After nearly a decade in Centreville’s Sully Station Shopping Center, a family-run Malaysian restaurant is closing its doors this week for good.
With husband-and-wife team Leslie and Penny Phoon ready to retire, Malaysian Kopitiam (5085 Westfields Blvd) will serve its final customers tomorrow (Oct. 31).
“Our loyal customers and the community [are] here,” said Leslie. “We are just tired. So, we are looking forward to the retirement, but our heart is sorrowful that we had to let it go, with our loyal customers here. We just need to slow down and rest. It’s bittersweet.”
The couple found a loyal following for the restaurant by offering something relatively unique in Northern Virginia’s crowded restaurant industry, Leslie said.
“There’s so many, many, many restaurants, but not Malaysian,” he said. “We are one of the [few] very authentic Malaysian restaurants … You couldn’t get any elsewhere.”
Both Leslie and Penny, who’s the chef at Kopitiam, have been passionate about providing an authentic experience of Malaysian cuisine, a fusion of culinary traditions from Malay, Chinese, and Indian cultures.
The couple ran the original Malaysian Kopitiam for about 15 years in D.C. before closing the restaurant in the mid-2010s, mainly due to the limited parking downtown. They then took a four-year detour into catering before reopening in Centreville in 2018.
As word has gotten around about their retirement this year, longtime customers have been coming back to say goodbye and ask for recipes, particularly over the last few weeks, said the couple’s son, Marcus.
“A lot of people are actually crying,” he said. “They just want a taste of home.”
That popularity was clear on Thursday night (Oct. 29), as customers in a completely full restaurant stopped to shake hands with Leslie on their way out the door, where about 10 people stood waiting to get a table.
While the restaurant won’t be around after this week, finding that small “taste of home” might still be possible — after Leslie and Penny take a well-earned break. They’ll keep Malaysian Kopitiam’s social media channels open in case they embark on another adventure, like starting a YouTube channel or writing a cookbook.
“We will travel and when we come back, we … might sell some sauce from the restaurant,” said Leslie. “[It would be] a food business, but not a restaurant.”
