After a number of pints with Zaw and an agreement that he would resign the next day, I went into Odgers and did the same. I’d been there eight years and what a brilliant bunch they’d been. They showed me good grace given my low workload at the time and their awareness of my intentions, and I was out by the end of the week.
The next morning I made an application for a government start-up loan - £25,000. It was surprisingly straightforward. An interview, a walk-through of the business plan, and the application was accepted.
Resigning from Maltby Street was harder. That market had given Lahpet its first audience and I left with a heavy heart. But the run-up to Christmas was a whirlwind and there wasn’t much time to dwell as the opening workload engulfed me.
Zaw was working out his notice during the busiest time of the year for operational hospitality but joined me any day or evening he had free. He took care of food supplier onboarding and equipment requirements. I took care of everything else – signage, website evolvement, front of house set-up, recruitment, accountant onboarding, and the rest.
By day I worked with Sally to strip out the warehouse – clearing huge ceiling-height industrial shelving units, selling what wasn’t needed, generally cleansing a space that had been redundant for so long. By night Zaw and I were in the kitchen, cooking, tasting, refining presentation. The menu – so much of which had been worked out in our heads in various pubs, just needed executing, costing and putting on paper. It had to be short, punchy and accessible to a crowd that wouldn’t have eaten Burmese food before, but unique and varied enough to draw people in. It all needed finalising before the Christmas shutdown.
By the 23rd we were in a good place. A front of house canvas ready to personalise into daytime workspace and evening Lahpet, and a stripped-back food menu just about there.
Brother Ed’s Birthday
I returned on 2nd January to meet Sally and discuss opening agendas. Her workspace, The Tuck Shop, would open the following Monday. Our first service would be Thursday dinner the same week - 14th January – a birthday party for my other brother Ed and around 25 of his mates. A great opportunity to test our dishes and service out.
It was a tight turnaround. Just under two weeks to perfect the menu, hire our first chef and kitchen porter and procure our first inventory. What followed was a number of high-rolling Ikea and Nisbets visits, food and drink supplier meetings and account openings, council office visits, PoS and booking system setups – and so much more it felt all-consuming at the time. Strangely, in hindsight, it was only a blip compared to what was to come over the years that followed.
The whole process was enthralling. Learning as I went, watching the next natural step for Lahpet unfold day by day.
Ed’s party went down well – no hiccup significant enough for me to remember. Zaw and our first hire, a Hungarian chef called Danny who was pushing six and a half feet and dwarfed Zaw in a way that gave me endless grins, pulled out the stops. I even chuckled further at the thought of getting Zaw a tall white chef’s hat to add a few inches. I think he found it funny too. I served the rabble of hungry, thirsty brother-friends supported by Kate and Tin, our respective other halves, and it was a resounding success. It gave us the confidence we could open to the public after a couple of days to take stock and refine.
First Service
Sunday came. Our first service open to the public.
We knew, hoped I guess, it would be slow. We hadn’t really marketed ourselves but had had many discussions with passers-by enquiring about the opening. I hadn’t even hired front of house yet, so a gradual flow of custom over the coming weeks was the aim.
I was nervous. I couldn’t even hold a tray with one hand.
A close friend, another Danny, turned up unannounced at midday on the dot – our first paying customer and the nerve-settler I needed. Around an hour later a table of six walked in: a tech bunch chatting about app development, oblivious to the fact that this was the second table I had served, ever. I walked them through the basics – an overview of the cuisine and menu – something that was to become the backbone of my Lahpet blurb for the thousands I’d serve over the coming years. Just enough information to feel educational, but with enough brevity to keep the service moving and get to the next table. A fine balance.
Danny and the tech lot loved it and left happy. Over the coming weeks we slowly started to fill up. It felt organic, not engineered in any way, and gave us the time we needed to find our feet – back and front.
Finding the Rhythm
By the middle of March, the London Fields locals had really started to take to us, and our 32-cover dining room was full every Friday and Saturday. The area had something of a community feel – the Bread Station bakery, run by an ex-Michelin chef, turning the daytime footfall, and Dandy, an excellent neighbourhood modern bistro, alongside the Institute of Light arthouse cinema and vinyl shop with its occasional food pop-up, all turning the evening trade. It felt like we were part of a hub of businesses drawing in locals and Londoners visiting from other parts of town. Lahpet was also starting to build its own reputation among the Burmese and Anglo-Burmese communities in London and further afield, and our book reflected it.
The Tuck Shop transformed from workspace to Lahpet every Tuesday to Friday between 5 and 5.30pm. The weekends were all Lahpet. On Sunday we’d close after lunch service at around 5pm, giving us some rest before reopening on Tuesdays.
That was the routine and it didn’t change. There weren’t many nights out or off. Zaw was there, I was there, every service, without fail, and we staffed up around us. The joint ethos was fairly straight forward: we’re starting to take off – living our dream of starting a Burmese restaurant – now get back to work and don’t take your eye off the ball.
Grace Dent
Sometime in April, midweek, halfway through a fairly busy service, I’d quietly had it in the back of my head how amazing it would be to get some positive press out there, but we’d only been open three-ish months. I was flirting with the idea rather than actively inviting it.
I’m still not sure how it happened, because I could have spotted Grace Dent a mile off, even back in 2017 – but she and a companion had slipped in, taken a counter seat facing the shelves with their faces away from my sight, and managed to eat their whole meal without my knowledge. As they got up to leave we clipped shoulders. I immediately recognised her, and after a brief moment of awkwardness blurted out: “Shit! How was it, what did you have - tea leaf salad I hope?”
I can’t remember her exact response but I do remember that unmistakable northern twang and some words of positivity – confirmation that the salad was a highlight. They left and we genuinely didn’t know whether she’d come to review, to scope us out, or just to eat, off the cuff.
A few days later the image request came in from the Standard which settled the anxiety and got us properly excited.
The review came out around three weeks later – a disappointing 3.5 out of 5. Striving for perfection so blindingly fogged our perception of how good 3.5 out of 5 actually was in a national paper, at our stage of development.
Riding the Wave
Whatever the review rating was, the bookings started to flow in at a pace that startled us. We needed to hire more staff, and quick. Back then it was a straightforward process to find quality hospitality trained staff and by the middle of May we had four chefs on the rota and three floor staff including me.
The remainder of spring and the summer ahead were hugely busy. Grace had propelled us into the limelight and we were riding our first wave, just about staying upright. Zaw and his team were utterly brilliant – keeping consistency high, working with skill and pace. The front team were kicking into gear too and knew the dishes back to front within a short space of time, so important when representing a cuisine this unknown.
Before long, temperatures were high enough for us to open the front sliding door of the warehouse most evenings and spill out a little further, adding a few extra covers. The vibes were electric – our little warehouse in full flow, dining room buzz, kitchen wafts of hearty curries and fritters spilling out onto the street, all backed by a summery deep-downtempo electro soundtrack. Very East London. We were flying.
The Warehouse Cracks
Over the same period Sally sadly took the decision to close the Tuck Shop, which hadn’t performed as she’d hoped. We were now in a position to take the sub-lease on and make the site our own.
The trajectory we were on took a while to comprehend whilst keeping the place going and services smooth. Contemplating our next move whilst being so consumed by the day-to-day took some mental manoeuvring. What was next? We were forming a solid base and building a reputation, but we weren’t making enough profit off a 32-cover room to open a second site or consider proper bricks and mortar.
The warehouse, charming as it was, was ramshackle. It had a clear identity and character and I did my best to make it inviting, but under the surface it was beginning to crack under the pressure. Ideal for a first outing – but you could see any hope of longevity slipping away as it operated at capacity most evenings. Thank god it had high ceilings to absorb the overflow of what was a woefully underpowered kitchen extract system. Our cooking was more often than not pungent, and five minutes sat on the atrium above the dining floor mid-service and you’d be coming back down stinking like a Burmese spice bazaar with a touch of deep-fried kidney bean fritter.
It was time to reach out to the market and reapproach the investors I’d contacted pre-market days.
The Couple at the Worst Table
A few emails got sent but what transpired was something altogether different.
Towards the end of summer, a couple of diners – a very well-presented gent with a European accent and a very Western Burmese woman – asked to be sat on the least desirable table. Right next to the till, but the only seat with a clear sight-line of the kitchen pass. They watched and ate and watched some more, never really taking their eyes off what was going on. We didn’t ask – just gave warm service and bid them farewell, with only a brief post-shift discussion about what they were up to.
They returned a couple of weeks later, ate again, and asked for a chat post-dinner. They were scouting investment opportunities for a private equity-cum-family-office hospitality backer. They liked us and booked a table for two weeks’ time for the principal investor to visit.
We were thrilled. We tried not to make too much of it, and agreed to carry on doing what was by now second nature.
The Balmy September Evening
The day came. A balmy mid-September evening, doors wide open, sun dipping over the warehouses opposite – but not much in the way of custom and no bookings until 30 minutes after the time the investor was due.
We wanted to look busy.
They arrived. Second table in, everything in place but no buzz yet – just a slight awkwardness from both sides of the table lingering in the air. This wasn’t a schmooze event. Let’s treat them like any other table and make sure the food is tasting as it should and presented perfectly.
Not long after taking the order, and much to our delight, the restaurant filled up within minutes. We were in business.
The service went well. I tried my utmost not to hover for most of it, and after a brief intro from both sides the investor and his team left without letting much on. We could only conclude they must have been impressed – it couldn’t have been a better evening for it. Empty industrial backstreet restaurant serving niche food to full-swing buzzing service inside half an hour – we must have been doing something right.
Three Months to Vacate
The autumn played out as hoped. The investor was interested. Our site stayed busy, and I readied myself for the ton of due diligence heading our way.
Around the same time, we were notified that the coffee roastery opposite would be purchasing the main lease for our site. We were given three months’ notice to vacate.
Sad to be leaving - but enamoured that it couldn’t have come at a better time. Onto the next we headed, with refreshed focus and newfound dynamism.
The search for site two – our first permanent home – began.
← Read Chapter One: How Lahpet Started
Ground Up Dispatch
Operator insights on building distinctive hospitality businesses. Written by Dan Anton.
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