Features / Street food
From nuclear engineer to street food trader
Kit Lee founded his street food business, Fat Rice, in order to make the cuisine that he loved eating when growing up in Malaysia.
“I serve food just how I like it,” said Kit on a recent morning before heading to the Harbourside Market on the centre.
“What you taste is how I like to eat based on my palette. And how I serve the food is as fast as I can because I hate waiting for my food!”
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Since Kit’s first market in 2019, Fat Rice has become one of Bristol’s most popular street food stalls, serving “Malaysian comfort food” of braised pork belly, beef rendang and kunyit chicken.
Fat Rice has also been a pop-up at various locations across Bristol, with its next pop-up taking place at the Scrandit on Christmas Steps from February 15 to 18.
Kit said that these pop-ups are his “creative outlet”, with the menu at the Scrandit set to include dishes including pork belly slices marinated in fermented red beancurd and fried; poached chicken leg drizzled with seasoned soy and topped with crispy onions; and mixed vegetables and prwans stir-fried in chilli paste.
There will be a spicier and more pungent version of their market stall best-seller, braised pork belly with salted fish and chillies; and of course there will be the eponymous fat rice: rice cooked in chicken fat, chicken stock and aromatics.
Fat Rice began their street food journey in 2019 – photo: Fat Rice
Kit, 37, who lives in Stoke Gifford with his wife Chwen and their three-year-old son, Han, was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.
He has now lived in Bristol for ten years – first coming to work as a graduate engineer at Rolls Royce after university in London, before being seconded to work on Hinkley Point C (“none of that Oppenheimer stuff though!”)
So how does an engineer who used to work in nuclear power end up as a street food trader?
“It didn’t feel like a good decision at the time,” Kit laughed. “It was a leap from having a nine-to-five and a steady income to an unknown. We started in 2019 as well and then soon after that everything shut down.
“I think there is always imposter syndrome. I was never that into engineering. I have always loved food and cooking.
“I have a very typical overseas student story. I was away from home, I wanted to create a piece of home so I used to cook.
“When I was working nine-to-five, I would always be using the microwave to heat up my packed lunch from batch cooking because I just cannot stand a meal deal.”
There was also a distinct lack of Malaysian food in the UK. “You just can’t find what we do here,” Kit explained. “It’s certainly an under-represented cuisine.
In October 2019, Kit took a sabbatical from his engineering job for three months to trial his new street food business, which went well enough for him to hand in his notice in February 2020, just a few weeks before the first lockdown.
“When everyone else was jumping on delivery during lockdown, we had no profile. It was so bad. It was like a slow car crash. But looking back, it was a journey. We had to start small and start with baby steps.”
Fat Rice trades at the Harbourside Market, Temple Quay Market and Finzels Reach Market – photo: Darren Su
When he is not trading, Kit can be found almost every day at his prep kitchen in Ashley Down so that everything at the markets can then be served fast to hungry customers in a rush.
Kit now has help at markets and there is also often one other person with him in the prep kitchen chopping, marinating and braising.
While Kit was learning the ropes of being a market trader, Fat Rice regularly used to sell out. He now uses data from his background in engineering to ensure that he prepares just the right amount of food without too many leftovers.
“If the market ends at four and you sell out at two, you’re an idiot! It’s a snowball effect. The more people you can reach, the more people you can try to win back to come the next time.”
On a wet and rainy day, Fat Rice might serve as few as 40 people over five hours but on a sunny summer’s day at the Harbourside Market when the half-marathon and 10k might also be taking place, there could be as many as 200 orders.
Fat Rice’s food is a traditional Malaysian blend of cuisines – photo: Fat Rice
So what is Fat Rice all about?
“Malaysian food is unique because it’s a blend of Malay food, Chinese food and Indian food,” Kit explained.
“It’s never strictly one of those; it’s all melded together. That’s the beauty of it. It’s such a wide array of food and we’re just serving a small selection of it.
“Usually I have sleepless nights weeks before a pop-up thinking about workflow. Every kitchen is different and we are always serving something new.
“It’s a creative outlet for us as the market menu is fairly stable. We don’t really change it as it’s what the people want. These pop-ups can be a showcase of a wider variety of Malaysian food.”
The dishes served at the Scrandit will be ones which Kit said “we can truly do justice. Things that we have trialed and tested and we know that we can do well.”
“We are not just ticking boxes that it’s Malaysian cuisine so it should be this dish. It’ll be as authentic an experience as you can get. These are restaurant dishes.”
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Is this latest pop-up a glimpse into the future for Fat Rice away from markets?
“A restaurant is a dream but I have never worked professionally in a kitchen,” said Kit.
“This is only my second job after being an engineer. There’s so much still to learn and it’s such a daunting task to take on a shop with so many businesses failing.
“I recently went to a workshop about lease negotiation. A ten-metre difference in location, just the other side of a road for example, could be the difference in nobody going there. It’s so daunting.
“So for now, we’ll continue what we’re doing at the markets with pop-ups as our creative outlet just so we can trial new things, perhaps with a view that one day all these dishes will appear at a restaurant in the future.
“We want to work towards that but also we recognise that we still have so much to learn.”
Main photo: Darren Su
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