S.A.J. Bistronomy) and Joel Kirk.

In July, his hospitality group Cendul debuted Fleur Bakehouse, a Peranakan-inspired viennoiserie on the ground floor of Menara Access World in Seksyen 19, one floor below THB Bistronome — also his — which opened last December.

Then came Sept in August, a French-Japanese cafe by day and bistro by night, soft-launched into the Seventeen Mall unit previously held by Ren Ren Noodle, and before that, Superfine.

And because that isn’t enough, he’s also taken over and revamped Mellow, the natural wine bar next door — this time, however, he’s expanding the list beyond wines that are strictly “natural.”

Sept was about three-quarters full when I met Choy early in the afternoon.

He’s 39, a partner in TTDI’s Leen’s and S.A.J. Bistronomy, and took up the executive chef role at Brasserie Alma this year, on top of running Cendul’s seven concepts.

He’d just wrapped an earlier meeting when he greeted me.

Choy grew up in Penang, a sickly child, on a diet of bland food with no spice and very little salt; otherwise, he would get an “asthma-like reaction” and have coughing fits.

“I couldn’t even eat kuey teow soup,” he recalls. “My dad would have to dilute the soup with water so I could eat it.”

When he grew out of the condition, he embarked on a revenge tour, eating everything he’d been denied: fried chicken, mee goreng mamak, laksa.

By the time he was 11, eating was all he thought about at school, and he sometimes ate seven or eight times in a day.

The expenditure quickly outstripped his pocket money, so Choy started experimenting in the kitchen instead.

“I really liked KFC’s mashed potatoes, so I tried making them on my own,” he said. “But they weren’t as smooth. We didn’t have butter, but we had margarine, and I would try to recreate it with that. My first ever mashed potatoes.”

By his own account, Choy’s academic and athletic pursuits were unremarkable.

His great joy came from the Boy Scouts, where he often found himself heading the camp kitchen.

“I was always in charge of cooking when we camped,” he said. “Everyone loved it, I was winning awards, and I began loving to cook, especially when people told me my cooking was good.”

That validation planted the idea: after school, he’d go to culinary school.

His parents weren’t convinced, and culinary school wasn’t cheap, so they agreed that Choy would prove himself in a kitchen first.

At 15, he took a part-time job at Pizza Hut. Two years later, with Form 6 or culinary school still an open question, he landed a full-time position at Hu Ji Chinese Restaurant in the now-closed Copthorne Hotel Penang.

Both experiences solidified his desire to join culinary school, to his father’s dismay and disapproval.

His father would only support Choy through culinary school if he won a scholarship, which Choy said came down to luck: none of the high-scoring students in his class wanted one, so it fell down the list and into his hands.

He enrolled in KDU Penang’s culinary program, which was still in its infancy.

“We had eight people in the butchery class, and only two chickens to practice with,” he said. “Four people cutting one chicken. We’d get maybe one or two cuts each?”

That wasn’t enough practice for Choy, so he started buying chickens to practise on his own at home.

After graduating, he took on a culinary and hospitality management course in Switzerland.

A scholarship helped cover some portion of it, except this time it wasn’t luck. Choy excelled at KDU, but his father still had to sell his car to fund the move.

The course was meant to be a year, but it was the start of Choy spending over a decade away from Malaysia.

Choy thrived, especially because he enjoyed cooking French more than any other cuisine.

But his grasp of the language lagged behind, even though the program included language classes.

“I thought I went there to learn to cook, not learn a language.”

When it came time to land an internship, most kitchens turned him away because he couldn’t speak French.

He found a position at the Hilton London Gatwick Airport instead, and spent the next 11 months there.

Choy’s next move took him to Dubai and into the fine dining world. He took a significant pay cut to join Verre, also known as Gordon Ramsay at the Hilton Dubai Creek, where he stayed for two years.

“When my chef [in London] called me into his office saying he found me a job, he told me the good news and the bad news,” he said. “The good news is the restaurant is owned by a very famous chef, and it will look very good on your CV. The bad news is your salary will be 10 times less than what it is now.”

Except, Choy didn’t even know who Ramsay was at the time.

He described his time there as “hell”, from a combination of cramped living arrangements, low pay and a hostile kitchen atmosphere.

Ramsay did note in his 2007 autobiography Playing with Fire that Hilton’s salary structure caused problems in retaining staff, though his solution of supplementing their wages was limited only to his existing staff making the move from London.

Choy left for Bahrain, where he worked at a private members’ club for a year. In 2009, the global economic crisis hit, and though he survived the layoffs, the uncertainty pushed him to leave, accepting a short term position at the Swiss Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.

China wound up being the most important chapter of his life; he would stay in the country for the next eight years.

After the Expo, he joined Groupe Flo Asia, a Beijing-based French restaurant empire.

In five years, Choy rose from sous chef to executive chef, and from a single restaurant to overseeing 10 different brands, from fine dining to brasseries and cafes.

“I never felt I was ready, but the owners kept pushing me,” he said. “You ask me how I’m able to open so many brands now? It’s because of my time in China.”

In 2018, Choy’s wife had to have surgery. The experience led Choy to completely re-evaluate his priorities; he resigned and returned to Penang to be closer to family.

But he did leave again for one last thing. “I cooked French cuisine at Flo for nearly eight years, and I was always challenged by customers who would ask me if I’d ever been to France,” he said.

“They would say, ‘You’re not even French! How do you know this is what the dish should taste like?’”

Choy came across a programme funded by Atout France, the country’s tourism development agency, which placed applicants in Michelin-starred restaurants to be mentored by leading figures in French gastronomy for a month.

He applied and was accepted, spending the month at Guy Savoy’s eponymous three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris.

Choy’s French had improved by leaps and bounds by then, and he enjoyed the experience so much he wound up staying in the country a while longer.

While there he interviewed and was offered a job at one of Yannick Alléno’s restaurants in Paris.

“I told my wife, and her response was, ‘Why did you leave Beijing?’” he said. “She reminded me of why I left China. I was going to be away again for I don’t know how many years.”

He passed on it and returned home to Penang.

Coming home meant starting over as an unknown. After testing out private dining from his house in Penang, and later consulting for the opening of Australian restaurant brand Calia in Kuala Lumpur, he finally announced himself in KL with the opening of Chateau Dionne in 2020.

It was a partnership with David Lim, the owner of Chateau Dionne Shanghai, with Choy at the stoves cooking refined French cuisine.

The restaurant opened in the middle of the pandemic; canelés, originally meant as a small gift to diners, ended up sustaining the business as a delivery item when dine-in wasn’t an option.

In 2024, he branched out with Nice Bistronome in Section 17, echoing his experience in China of opening a casual offshoot to attract diners amid decreased spending in fine dining.

Choy left Chateau Dionne in September last year. “Throughout the whole year leading up to it, I realised that no matter what I do, I can’t revive fine dining.

“It’s just something that will never happen on its own,” he said. “I choose to build the team in a different way.

“I want all of these restaurants so my team can develop, and we build back up to a fine dining restaurant at the very end.”

Rather than a single flagship restaurant at the top that trickles down, Choy went for a bottom-up approach.

“Everyone knows fine dining burns money, even if you have a big backer,” he said. “I want to have something like a pyramid.

“You have the base, the middle layer, and then the bit at the very top. You need to have all these other restaurants in the other layers to support the uncertainty of a fine dining restaurant at the top.”

The layers aren’t just financial cover either; they’re mostly operational ones too. “For example, the bread will surely come from Fleur.

“I won’t need to hire another pastry chef,” he said. “We also cycle the team through the different brands so everyone is trained in everything.”

That flagship now has a name. “It’ll have my name, and it’ll be like my house. We’re calling it Villa A.C.,” he said.

“It’s going to be in Chow Kit, a refurbished two-storey house on Lorong Tiong Nam. The food will be French, with Penang roots.”

“What we’ll do differently is focus on storytelling about my journey, through the food, and showcase good food, techniques and flavour at an affordable price,” he said.

“We’re targeting around RM300 to RM400 per person.” That’s only possible, he explained, because the restaurant won’t have to pay for itself.

“We want to change the perception of fine dining. As we have this foundation to support it, as long as the fine dining restaurant doesn’t lose money, we can keep it accessible. Most fine dining restaurants have to charge because there’s no other income stream.”

After that, though, Choy says he’ll put a pause on further expansion.

“The plan wasn’t to build an empire,” he said. “It just happened. But I will stop after Villa A.C. I will need to focus my attention there, rather than continuing to look to open more. It’s my house. I need to be there to welcome people into my home.”

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