Sate Kampar, Ange Branca’s Malaysian restaurant, will return in a new location, with a new format

Ange Branca has been a chef without a restaurant since May 2020, when she closed Sate Kampar, her South Philadelphia Malaysian BYOB, after a proposed 15% rent increase at the height of the pandemic.

Branca moved on, doing pop-ups and creating Kampar Kitchen, a business incubator that supports chefs from diverse backgrounds and operates a membership series.

Now, she is preparing her return to the restaurant business. She will take over Nomad Pizza’s building at Seventh and Kater Streets, with a new restaurant, with a liquor license and a tweaked concept.

She does not have a projected opening date for what she is tentatively calling Kampar.

Nomad, wrapping an 11-year run in Philadelphia, has set March 25 as its last day, said cofounder Stalin Bedon. Nomad still has locations and food trucks in its native Central Jersey after shutting down a second Philadelphia location, at 13th and Locust Streets, in 2021. Last fall, cofounder Tom Grim opened a location in Brunswick, Maine, after relocating there to “retire.”

Branca said the new restaurant would incorporate elements of both Sate Kampar and Kampar Kitchen. She is modeling the two-level restaurant on the idea of the Malaysian kopitiam — a sort of food court.

The kopitiam concept has one restaurant with independent stalls, she said. “They all coexist as microbusinesses within the restaurant. The food is always the best because every business is focused on what they do well.” She said a neighborhood may have two or three of them.

“Growing up in Malaysia, this is the way I liked to eat,” said Branca, who in her past life was a strategist for large corporations such as Deloitte, Fujitsu, and IBM. She married John Branca, who managed a gym in suburban Philadelphia, and relocated. They had wanted to open a kopitiam when they conceived of the original restaurant.

“This is the kind of restaurant that I’ve been dreaming about before we opened Sate Kampar, but I know that in 2015, this concept would have felt flat because it’s too far-fetched for people to imagine how that would work,” she said.

The new restaurant’s kopitiam operators will be from diverse backgrounds, not Malaysian. She has not selected the chefs who will participate initially.

Branca and her husband burst onto the dining scene in 2016 on East Passyunk Avenue, capturing glowing reviews and a 2017 semifinalist’s spot for a James Beard Award.

She has kept in touch with customers. “They are so loyal,” she said. “I’m just so grateful for the Philadelphia community and everyone who have followed us everywhere to every one of the pop-ups and supported us in every single way.”

MPN Realty covered the entire transaction. Joseph Scarpone and Veronica Blum represented Nomad. Blum and Alexandra Charen represented the Brancas.