KUALA LUMPUR: Popular duet partners and real-life lovebirds Syamel Fodzly and Ernie Zakri have started their own restaurant, specially to mark their marriage early next year.
Located at Platinum Walk in Setapak, the month-old restaurant named Kafe Setable serves both Eastern and Western fare, and is "food-loving" Syamel's brainchild.
Syamel said that they both took a risk by opening a new cafe in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO), which had resulted in slow economic activity nationwide.
"By right we ought to be saving money. We've spent hundreds of thousands of ringgit for this enterprise, for our future investment and an opportunity for food vendors to rent some space, too," he said in a news report yesterday.
Syamel said that they were supposed to open the restaurant at month's end, but their contractors requested that they speed up the opening due to financial difficulties on their part.
Ernie said that the restaurant was Syamel's longtime dream, and she was fully supportive since Malaysians in general, love good food.
"It's hard for singers like us to get offers to perform these days, so having a restaurant of our own is a good investment to fall back on," she said.
On their wedding preparations, Syamel said that they were "almost ready".
"We've got a good wedding planner to do the job, and he's great. There'll be two wedding receptions, for our families and for our friends and the media," he said.
"However we won't be having too many guests due to the strict Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) in place," he said.
In August, Syamel, 27, and Ernie, 28, were engaged in a simple ceremony at her house.
The two first met when they were contestants in the reality show Duo Star, three years ago.
Although they seemed chummy since then, both managed to keep their special bond hidden from prying eyes.