From Campfire Dinners To Private Dining Indoors: An Intimate Experience Awaits Inside Vagabond KL

At the centre of Vagabond KL sits a stone-top long table, beckoning guests to share a meal. “The whole idea behind the communal table was that we would love it if people came in as strangers and left as friends,” co-founder and executive chef Daniel Kong explains.

Sparked during an impromptu road trip across Victoria, Australia during the pandemic, Kong, alongside fellow co-founder and executive chef Woon Ming, built the contemporary restaurant around their experience hosting spontaneous cross-country dinner parties. With their culinary experiences abroad, the duo combines the detailed perfection of fine dining with the consistency and pace of high-volume restaurants, drawing inspiration from their backgrounds in Malaysia and Australia to create a menu that blends familiar flavours with Western sensibilities.

“He worked at Attica, one of the best fine dining restaurants in Australia at the time, and I worked at the busiest pub opening, where there were 2,000 people standing outside,” Ming recalls. “I think, for me, I’ve never really been super detailed, so that’s where Daniel comes in. It’s a different kind of experience.”

Behind its Aussie pub ambience and eclectic menu, it doubles as an intimate dining space—where its industrial-chic design serves as the perfect backdrop for private dinners for groups of up to 30. Each menu is fully tailored to every group, from its ingredients and dishes to the budget and number of courses. “Our first ever private dining event was a sake one,” Kong explains. “So, then, we had to ask, how does our food work in the context of Japanese cuisine and pairing it with sake?

“We have a portfolio of dishes that we’ve done before—sauces we know work. And if there’s anything else that they want, we’ll do it. Some people simply just want high-quality ingredients, while some request specific dishes, like a beef they had in Japan. We’ve even had people bring in their leftover ingredients from weddings!”

Guests may also request dishes, old and new, from the aforementioned diverse menu—from elevated Sarawakian laksa to jumbo Southern American-style chicken tenders inspired by a stint in an American barbecue restaurant. The restaurant’s signature, the Umai Pie Tee, is one of its standouts. Combining flavours from both East and West Malaysia, it’s a dish reminiscent of Ming’s background in Penang and Kong’s in Sarawak.

“It’s one of the first things we put on the menu, and it’s been there since day one,” Ming explains. “The umai being the Sarawakian ceviche, pie tee being a Nyonya dish. Generally, with all our private events, we feature the pie tee in some kind of form.”

“It’s like we’re bringing Malaysia into the food that we ate in Australia,” Kong adds. “Because Australia has enough restaurants, the culinary scene is so different. Malaysia is still catching up, and we feel that it needs more people who want to come back.”

Vagabond KL

Cover image: (From left to right) Woon Ming and Daniel Kong, co-founders and executive chefs of Vagabond KL.

Photography by Law Soo Phye