EXOTIC Dilemma

One of the newest restuarants near my office in Desa Sri Hartamas is a new place called EXOTIC started by a nice Vietnamese chinese lady and her husband. They moved from Canada and settled in Malaysia over 10 years ago, and started their new restuarant venture a month ago.

Being one for trying new things, I have been having my lunch there quite regularly. They have a simple but delicious lunch menu and slowly they have been attracting the office lunch time crowd. Its an efficient and clean little place and food is reasonable. They have also renovated the public place next to their restuarant and upgraded the sunshade awnings too. Generally, they have made the corner brighter from the previous mamak restuarant which was really badly run and had non-edible food.

Anyway, here lies the entrepreneurial challenge for the EXOTIC owners.

Around 3 weeks ago, the neighborhood had the priviledge of being visited by the mayor of Kuala Lumpur followed by an army of city hall officials supposedly to clean up and improve the area. Instead of making positive changes to the neighborhood such as getting rid of the illegal parking companies, haphazard parking, poorly installed meters and dirty streets, the officials have picked on one aspect of the neighborhood - unauthorised renovations. Many corner restuarants in order to increase their al fresco dining space has expanded into the public space next to their rented shoplots. As there are no proper guidelines from City Hall (or DBKL) these are considered illegal renovations. So, the DBKL officials came by last week and handed the EXOTIC owners an official letter to remove the illegal renovations.

It is SAD that enterprising restuarants owners who take the trouble to improve an otherwise dead public space by relaying the flooring, planting flowers, install lightings and awnings has instead been give 7 days to tear down everything. Of course the EXOTIC retuarant owners are banding together with a few others in the neighborhood to protest against the tear down of their renovations.

So typical of DBKL - and while the real problems of the neighborhood remains unsolved.