A small room.
Koyo opened on a cool Wednesday in November 2019, in an upstairs room above a tailor on Jalan Mesui. Twelve seats. One wall of records. No plans to grow.
The shophouse is from 1956. Upstairs is one long room with a bay window over the street. We kept the cement tiles, the timber ceiling, and the odd angle of the wall where the neighbours' roof comes through. Everything else is counter — ten at the long bar, two at the short end — and a wall of records opposite.
We light it like a living room, not a bar. Tungsten, low, two floor lamps and a reading light over the turntable. If you sit at the far seat you can just see the signal meter on the amp.
The name is koyo — autumn leaves. The season we opened, and the palette we live in: ochre, umber, moss, a little dusk. Min picked the colours off a photograph of a Kyoto garden in late November. The walls have stayed that way.
It is a bar. It is not a concept, a hidden gem, or an experience. If you came for a photograph of your drink, there's a better place two doors down. We mean that kindly.
Min Ong
Nine years practising architecture at a firm in Singapore. Left in 2019 after a three-month stay in Osaka that involved too much time in too many small bars. Pours the wine, changes the records, washes the glasses himself on slow nights.
"Reservations feel like homework. Just call, we'll tell you if there's room."
Farah Aziz
Former pastry cook at a KL fine-dining place, now three nights a week at Koyo. Makes everything on the slate, most of all the desserts. Believes strongly in cold spoons.
"Small plates. Long meal."
"We don't do cocktails. We do two glasses."
"The food is small because the listening is the meal."
"Autumn here means the first cool night. We opened on one."
"If you came for Instagram, there's a better place two doors down."