The age-old adage is that blood is thicker than water, but there’s something even stronger in the bonds of chosen family. In exploring the theme of Kinfolk this month, Angeline Tan and Chong Ai Lee embody the titular ‘kindred spirits’ name in every sense of the word.

As childhood friends with 30 years of shared history through primary and secondary schools and beyond into their careers, these two women have been project partners for most of their lives. Today, they are business partners, with Angeline as the current CEO and second-generation leader of Maria’s SteakCafé and Ai Lee as the Business Director.

 

Growing up with Maria’s

“Maria’s Café started in the home kitchen, and it was about 25 years ago, in 1999, that my parents finally decided it was time to open the first restaurant in Ipoh. It started off not really with steaks, but more western food like pies and pastries,” Angeline explains.

For Angeline, her journey with Maria’s has been a lifelong one. Growing up in the very same home kitchen where Maria’s started, the café was her second home. “It was fun! It was all about food, and I was too young to understand then, but I watched my brothers and sisters who worked in the café coming home with stories like ‘I made 100 cappuccinos today,’” Angeline says. Even back then, Maria’s had a handle on ‘firsts’ as they were the first dining spot with a coffee machine in Ipoh.

For Ai Lee, growing up with Angeline as best friends since childhood, the food and memories hold strongly too. But her “official” start as the company’s business director kicked off seven years ago. “Angeline first approached me 12 years ago, but I wasn’t ready. I was still in the retail marketing industry then, so I said ‘maybe next time in the future’. Then seven years ago, she approached me for the second time. I was actually working together with my husband to run a café, so I had the experience there and I thought it might be interesting to work together with my best friend. That’s how it began for me,” Ai Lee explains.

Angeline further explains the evolution of Maria’s from café to steakhouse, adding, “[My mother decided to] expand to the Klang Valley in 2007 with our outlet in Damansara Perdana. That was when we noticed that our customers would drive from far away just to eat our steaks. When I took over about 12 years ago, I changed the menu to focus more on steaks along with some of the western dishes that our customers really love.”

Not wanting to lose the homey, warm feel that Maria’s Café was always known for, the team came up with the moniker SteakCafé, instead of going with the more typical steakhouse. The name retains a sense of comfortable casualness, allowing customers to relax and enjoy the food and service, without the need for formality.

 

Cultivating a family culture

Since then, with both of them at the helm, Maria’s SteakCafé has expanded to four outlets in the Klang Valley, including Bangsar, Sunway, KLCC, and their newest outlet at the sky level of 1Powerhouse Bandar Utama, which replaced the Damansara Perdana branch in 2022.

“[We opened the] KLCC outlet during the pandemic. It was just an opportunity that we had to take because otherwise there’s always a queue to get in [to KLCC]. As for 1Powerhouse, it’s always been my dream to have a sky dining restaurant, so when I found out there was a lot here, we just took it,” Angeline continues.

The expansion doesn’t only stop at new outlets however, as Maria’s has also expanded their services to accommodate corporate events in all of their four venues, on top of their family-friendly spaces and private dining areas. But underneath it all, the central tenets of Maria’s remains true: food, family and legacy.

“Our team is really like a family. Because of the bond that we have, and how our team looks at us, they know they are part of a family as well. Most of our staff have worked with us for more than five years, and it feels like a family when they come to work.” Angeline explains.

Ai Lee adds on, “It’s our core value, we listen to their problems and we try our best to help. We try our best to give them a family value working culture and environment, and to show that we care.”

This same environment and care extends to the customers as well, with many of Maria’s regulars having stayed with the brand for more than 10 years. “Even during the pandemic when dining in wasn’t allowed, our regulars would drive to our outlet, order and eat in their car, even to that extent. Every week, without fail!” Ai Lee explains.

 

Best friends who achieve together

“We have been working together since we were seven years old – since that young! And since then, we have been unstoppable. We are very strong-willed and tough. We always want to make things happen. We joined the same clubs, we joined competitions together and it is the sense of satisfaction at the end of the day, that we are able to achieve things together. It is this same spirit that we are putting in now [with Maria’s SteakCafé] to work things out together,” Ai Lee says.

“To us, of course we want to preserve the culture of family in the business. It is in the way we treat our staff, our customers, and of course in the food, the flavours and the quality. It all adds up together. But the main thing is our teamwork, that we have the same goal.”

They admit that it doesn’t feel like work when they collaborate – that it’s more like a project, like the events they used to organise back in school together.

“Of course, the stakes were lower then, but even so I knew that we can work well together. Even if we fight, the next day we will make up and it’s all good! We also have very different strengths and weaknesses; I am a numbers person while Ai Lee is good with words, and a people person. So I think our strengths really complement each other,” Angeline adds on.

“We have been working together for more than 20 years already, and of course, we foresee 20 more years to come,” Ai Lee concludes.

 

Kobe beef, from Japan to Maria’s

Their latest achievement together is being the first and only certified steakhouse in Malaysia to serve authentic halal Kobe beef. The journey isn’t easy, and it takes nothing less than a strong will to see the process through. “There’s just something about the flavours of Kobe beef – it tastes heavenly and magical. So, having it certified means that [the customers] are really getting the authentic one,” Angeline explains.

“And Kobe beef is very limited, as we know. We want to treat our customers to something that can rarely be found anywhere else but Maria’s. So when they think of Kobe beef, they think of Maria’s – we wanted to achieve this,” Ai Lee chimes in.

For those who have yet to taste it, authentic Kobe beef is truly a unique experience for the palate, and vastly different from other grades of wagyu beef. Melt-in-your-mouth, buttery and indulgently rich – but not in a way that makes you feel ‘jelak’ (as we say colloquially). And the fact that it is now available just a short drive away to your nearest Maria’s outlet – without the need for a flight ticket or passport – is surely a special experience.

 

After such a huge achievement, what can we expect next from this dynamic duo? “We won’t be introducing so many new things, because our main focus is still on maintaining the quality,” says Ai Lee. “Our main value is to give our customers the best experience, and if we keep chasing the next new thing it’s easy to lose sight of the focus and consistency. So we always come back to the basics – is our food still good? What are our customers saying? We really care and so we’re always working on improving and fine tuning the service, the food and the quality.”

The words ‘food, family and legacy’ are Maria’s SteakCafé’s core pillars since its beginning 25 years ago, but for Angeline and Ai Lee, what three words would they say represent the experience of eating at Maria’s and their shared goal for the future?

“Flavours, care, and magic,” they summarised.

 

Visit Maria’s SteakCafé at their outlets in 1Powerhouse, Sunway and Bangsar, as well as the Maria’s Signature outlet exclusively at KLCC. Learn more about their food and services on their website. 

 

Catch up with our featured personalities and discover more Kindred Spirits stories here.