We all have those dreams – those lofty, tenuous ambitions of one day writing a book or opening a bookstore or moving to a far-flung part of the world and living out our golden years. But few of us actually get round to doing the things that fuel our dreams. Having lived, breathed and dreamt about food for years, long-term friends Damien Lim Yat Seng and Loke Wai Fun finally decided to open that restaurant they had talked about for so long.
Lim is a chartered accountant while Loke used to run a school canteen and had a catering business specialising in nutrition-dense meals. Both love going out to eat and over the years, spent a considerable amount of their free time doing exactly this. “Before we opened the restaurant, we had a habit of regularly eating out to try different things.
We travelled quite extensively, too. So we thought, ‘what if we had an avenue of repeating the experience or sharing the experience with other people?’ “That was something we felt we wanted to do. I think we also felt that there’s a spot that’s missing in the food scene here where the ingredients speak for itself.
If you feed the ingredients with respect, the ingredients will speak for itself,” says Lim. And that is how the two ended up opening Black Salt, a restaurant in an unassuming part of Damansara Heights in Kuala Lumpur that pays homage to their love of making good food. Loke says the location was selected primarily because the duo felt that the area’s denizens were the per.
