YEN: The Next Sensation After Dolly Dim Sum

By June Ramli

Kuala Lumpur, July 14: There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from a restaurant that doesn’t need to raise its voice. At YEN, W Kuala Lumpur’s Cantonese dining room, that confidence shows up in the details — the woodwork worked into quiet symbolism, the low hum of ambient light against sleek contemporary lines, and a menu that treats heritage as a starting point rather than a museum piece.
We arrived at noon, roped in a good friend to join the tasting, and found the room already humming — it had been filling since 11.30am, a telling sign for a weekday midday sitting and a preview of the kind of following this reboot has built under Executive Chinese Chef Tan Kim Weng.
One thing worth flagging upfront: YEN is not halal-certified, though no pork is served, and a handful of dishes carry an optional splash of Chinese wine or other alcohol. When I mentioned this to my friend before we sat down, she didn’t think twice about it — and looking around, we weren’t the only ones comfortable with that middle ground. Our waiter addressed us in Malay, and at the table beside us was an Indonesian family enjoying the same spread.

The Meal

We were looked after by head waiter Alvin, who took the reins entirely — rather than ordering off the menu ourselves, we let him bring out a selection of the dishes flagged with red markings, YEN’s own shorthand for what the kitchen wants people to try. It made for a genuinely curated tasting rather than a self-guided one, paired throughout with pots of black Chinese tea — the kind of unfussy, correct touch that Cantonese dining has always run on. On the day we visited, what Alvin steered us toward leaned entirely into the seafood side of the kitchen.
One course arrived in a glossy, egg-based sauce, seafood folded through it with the kind of restraint that lets the main ingredient do the talking rather than the seasoning. Another came in dumpling form — delicate, translucent skins wrapped around a seafood filling, closer to a soup dumpling than a standard dim sum bite.

Between the two, it’s clear the kitchen has a light hand with seafood — nothing overworked, nothing masking what’s actually good about the main ingredient.
We didn’t make it to YEN’s signature duck course this time round, but it’s hard to visit without hearing about it — the YEN Golden Duck is the dish most closely associated with Chef Weng’s reinvention of the menu, alongside a growing reputation for the kitchen’s more playful creations, like a Mushroom-Shaped Honey Barbecue Chicken Bun built to resemble an actual mushroom cap, filled with sweet-savoury char siu chicken.

Beyond the à la carte menu, YEN also runs a dim sum brunch and a dim sum champagne brunch on weekends, drawing a heavy family crowd. Rounding out the drinks side is a small but purposeful cocktail list from resident mixologist Lim Jia Jun — concepts like Inferno, a clarified vodka-and-pickled-tomato number, and Fifth Taste, a smoky nori-tequila-and-mezcal creation, suggest the bar program is being taken as seriously as the kitchen.

A Conversation with Kiranjeet Kaur

Ahead of this visit, DailyStraits.com sat down with Kiranjeet Kaur, W Kuala Lumpur’s Director of Marketing Communications, to talk through what’s changed at YEN — and what W Kuala Lumpur is trying to be more broadly.
On the duck, which we didn’t get to try ourselves this time, Kaur walked us through how it’s built: the first course arrives canapé-style, duck skin paired with foie gras, pickled cucumber and plum sauce, alongside fluffy white bread and crab sauce in place of the usual pancake. The second course puts the rest of the bird to work, the meat reworked into two further preparations so that, as she described it, the whole duck ends up on the table in one form or another.
She also pointed to the Hokkien Mee with foie gras as one of her own favourites on the menu. Traditional Hokkien mee leans on pork blood for its depth; here, Chef Weng substitutes foie gras instead, keeping the dish’s signature wokiness intact while elevating it well beyond its hawker-stall roots. “It’s literally one of those dishes that I like — if I can splurge, then I will definitely splurge,” Kaur said.
On the brand itself — W Kuala Lumpur is the only W property in Malaysia — Kaur described it as “a luxury lifestyle hub,” built less around conventional five-star formality and more around “lifestyle luxury”: design, fashion, community and food culture, tied together under the brand’s line, “Ignite curiosity, expand your world.”

She pointed to how that plays out differently across W properties globally: W Sydney, sitting near Darling Harbour, leans into a design language shaped like a yacht, while W Kuala Lumpur builds its identity around the idea of a “Jungle City” — a nod to Kuala Lumpur’s origins as literal jungle, reinterpreted through a confluence of old and new set against the city’s concrete towers.
On who actually stays there, Kaur said the split is roughly even between locals and overseas guests. Locals tend to book staycations, while weekends bring a more multigenerational mix — grandparents, parents and grandchildren travelling together. Australia, she noted, is one of the hotel’s key overseas markets, particularly over the holiday season, with Australian guests tending to keep their stays simple: check in, explore the neighbourhood, enjoy breakfast, and soak up what’s around.
That same design-forward, social approach extends to WET Deck, the hotel’s rooftop pool and bar. A day pass priced at RM50 includes a coconut and pool access. “It’s not a club,” Kaur was careful to clarify — more a social hub that shifts personality across the day, with local and regional DJs providing music programming once evening sets in.
As for YEN itself, Kaur was candid about what the team is chasing next: eight years in, with a reputation built on consistency Chef Weng is visibly proud of, the hope internally is for recognition — “fingers crossed” — at the Michelin level. Whether or not that materialises, the ambition tracks with what’s already on the plate.

A Few Practical Notes

One thing diners should know going in: YEN does not allow food to be taken away, including desserts. We asked, having barely made a dent in what was clearly meant to be a shared, unhurried spread — the answer was a firm no. For a restaurant clearly geared toward generous, multi-course lunches, it’s a policy worth flagging so guests can pace their ordering accordingly. Worth noting too: YEN only opens from 11.30am for lunch, with a separate dinner sitting — there’s no all-day service, so plan around it.

Less charming was something we noticed on the way out. The restroom on YEN’s floor has no baby-changing facilities. While we were there, we watched a Muslim family struggling to change their baby’s nappy balanced between two sink counters — an avoidable indignity in a hotel positioning itself around inclusive, family-friendly luxury. For a property investing heavily in design storytelling and cultural nuance elsewhere, it’s a basic accessibility gap that’s worth W Kuala Lumpur’s attention.

The Bigger Picture

YEN’s reinvention doesn’t exist in isolation — it’s part of a broader push by W Kuala Lumpur to position itself at the top of the city’s luxury tier. That philosophy extends up to the room categories, too. The hotel’s signature Supreme Suite, at 105 square metres, is built around floor-to-ceiling views of the Petronas Twin Towers and KL Tower, and can now be interconnected with an adjoining room — a nod to a broader shift in luxury travel toward group and multigenerational trips, with small-group travel reportedly up 17% since 2025 and friend gatherings up 8%.
Volker Burth, General Manager of W Kuala Lumpur, frames the hotel’s ambitions around exactly that sense of place: guests, he says, don’t simply visit the city under W’s care — they’re meant to feel folded into its rhythm, whether through the energy of the hotel’s social spaces or the skyline views from the Supreme Suite.
It’s a positioning that YEN, and the team behind it, back up at ground level — a restaurant that treats Cantonese heritage as something to be lived in and reinterpreted, rather than simply displayed.

The Verdict

YEN succeeds at the thing it set out to do: honour Cantonese tradition without freezing it in place. Even sticking to the seafood side of the kitchen’s output — and trusting Alvin’s picks over our own guesswork — the balance and precision came through clearly, and everything we heard about the Golden Duck and the Hokkien mee suggests there’s plenty left to come back for. Service, at least under Alvin’s watch, was warm and well-paced for a full house. The restaurant earns its lunchtime crowds, and eight years in, still seems to be chasing something higher. But a proper luxury dining experience is judged on more than what’s on the plate — and small oversights like the missing baby-changing facilities are the kind of thing that quietly undercuts an otherwise polished offering.
YEN is located at W Kuala Lumpur. Lunch service runs Monday to Friday, 12:00pm–2:30pm (last seating 2:00pm), and Saturday, Sunday & Public Holidays, 11:30am–3:00pm (last seating 2:30pm). Dinner service runs 6:00pm–10:00pm Monday to Thursday and Sunday, and 6:00pm–10:30pm Friday and Saturday. Reservations: 6012 357 4188 / bf.wkualalumpur@whotels.com.

Disclosure: DailyStraits.com was hosted for a complimentary tasting at YEN for the purposes of this review.