LET'S MEAT FAMILY (Chapter 2)

I would love to sit here and tell you we had a Vision. A whiteboard. A theme. A brand deck with a mood board and a font we all agreed on. We did not. What we had was customers telling us what they liked and didn't, and us doing the incredibly sophisticated business maneuver of listening to them, over and over, until something that looked suspiciously like an identity fell out the other end.

Some of that identity, if we're being honest, wasn't strategy at all. It was us smuggling our actual lives into the restaurant because we did not have the bandwidth to keep two separate ones running. This sounds, said out loud, like a thoughtful decision about brand authenticity. It was not. It was a coping mechanism with a menu.

The thing is, running a restaurant with a small child physically attached to your hip: it is hard. Not "character building" hard. Just hard, structurally, the way trying to do surgery while riding a unicycle is hard. Now imagine doing that inside one of THOSE restaurants — you know the one — pinky fingers up, portions the size of a coin, a general air of judgment radiating off the flatware itself.

IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE. Someone would end up crying, and it might be us.

So we made an executive decision, and the decision was: if you don't like kids, you don't like us. And if you don't like us — well. That's okay. (forced smile, one eye twitching slightly, we're fine, everything's fine)

That's how Let's Meat became a family restaurant. We had family. Our community had family. So we fed the families. Genuinely the entire strategic plan.

Eli, Age 1, And A Playhouse Built On YouTube Tutorials And Denial

When we started this whole thing, our firstborn, Eli, was one year old. Using my YouTube construction skills, I built him a little playhouse into the wall of the restaurant, and — showing the kind of naming creativity that would define this entire operation — we called it Eli's Playhouse.

Small tangent, because it's a good example of how this business runs on divine providence rather than any actual capitalist cunning on our part: right around the time we finished building it, Diana was already pregnant with kid number two. And instead of thinking ahead — instead of building something a five-month-old future sibling could eventually also have a stake in — I built a one-owner establishment. Jude, our second, would grow up watching his older brother and all of his older brother's friends enjoy full run of a property Jude had zero equity in, quietly wondering, in his small toddler heart, why he hadn't been made a partner.

BUTTTT ANYWAY. I reminded myself that hamster parents eat their own young, decided we were, comparatively, doing great, patted myself on the shoulder, and moved on — fully embracing our identity as a restaurant with a heart for people and their families, one structurally unfair playhouse at a time.

The Rise And Fall Of An Empire

Oh, that playhouse. We stocked it with books and toys, and — with generous unpaid contributions from our smallest, stickiest customers — crumbs, and the occasional abandoned French fry, working its way into the archaeological record. Some of our best friendships today started because two kids bonded over a shared love of hiding leftovers in there like tiny, greasy little squirrels.

One of the most beloved toys in that playhouse — and one of the most despised objects on planet Earth, if you asked any parent — was a roll-around baby chair. You know the one. Adorable at month twelve, when the baby can't walk yet and is basically a very content lump on wheels. Then, the second that baby discovers locomotion, that same chair becomes a high-speed unlicensed road paver, and every unsuspecting adult toe in a 15-foot radius becomes collateral damage in its Flintstone-powered rampage.

If you're new here, you're probably wondering where the playhouse actually is, because it is very much not here anymore. That's a genuinely sad story, but it's stitched permanently into how this place became what it is, so here goes.

During the COVID lockdown, we had to shut our doors and run on takeaway alone. To clear space for staff to clean, and to pass the time having push-up competitions like the world's saddest fitness cult, we moved all of our self-built wooden dine-in furniture into the playhouse for safekeeping.

When we finally got the green light to reopen, we excitedly unpacked Eli's Playhouse and found — instead of furniture — a heap of wood dust roughly the size and shape of where furniture used to be. A colony of evil Trojan termites had invaded under cover of night and government restriction, and eaten literally everything wooden in there, including the studs holding the playhouse itself together.

That was the fall of Eli's Playhouse. It was genuinely sad. But in hindsight, it also permanently and unilaterally resolved the ongoing equity dispute among his younger siblings, so honestly — thanks, termites, for handling what I did not have the emotional bandwidth to.

The Library That Rose From The Wreckage

Fast forward to today. The playhouse itself is gone. But its spirit did not go quietly — it just got bigger. What used to be a single wall-mounted playhouse for one very lucky firstborn has grown into a full library, stocked wall to wall with coloring supplies and kids' books, open to literally anyone's children, not just ours, which if you think about it is Jude finally getting his equity back, just fifteen years late and shared with strangers.

We now regularly witness full-scale toddler meltdowns — the real kind, floor-based, volume uncapped — from kids whose parents made the fatal mistake of mentioning they were thinking about eating somewhere else. Which, look, we didn't plan for that specific outcome. We just built a place kids actually wanted to be in, and it turns out kids have opinions and are not shy about sharing them at full volume in public.

And somewhere in between the crumbs, the fries, the wheeled toddler road pavers, and now the library, we've ended up with something we genuinely didn't plan for on any whiteboard: real friendships. Families who started as strangers eating at neighboring tables, whose kids found each other in that playhouse or now in that library, who are still in our lives years later. We didn't set out to build a community. We set out to survive parenting a business and toddlers at the same time. The community just happened to us, the way termites happened to the furniture — except, in this case, we're genuinely glad it stuck around.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

• Is Let’s Meat a family friendly restaurant?

  Yes, and it’s on purpose. We started with a one-year-old and built the place around kids. There’s no dress code and we have a kids’ library with books and colouring supplies, open to everyone’s children, not just ours.

• What happened to Eli’s Playhouse?

  We built it into the restaurant wall when our eldest, Eli, was one. During the COVID lockdown we stored our wooden furniture in it, and termites ate everything, including the studs. The kids’ library grew from what was left.

• Where are you, and can we park?

  We’re at 18 & 20 Lebuh Lembah Permai 4, Tanjung Bungah, directly across from a large public park. We’re open every day from 8am to 9pm, with free parking on site. Reserve a table for the whole family on WhatsApp at +60 16 215 4234.

• Are you halal, and do you have vegetarian options?

  We’re not halal-certified. We do have vegetarian-friendly options, vegan options, and gluten-free swaps on many dishes. Call or message us before you visit if anyone in your group has dietary needs.

• Can we bring our dog?

  Yes, on our outdoor patio, with advance notice. Please call or WhatsApp us ahead so we can confirm specifics for your visit.