Hi Shen, thank you so much for sitting down with us after having just successfully completed the third edition of Penang Cocktail Week (PCW)! We’re incredibly excited to find out more about how is going and your plans for it, as well as touch on an equally wide span of areas that you’ve directed your creative energy towards.

Whilst in the context of the bar scene, you’re of course best known for your work at the Backdoor Bodega, where what started out as a little drinks pantry for your friends in order to make full use of your clothing retail shop the Swagger Salon turned into a full on opportunity to create a unique bar concept paying tribute to Penang, and yet your endeavours far extend beyond that. Even before Backdoor Bodega, you had founded your own statement clothing line Lansi (which extended to the physical store Swagger Salon, where the Backdoor Bodega is located behind), and since then you’ve also helped start cafes, furniture stores, and of course inaugurated the Penang Cocktail Week. It’s incredible to think that you and everyone else shares the same 24 hour day (although you’re handicapped because you can’t burp and most people can, which was also how you always favoured cocktails over beers we hear)!

 

Backdoor Bodega Bar in George Town, Penang.

 

Today, we’re going to delve deeper into your story, what inspires and motivates you, how you see creativity and expression, putting Penang on the map, being a community leader, as well as the ongoing impact you’ve sought to create in the drinks scene. Let’s go!

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[88 Bamboo]: You grew up in Penang and went on to study graphic design having been heavily influenced by your love for graffiti art, wherein you got to be based in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia’s capital city), a more bustling city, which was also where you also became quite involved in the hip hop scene at the time. This would later influence many of your pursuits be it in fashion, brand design consulting, and of course what became Backdoor Bodega. Whilst many of your ventures seem almost completely disparate, it’s also immediately obvious that it is your creativity that fuels each of them, and then also that you’d be sure to always have wrap that venture around the idea of making a statement and also being true to its cultural or heritage roots.

What is it about graffiti art and making a statement that resonates deeply with you? Do you recall that lightbulb moment where you saw a work of graffiti that really opened up something inside of you? 

[Shen]: I first started doing graffiti art, that is actually lifted a spray can, when I was 16 and still in school. But really before that I had already been heavily influenced by hip hop. Growing up, my mother was an English teacher and so at home we communicated mostly in English, and yet much of my time as a student was being in a Chinese language based environment. I found it really tough, I couldn’t relate to my peers who were really into Cantonese or Taiwanese pop music for example. I really tried, but I just couldn’t get into it. I just really loved rap music because it felt rebellious. Everyone has this boy band phase, but then as you grew up you wanted something more hardcore - and that was rap music for me. Things were more straightforward when I was a kid, there was no social media but we did have the Internet, and so I began learning about rap music, hip hop, DJ-ing, breakdancing, and just immersing myself in that culture. At some point it felt like I had to get into graffiti or rapping - because I couldn’t afford a turntable so being a DJ wasn’t possible, and I wasn’t fit enough to breakdance either, which left me with graffiti which I felt was something I could actually execute. Yet it did [together with rap] really help me express my creativity.

 

 

I would go to cybercafes before or during school and whilst everyone was playing games like Counter-Strike, I would instead be on the Internet looking for graffiti references and figure how I could learn to draw graffiti. Back in 2000, or 2002, Banksy (the mythologised UK based street artist) actually had a website, and I would find myself constantly going to his website to see the new artworks he’d put out and be exposed to the messages that came along with them. Even 20 years ago, he [Banksy] already had a whole thing going on with his way of expressing his thinking, it wasn’t really about beautiful or colourful artwork, but really about conveying a message, and that really resonated with me. I do reference colourful graffiti art and all of that, but I kept going back to Banksy’s website. And so going back to rap music, even though I recorded albums, it was primarily the writing for me. I enjoyed writing the lyrics more than the actual rapping itself!

And that set the path for my life, where professionally I’m a copywriter who also graduated as a graphic designer. It really boils down to these two things: rap got me into writing, and graffiti got me into design. 

  

"Back in the day, Penang was always the place where people moved out from...[after moving back] I had a lot more time throughout the day and I could do a lot more things. I didn’t realise all this until much later on, but it was why I felt so much more at peace."

 

[88 Bamboo]: And then being from Penang yourself, you’ve always infused or paid tribute to the local culture in one form of the other – what does Penang mean to you, and what do you see when you think of Penang that you would love for others to see as well, or that you’re trying to convey through your endeavours? 

[Shen]: I feel like my perception of Penang has really changed a lot over time - without a doubt - because as you grow up, your thinking is so different. Back in the day, Penang was always the place where people moved out from. There wasn’t much career opportunity unless your family had a business or you were in manufacturing - Kuala Lumpur was where you’d earn money; Singapore was where you’d earn money, right? People move out of Penang, I myself moved out of Penang after high school. I moved to Kuala Lumpur when I was 17 or 18, and spent 12 years there. So for me back then, I had always felt that Penang was a place that didn't really have much for me to do. Whereas Kuala Lumpur was where the people were, where the cool kids were, where the events were happening, and so being that 20 year old kid who really just wanted to do rap music, graffiti and design t-shirts, really just be the cool kid, Kuala Lumpur was where I wanted to be.

And then by some chance, I moved back to Penang. Well, I didn't actually move back to Penang initially. I had opened the clothing store (the Swagger Salon) in Penang simply because there was an opportunity and rental was cheap. So that's when I started going back to Penang a bit more. And then, I'll be honest, it took me a while to get used to being back in Penang because of the pace. It was way slower. 

 

Shen's clothing store, the Swagger Salon.

 

You’d only have these same few places to hang out, the same cafes, same restaurants, you even see the same people everywhere! That was very different from Kuala Lumpur. I struggled for a couple of years trying to adapt, I even still kept going back to Kuala Lumpur every month just so that I could enjoy some of the big city. Covid played a part (in changing my perception) as well, because I was locked down in Penang. I spent two whole years in Penang, every single day here, and it’s not the worst thing, but for me it was adapting from 12 years in Kuala Lumpur to now going back to Penang. 

And then I started to realise that suddenly I had a lot more time on my hands! Not because it was the lockdown, but purely because of how small Penang is, how connected Penang is. I don't spend all my time in traffic or commute. Good food is just a corner away - the market, grocery store, you’d just pop by, park by the roadside, easy. And so suddenly because I wasn’t spending time stuck in traffic or rushing around town, I had a lot more time throughout the day and I could do a lot more things. I didn’t realise all this until much later on, but it was why I felt so much more at peace - because of the extra time I had. 

And as the bar grew, I started exploring ingredients as I started trying to find an identity for the bar. When the bar was first started, it was really streetwear themed, but as the years went on and we started exploring the cocktail program, more local ingredients began to come into play, purely because it was easy to find from the nearby market, just take whatever was fresh that day and put it in a cocktail, and also I had wanted guests to find familiarity with it. Even if I might not have been the best person to make a Ramos Gin Fizz, I knew that at least if I had incorporated local flavours, a tea or bandung (a beloved Southeast Asian specialty drink made with evaporated milk and rose syrup), guests would drink it and relate, and they would hopefully like it more than if I had tried to make the perfect classic cocktail.

 

The Kelapa Hotak that started it all and has stayed constant through the years.

 

All these little things paved the way for how I had wanted to celebrate Penang, and at the same time I began to also realise that people often take all these [local flavours and identity markers] for granted - and so I became more of an advocate for Penang. I wanted people to realise the potential of the place and all the things that they've been missing out on, so that they wouldn’t move out of Penang. And that’s even if they had moved to Penang! I really didn’t think of all of this right from the start, it was of course more of a gradual evolution, and I found that I had wanted to champion Penang. 

The path has now taken me to a position where I can really shout about Penang so that people come and it benefits us all. Penang Cocktail Week for example is one of those things that I felt that I had to do because  there's only really only that far that I can go with Backdoor Bodega. At the end of the day, Backdoor Bodega is still my thing - it's just me - and if I shout about it to the world, it would just be me shouting about myself. But if we do it as a Penang industry, this way we show the world what else there is in Penang beyond Backdoor Bodega, beyond even the bars, and then it gives people more reason to want to look to Penang. You don't have to be tourists, now it could be tourists, it could be journalists, or it could really be just people realising that there's this thing going on in Penang that's not Singapore, that's not Hong Kong. 

 

"...at the same time I began to also realise that people often take all these [local flavours and identity markers] for granted - and so I became more of an advocate for Penang. I wanted people to realise the potential of the place and all the things that they've been missing out on, so that they wouldn’t move out of Penang."

 

The iconic Penang Char Kway Teow.

 

[88 Bamboo]: And just to unpack that a little bit more, are there any aspects of the Penang identity that you think is really unique or that people don't seem to recognise?

[Shen]: It is actually something that I am constantly exploring. No doubt, I also have trouble trying not to always be repeating myself or getting caught up in touting generic things like - and it’s predictable, right - Penang’s food scene for example. And it even goes down to the [Backdoor Bodega] menu itself, because when we designed the menu, it was fun at first, trying to do cocktail versions of Penang food, but after a while how many different Penang street dishes are you going to turn into a cocktail? 

So really you’d have to think beyond that. Like what else is Penang known for beyond just street food? And that is really something that I'm struggling with as well. I love the challenge! It makes me go looking into other aspects of what makes Penang Penang, and how do we then sell this to the world. And it does depend on the context - if it’s Penang Cocktail Week, we have lots of activities that showcase the beauty of Penang beyond the cocktail bars; if it’s our menu, we try to put across and explore the local festivals and culture that is often taken for granted even for folks who grew up here as kids and show how it inspired the cocktails we make.

 

 

Even for the clothing that I make too, it kind of started with just a tagline, "No Town Like George Town", because taglines were the one thing that I knew the best, as a copywriter. This then became the big idea of championing Penang, and I started putting out as many ideas as I could throughout the work that I do, even though it can be tough sometimes to split the different projects into its unique entities (eg, Backdoor Bodega Vs Penang Cocktail Week Vs The Swagger Salon) whilst they’re all shouting about Penang, and there’s only a finite number of identity markers to draw from. So it’s a struggle for sure.

That said, I do think something that makes Penang stand out identity-wise is the community. Back in the day, I told people that it’s really difficult for people on the outside to start a business in Penang, just because of how small the circle is here. If you’re from Penang and you set up shop, your first customers are always going to be your friends, and maybe your friends who tell their friends. It’s not like Kuala Lumpur, we don’t have this influx of people moving in and so it’s very difficult to get people who are not your friends to come visit your business. There’s no instance where you set up shop, shout on social media and have random people from the Internet showing up. But now we get a lot of tourists so things are okay, because again, you don’t have a lot of people living in Penang. So really, that bond is tight, very tight. As we grew the bar scene, you could see that same cycle reflect itself - everybody who came through was either your friend, or a friend of a friend. That’s really how small Penang is. The fact that things in town are in such close proximity really facilitates making that connection happen, and is one of the best aspects of Penang. It helps us stay close to each other.

Something else that sets Penang apart is the ease of making things happen. You think of something and you could literally do it tonight. I’ll pop by this shop, call that guy - everyone has a guy for something - and going back to how everyone here runs a business or is in some sort of manufacturing business, as it turns out, it’s really useful once we all grew up.

 

"Everyone’s really resourceful! And so everyone gets to rely on each other and have the ability to support each other, and you’re all friends - again, something we really take for granted. You could have the same set up in a bigger city, but it’s not based on friendship."

 

[88 Bamboo]: That’s a really interesting point about how that physical proximity translates into this close relationship people in Penang have, that in turn allows for spontaneity. 

Given that you went as far in your early days to record a rap album of your own, what do you make of this surge in popularity of Asian rappers like SKAI ISYOURGOD or Rich Brian? Does it even make you think that the world is finally ready for your rap debut, and maybe you should give that career track another go? 

[Shen]: Y’know, I actually feel it's not so much just about the rise of Asian rappers in and of itself so much as it is about the available platforms and the connectivity which makes it much easier to sell yourself right now. When I started graffiti and doing music, I certainly didn’t have those opportunities. It’s also just more acceptable these days for Asian rappers to be a thing. Back in those days, it was seen as a genre belonging to black artists. Now it's like everyone has their own identity. Take Rich Brian for example, he feels like he could have easily been someone from your own circle of friends. I feel like I could have written something like what he wrote, but really it's the combination of beautifully written lyrics and beautifully choreographed, timed and shot video that went out and became this amazing thing. I find it really cool. 

And taking this back to Backdoor Bodega, before Covid, there was one night when Yung Raja came over, and bear in mind this was some small tiny version of Backdoor Bodega, not the Backdoor Bodega you know today, and we were just hanging out! Y’know music is so hard to pursue in Malaysia for example, and sure Malay rap has become a huge thing now, but it’s also a matter of it being a regional thing; it’s not like it’s that easy for it to go international.

 

One Night With Rapper Yung Raja At The Backdoor Bodega.

 

I haven’t dabbled in music in quite awhile, and like I said, I do enjoy the writing aspect of it, I don’t know if I still have the capability to perform. And I really didn’t enjoy as much the performance aspect about it, and in that sense it’s an act in two parts, the writing and the performing. So maybe I’d just be an MF Doom, and just keep my identity a secret and put music up, although without a visual identity it might be hard. But yeah, it’s definitely a great time to be in music now, and who knows, I could maybe see how I could make this thing again!

 

[88 Bamboo]: Yet it was in the earliest innings of your career that might have gotten the ball rolling – when you were about to graduate university and had figured that if you were going to create a fashion brand it was now or never (for fear that once you had settled into a full time job that you might not have the time). It is said that you had drawn upon this 2007 memory of yourself taking a fitted cap and simply doodling the phrase “Lansi”, a local way of describing someone as being cocky or having a cocky attitude, which you then took inspiration from to go through your savings and have 300 caps made with the phrase. 

The goal then was to fill the gap of at the time Malaysia only having available very expensive imported caps or knockoffs – yet as it turns out, as many great things are, that it wasn’t so easy and it was because you couldn’t get local retailers to stock it that you created the online shop Swagger Salon. This was a great success and it was only 5 years later when an opportunity came knocking, with a unit at the Hin Bus Depot offered to you as the area was being redeveloped as a creative enclave, that you finally caved and took up a physical store.

During that time you had spent 3 years in advertising and you were moving back and forth between Kuala Lumpur and Penang when eventually a couple of things converged – you already had this great “Backdoor Bodega” brand in mind that you wanted to somehow use, and your little pantry that was initially meant for you to make drinks for friends and family started to get popular; seeing the bustle of Kuala Lumpur’s bar scene and the lack thereof in Penang, you decided to turn the literal back of Swagger Salon into the Backdoor Bodega bar! 

 

 

...“We’re in Penang, notice us”, we want to be known as a force to be reckoned with, and recognised for being unique and unlike other cities. For me, it’s the same train of thought as how I feel about rebellious statements, except now it’s in the form of a cocktail bar or a cocktail scene in a small city that wants to make its mark.

 

[88 Bamboo]: A lot of your forays really started with the Lansi clothing and apparel line. Could you tell us more about that and how that connects back to the whole desire of yours to make a statement?

[Shen]: The word “Lansi”, which is basically a way you’d describe someone as being cocky or arrogant, is a local colloquialism that just existed, and so it was just a matter of rebranding it into something sellable, and so I made it more about being confident and really conveying an attitude. And of course a lot of branding went into portraying that message, and I’ll be honest, it worked - the word itself helped sell itself from Day 1. That kickstarted the brand, and it began to embody confidence instead of arrogance. 

Growing up as someone who did graffiti, with artists like Banksy, it made me look at pieces as not just being beautiful or colourful, but that they could also be about the statements they conveyed. So when it came down to putting out a t-shirt line, I realised that beyond just a beautiful t-shirt, I could do t-shirts that had witty taglines. And I can tell you right away that a simple one-liner t-shirt will sell better than the one that’s beautifully designed! Because at its core, t-shirts as a medium has always been about making a statement! 

You think about say Marlon Brando, who wore just a simple white t-shirt whilst everyone else was suited up, and it became a statement about rebelliousness! So t-shirts have always been a statement piece. Sure, it’s evolved through time, and it’s been a canvas for artwork certainly, but I feel it’s still always going to be how people want to make a statement. And then that became a little seed planted in my head about how I felt about brands thriving, that for a brand to succeed, it has to make a statement. And as a copywriter and even being a rapper, that became my direction.

And you know rappers don’t exactly compliment people, they’re always in this game of one-upping someone else, and I feel now that in some ways that spills over to the bar as well. We’re of course not trying to say we’re better or anything like that, but more so in the sense of “We’re in Penang, notice us”, we want to be known as a force to be reckoned with, and recognised for being unique and unlike other cities. For me, it’s the same train of thought as how I feel about rebellious statements, except now it’s in the form of a cocktail bar or a cocktail scene in a small city that wants to make its mark.

 

The Backdoor Bodega crew.

 

[88 Bamboo]: As the story goes, even though neither you nor your team had any formal bartending training. You had also found yourself creatively exhausted with clothing design, and so you fully launched yourself into Backdoor Bodega in 2016 – where you would come up with the coconut and pandan-based Kelapa Hotak cocktail which was meant to be so unique that customers wouldn’t compare or benchmark it to the classics, which you thought might have exposed your then lack of experience.

We’re curious if there were any bars or bartenders that you referenced, or memories or ideas that you tapped on, as you put the bar together? 

[Shen]: To be perfectly honest, I really had zero bartending experience. I was always that one guy who goes to cocktail bars because I don’t drink beer (Editors Note: Beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage in Malaysia). And then I became that guy with Internet access who was Googling how to y’know make a cocktail infusion, spirit infusions, syrups, things like that, and so when I started Backdoor Bodega, all my knowledge was just pieced together from here and there from all over the Internet, for example, maybe something Punch wrote about, or YouTube - the only bartender I probably watched was Kayama-san (of the legendary Ben Fiddich in Japan) because he was featured by 88 Rising. And that all influenced me to make my own tonic water, because Kayama-san was out there making his own bitters.

My first real bartending friend would have had to be CK from Coley (Editor’s Note: CK Kho is the founder of iconic Kuala Lumpur bar Coley). I had met him only in 2017 or 2018, through Alvin of Taps (a popular beer bar in Malaysia, and founder of local craft beer brewery PaperKite), and really before that, I had known no one else in the bartending world. I did not know what the industry was, and it was just me, like every other home bartender, just trying to make my own little whisky sour.

 

Coley's CK Kho.

 

After moving back to Penang, I was living with my parents so I spent most of my time at my clothing store, using the space behind it for bartending since I couldn’t do that at home - and that’s how things started! After I got to know CK (of Coley), he would try to tell me tips about bartending, but really it was just a blank for me because I was still a t-shirt guy. So I didn’t really know where this (bartending tips) was coming from, but I thought I’d just take his advice and started to get this or that, that I needed to use this ice, and it had to be good ice. It was only in 2018 that it was 2-3 years after I had started Backdoor Bodega that one of the first brands, Jameson (the Irish Whiskey), had come to Penang to do a cocktail competition, and that’s when I really got into it. It made me see that all the best bars globally were doing this and that, and that became the start of my real bartending. Up till that point, I would just be in Kuala Lumpur watching bartenders make a Mojito and think to myself “Wow an Asam Boi mojito, not bad”, which was just me being really basic.

 

I was really actually trying to get people to not come, because I wasn’t sure of what I was doing.

 

[88 Bamboo]: Now you also famously branded Backdoor Bodega as a hidden speakeasy (a play on it being behind the Swagger Salon) and initially you got around regulations by offering a free cocktail drink with every pin purchased, leading to the bar’s iconic tagline as being “An Overpriced Pin Shop”.

Could you let us in on something very few people know about to do with Backdoor Bodega? 

[Shen]: *Laughs* Back then I didn’t really plan on doing this full time, it wasn’t a real business I was actually trying to venture into, and was just me making drinks for my friends, and then people would start to come in and ask for a drink - but I wasn’t going to go out of my way to apply for an alcohol license based on something that I wasn’t even sure of what I was doing! I was really actually trying to get people to not come, because I wasn’t sure of what I was doing. I even had a board that says “No Wifi, Don’t Take Amex, No Card”! I was just trying to make it the most inconvenient bar to get to because I didn’t want strangers coming and buying drinks because, again, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing!

I was just doing all of this for fun, but we were already getting regulars who were friends of friends - and I was happy to serve them maybe a few times - but the last thing I wanted was a proper cocktail enthusiast coming in and thinking “Why is this bar’s air-conditioner not cold,” or “Why is their bar counter set up like this?!” I was definitely the most inconvenient bar to get to.

 

Who Backdoor Bodega's follows on Instagram. Hint: It's not you.

 

I even initially opened on just three days a week - Thursday, Friday and Saturday - and from just 10pm till late. People were thinking how it was that I only opened it for so such short hours! Yet somehow I feel like the more exclusive I [incidentally] made it, the more people actually wanted to come! And so eventually I decided that I’ll do it properly, have proper hours, apply for a license and redecorate the place. But going back to the start, I wasn’t what you would call an accessible bar. I had just wanted to do my own thing and be in my own little world.

 

[88 Bamboo]: And whilst Backdoor Bodega does this incredible job of conveying a vibe of easygoingness, at the same time we know that your time spent in advertising has ingrained in you this sense of perfectionism.

What are some tiny details that most visitors may not notice and yet is something that you obsess over and actually plays a big part in creating the atmosphere?

[Shen]: Wow, I'm pretty sure there were, I'm just trying to think what it is that I feel was the advantage I had. So being a designer and being from advertising / marketing myself, I could really do everything myself as opposed to other bars who would have had to hire someone to do things for them professionally. Really whatever I have in mind that I want to do for the bar to market it, I could execute it to the standards that I wanted. 

Perhaps the one thing I did that’s still ongoing till this day is the Backdoor Bodega Instagram page.

 

 

Starting from way back when I really wanted to stick to the speakeasy concept, and really why I enjoyed building Backdoor Bodega, I just loved that I could bring this idea to life, of being branded as this “Overpriced Pin Shop”, and that I could do all of this myself having been a brand design guy. I designed the logo with a door to brand it as a speakeasy that was hidden behind a clothing store, and when it came down to the website and the Instagram, I didn’t want any photos of cocktails because it had to stick with the speakeasy identity! Every image would have been of pins and merchandise, and if we had an event with other bars, we would just post pictures of the pins and merch, and then all other pictures would go behind it, which conveyed this sense of you having to swipe past the pins to “discover” that it was a bar. Also if you check who Backdoor Bodega’s Instagram follows, you’d see [various accounts named] “Thursday”, “Friday”, “Saturday”, “Sunday”, “Monday” and “2000hrs” (8 PM) - these were some of the little touches we’ve been doing since Day 1.

It was all done for fun back when we were a small bar having to do everything on our own. But of course as we got bigger, it became harder. You now have Instagram collabs, people wanting to post about the cocktails, so we have deviated somewhat since then. Back then, even when you walked into Swagger Salon, all the Backdoor Bodega stuff would be in just one corner, and we didn’t even have the bar’s t-shirt displayed so prominently, and so you’d really do that whole thing of buying a pin and then heading to the back where the bar was. These were the little touches that for me as a perfectionist were things I really enjoyed doing. These days though, with higher footfall, tourists, people complaining they can’t find your bar, you just have to give in a little on that.

 

 

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Editor's Note: Backdoor Bodega’s menus have often featured local flavours and sensibilities with hallmark cocktails such as Georgetown Gimlet (of torched ginger, belacan chilli and tamarind spice), the Ulam Mojito (made with local leaves and torched ginger) and of course Shen’s own debut creation, the Kelapa Hotak (a clarified interpretation of the classic Malayan kaya toast). The bar’s 2025 menu titled Bar Guide to Penang serves as also a guide to the bar team’s favourite food haunts with char kway teow (charcoal wok fried noodles) and ice kacang (flavoured shaved ice) recommendations, along with local takes on the weather, street photography and notes on the local slang – instructive as Georgetown, Penang, stars as a tourist hotspot in Malaysia. 

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[88 Bamboo]: As you established Backdoor Bodega’s cocktail program – most recently titled The Backdoor Bodega Guide to Penang which won Best Cocktail Menu at Asia’s 50 Best Bars 2025! – you’ve always emphasized the embodying and championing of local Penang culture, which might seem obvious on the surface given the rich local culture to draw upon and the distinct uniqueness.

Yet you’ve said this focus on what's local was an active choice to avoid the commonly held belief that the aspirational gold standard for bartenders was to simply replicate more international bars – could you take us through your thinking on that?

As a pioneering bar in Penang where the bar scene is still very nascent, how do you balance between learning from the established bars in more internationally well known cities and staying true to what is local culture, practice and norms?

[Shen]: That's a very good question. I feel like I have the answer for that because of just one conversation [with a guest].

There are some things in the industry that no matter where you are has to be the standard, for example, hospitality, the quality of drinks, the balance of your drinks, comfort. All these are what makes a great bar, it's universal. Whether you're in London, Sydney, Penang, great hospitality should be a thing, being as welcoming as possible, or being a people’s person because bartending is a very peoples-facing job. Although of course there are bars who don’t care, and where if you’re buying the cocktails, then they’ll be nice to you, but that’s really the exception. So internationally, no matter where you are, some of these things ring true - to be a good bar, you simply have to have these qualities. 

But back to the part about how we still stick to our identity; I had this conversation with a guest who was probably travelling from the US, and because this was early days and so I told her that I have no idea what I’m doing, and that I had just thrown together random stuff, random syrups, local ingredients, all that. She then responded to tell me that I could take my entire cocktail menu as it was right then - not change a thing - and put it in New York or London, of really any big cocktail city, and I would be the best bar in the world. That was what she said to me! And that made me realise that we try so hard to replicate all these international bars in bigger cities, and we forget that they [bars outside of Penang] can’t do what I can do! That is what makes what we do in Penang unique!

Over the years, we’ve talked to guests who have travelled across all corners of the world, and I really started to realise that this was really something that was indeed true. People come from all over knowing that they cannot get this experience anywhere else in the world. That made me feel that I should play to those strengths. In the early days, I didn’t want to do something so predictable, take for example a durian cocktail, which would have been the easiest thing to do and such a low hanging fruit, yet I realised that for someone who isn’t from Penang, this would have been a mind-blowing idea.

 

It's the nutmeg juice.

 

My favourite story has always been the nutmeg fruit. Growing up in Penang, it’s something we would drink as a juice at coffee shops, and so we take it for granted. But after I started running the bar, I realised that we’re probably the only people in the world to drink nutmeg as a juice, whereas for everyone else it’s used only as a spice! So every person who comes to the bar, I tell them this [cocktail] is nutmeg, and that everyday we make a nutmeg syrup, and their minds are blown because they don’t know nutmeg beyond the nut. In fact, we have fresh nutmeg in Penang!

Things like these we take for granted growing up, which I then realised is our strength, and is what we should use and play towards, and is what would make us unique. And that for me was when I started to dive deeper into all these other ingredients that makes us special. Torch ginger flour that we use in Assam laksa or all those Peranakan dishes - we really cheapen them, yet it’s what makes us special.

But of course where it comes to hospitality standards and quality drinks, we still maintain high standards, because no matter what unusual ingredients you use, your cocktail still has to have balance. And so we hold ourselves to those international standards in terms of bar quality, but everything else is really up to us to be unique about.

 

"...we try so hard to replicate all these international bars in bigger cities, and we forget that they [bars outside of Penang] can’t do what I can do! That is what makes what we do in Penang unique!"

 

One man's cliche, is another man's mind blown.

 

[88 Bamboo]: We know that this desire to encapsulate the local culture is something that can be characterised even in your work with Lansi for example, and that at the same time you broadly see culture as being organic and not something that is to be monopolised or immortalised in stone (you’ve even mentioned having fiery online debates regarding the idea of working over someone else’s street art).

How do you consistently and regularly pin down or grasp what that Penang identity is, and where do you turn to for inspiration when you most need it? We’re curious how do you reinterpret Penang culture from one year’s menu and do it all over again the next year but differently?

[Shen]: The first thing was to not be fixated on food. It’s fun and all, but if we keep doing food-inspired cocktails, we’re just going to become predictable and eventually run out of flavours. So then we felt that the best way forward was to segment our drinks, or the inspiration for our drinks, into several categories: food, culture, and history. These felt like the things that Penang was particularly rich in, and so from there it was easier for us to explore different inspirations.

But to answer your question in a broader sense, I feel like while we look to what we have, the past, or even what Penang is famous for for inspiration, I felt strongly that we mustn’t forget the path that we’re on in also creating a Penang identity as we move forward. Ultimately, it has to be something where we fuse these two together - what we are building now, and the inspiration that we take from to build it, which together becomes one unified thing. If we’re only looking towards what already exists or historical aspects, eventually we’d have run through everything. It’s then important that we also have to be creating new things.

Similarly, if we only focus on the cultural aspects of Penang, we’d eventually run out of things to talk about. But then what if we take that and turn it into something new, so let me give you an example, Penang is always coming up with new Durian flavours in the form of different breeds, say Black Thorn Durian or Red Prawn Durian, and when you bite into them, you’d have all these various tasting notes, be it nutty or even brandy-like. So what if we could instead break down these flavour notes and put them together in a cocktail that’s inspired by this particular breed of durian, without having any durian in the cocktail itself!

 

A hike up Penang Hill.

 

That’s usually my train of thought when I go about creating things, and there are also other ways to approach this. My main issue with focusing too much on culture is also that not every cultural element wants to be associated with alcohol, so it can be abit touchy. The most happening day in Penang is during Chinese New Year, and we could take from it a particular celebration and turn it into a cocktail - it works, but would it be accepted? Whilst you’re trying to be mindful of the various ethnic cultures, it might not always be accepted. And so instead, when you take a look at our Bamboo Aged series, this was inspired by Penang’s favourite past time hiking, it’s not a cultural thing, not a historical thing, but it’s a local feature because we have a big Penang hill that’s got so many hiking trails and so everybody’s got a family member who loves hiking. My dad hikes every week! And so take that and think about how we can turn it into a story. So for example, what do we see on the trail’s path? Bamboo! In so many shapes and forms. Even as a kid, as a Scout, you learn to use locally sourced bamboo to build structures out of bamboo. So we thought why not use this bamboo and make it into an ageing vessel and age cocktails in it!

From there we start to write stories about hiking trails we’d recommend, and that’s how we tie together a cocktail inspired by our own experiences living in Penang and being inspired by Penang itself! So we don’t have to keep using Laksa or Char Kway Teow, which would have been pretty generic and something that’s been done before.

 

Backdoor Bodega's bamboo aged Negroni and Old Fashioned. (Image Source: @boozychapter / Instagram)

 

And you could even take inspiration from people, there are many characters in Penang to draw from. You could for example collaborate with a famous rapper from Penang - so many ways of doing it, that we’re constantly exploring. And of course we still want to maintain the format of the menu, and then we’ll just update it and add to it, and that’s why the menu is so thick now - it’s like 70 pages long!

Another great source of inspiration are the competitions! The competition briefs, when they state that you have to do this or that, it forces you to think in ways that you don’t usually think about, and you also start to put together why it is that you made this new cocktail, so then maybe you work on on a drink based on this or that, and now you have a fresh new idea. And that’s how we got a Toddy cocktail, because we have a history of Toddy here, which became a winning cocktail from Thanesh (of Backdoor Bodega). And the same goes for cassava, for example. There was another one called “Val d’Or” which means Valley of Gold in French, but it’s also a village in the [Malaysia] mainlands, which also happens to be where Thanesh’s grandfather was from. And from that you create this entire backstory that brings guests to this otherwise sleepy town in the mainland. If not for that, you’d never talk about these things!

 

Backdoor Bodega's Thanesh takes us to the Malaysian mainlands with the Val d'Or.

 

[88 Bamboo]: Now of course, something has to be said about the people aspect of how Backdoor Bodega put Penang on the map in one of the most competitive rankings in the world, having clinched the landmark accolade of being the first bar in Penang to place on the Asia’s Best Bars list in 2022, You’ve proved that even without formal bartending training and also being outside a major city is simply no excuse! And at the same time you’ve been very transparent about how you would like to change the perception surrounding being a bartender (particularly locally) as being something transient that one does between jobs, to one that is – correctly, we might add – about dedication, artistry and craftsmanship. 

Beyond international recognition from the likes of Asia’s Best Bars (and PCW), what do you believe needs to happen for that perception to change? And if you could snap your fingers and change anything about the way things are, be it locally, internationally or within the cocktail scene, what would it be?

[Shen]: This might sound rather ironic but I feel that being more responsible with alcohol, and exercising moderation, should really be more important. What I mean by that is that, of course, alcohol is at the core of our work, and bars certainly demonstrate the craftsmanship of bartending, but there’s still a good number of people who judge a cocktail as not being “strong” enough - cocktails aren’t just about how strong they are! It’s human nature to want more of everything, but not every cocktail has to or should taste like an Old Fashioned.

Our job as bartenders is to curate and imbue a set of flavours! You don’t go to a fine dining restaurant and expect a Big Mac-sized portion do you? Because that’s not what it’s about! It’s about appreciating the beauty of how each dish is meticulously built with this myriad of ingredients, and creating cocktails is the same as that. That said, I am starting to see some change in that direction where people’s perceptions are turning more appreciative of the bartending craft.

 

 

"Now guests come in respecting the craft and the bartender that’s making it, and so the bartender also respects their own career path - it’s such a beautiful dynamic that really works; it really, really works!"

 

And then this also ties back to my earlier point about doing all of this to get people to stop moving out of Penang. People and bartenders started especially moved out of Penang during Covid to go to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur because they didn’t see a career path being a bartender in Penang - and I don’t blame them, I too wouldn’t have seen a career path here if not for the fact that I ran my own bar. This made me realise that in order for there to be longevity in this industry, we need talent and therefore the ability to attract talent. Now the moment that I knew what I was doing was working was when Janice, our Penang born and bred senior bartender who had already been in the industry for many years despite being only in her early 20’s, had told me when I had met her in Kuala Lumpur after she had left her previous job that whilst she received two offers from two great bars in Kuala Lumpur, she would rather stay in Penang if she had the opportunity because she was excited about the growth of the Penang bar industry and she wanted to be here to experience it first hand. It struck me and I remarked that she should have told me and I would have had her join the team!

And it’s just been so beautiful seeing how in just two short years, it’s gone from people seeing Penang as having no career prospects in bartending, to now these same people opting to stay put. It’s even gone beyond where now people are moving in here! You have Adrian from Jigger & Pony (the highly acclaimed Singapore cocktail bar) who’s opened up a bar here, and also the folks previously from Gibson and Madam Fan coming here too. It’s such a reversal from just four years ago when people were moving out of Penang for places seen with more career prospects. Now Penang is seen as having a proper bartending industry, and that’s something I’m proud that we’ve helped change.

That change ultimately comes down to the perception of the bartenders themselves. Beyond Penang being a space that offers a proper bartending career, it’s the perception of the community that is slowly changing - which is something that is helped by the media who plays a very important role in shaping the narrative of what it is that a cocktail bar does, and highlighting the craft that goes into it, and that it’s not just about drinking or at all about getting drunk! It’s not blue drinks and flaming bottles. And then with awards like 50 Best and Tatler, for example, cocktail bars and bartending is now on the same level as fine dining and five star hotels, and so being a bartender has become a worthy lifestyle. Bartenders then respect their own careers more - something that was really missing in the past - because the love was always there; people love drinking and bartenders love making drinks, but there was no respect for the bartender.

 

The Backdoor Bodega team showcasing in Guangzhou at Hope & Sesame.

 

When that happens, bartenders don’t think of it as a career and instead take it up because they get to drink, it’s an easy job and just a paycheck. Now guests come in respecting the craft and the bartender that’s making it, and so the bartender also respects their own career path - it’s such a beautiful dynamic that really works; it really, really works!

Also amazing is what’s happening with emerging markets - take a look at China. They’re producing so many new and nascent drinkers ready and eager to explore bars around the world and to learn about the drink. In the past, it was Singaporeans or Hong Kongers who already knew every single cocktail and were therefore looking to be impressed. Now with guests being minted from emerging markets, it’s such a beautiful time to be a bartender because you get to have these new drinkers who are willing to explore. 

Ultimately nothing can change overnight, but it is so beautiful what’s happening right now in the bartending world!

 

[88 Bamboo]: As if that wasn’t enough of a feat, you then went on to inaugurate the Penang Cocktail Week in 2023, with the goal of bringing bartenders from around the world to Penang first as a means of introducing international talent to Penang, which later turned into, as you said, something more personal for you, where you wanted to elevate the local perception of bartending as profession. Three years in and Penang Cocktail Week has become something of a fixture on the international bar calendar!

Having just completed PCW 2025 (this time backstopped by the first rendition of Bar Show Malaysia), what are your reflections on this year’s edition, what was a particular highlight or event that you felt was incredibly meaningful, and more broadly how do you feel about how PCW has developed?

[Shen]: Honestly, it was way bigger than I expected it to be - it’s grown exponentially over the years - but from the eyes of an organiser, I had known that this year’s budget was smaller because with everything that’s going on with the world right now. I had figured that even if this year we did something smaller, we could still make it more impactful and meaningful with the events planned, but the turnout was actually bigger than last year, and last year’s was already pretty huge!

I think one of the moments that stood out to me this year was actually the earliest encounter I had, and that was even before I had met the people who were down the night before Penang Cocktail Week started. I had been bringing some of the guest bartenders who had arrived early around town and we had met a couple of people at the bar and whilst we were just chatting, they had told us that they were here for Penang Cocktail Week, and when I had asked how long they were staying for, they told us they’d be here the whole week! To hear that from people who have come down from outside of Malaysia, people who had flown down from Hong Kong or Thailand, and these were people I had just met! It struck me that these were people who were here all week for something [Penang Cocktail Week] that we started doing just for fun 2-3 years ago. That was very encouraging and made me feel very optimistic, although it did also put some pressure on me, because now it’s going beyond just the Penang folks going around bars - these were people flying in internationally specifically for this and to enjoy the festival, and so I really can’t mess this up!

 

Penang Cocktail Week has made its way into the international bar circuit in just three years!

 

The rest of the week was quite a blur and I’ll admit there were some hiccups - but that’s the challenge right? We’re bartenders and bar owners, not even event organisers, and even if we’ve done this 2-3 times before, it’s not something we do every other week as a day job, which makes it very hard to be really good at this [organising PCW]. Moving forward, if it continues to grow at this pace, we’ll definitely have to work with a proper event planning agency or at least with people with event organising experience who can execute this at that scale. 

It’s really growing at a pace that’s beyond our imagination, and I recall the first time we did PCW, we only had a bunch of local and regional bars, and a few from Europe and South America, and we had figured that we could get some brands to sponsor us putting together this nice cocktail week. Now, we actually have people asking us already if they can come for next year’s PCW, and how they can be a part of it!

 

"At the core, me not being a bartender and not having any bartending experience, just a designer guy who loves cocktails, and now I am able to go out on a weeknight in Penang and grab a cocktail - that’s a win for me!"

 

 

[88 Bamboo]: You’ve brought the world to Penang – do you ever have any thoughts as to how you could bring Penang to the world?

[Editor's Note: During the Covid-19 pandemic period, Shen saw a silver lining in that he could ship bottled cocktails and share little bit of Backdoor Bodega with the whole of Malaysia, instead of Penang itself.]

[Shen]: We’re also doing cross border collaborations which I feel is the next thing for us to focus on - no longer it being just what’s happening in Penang, but how can we bring Penang to the world. We just did a collaboration with India Cocktail Week for example, where we sent bartenders from Penang there branded as a Penang Cocktail Week takeover, instead of it being just a Backdoor Bodega takeover. And then in turn we have these India Cocktail Week bars come over to Penang. In fact, we were just in Colombo where they invited us to give our input as they try to start their own cocktail movement there. Similar to Penang of the past, they’re also a smaller city that doesn’t have a big cocktail focus, and now they want to really kick start it. It’s nice when smaller cities can work together - the established cities are already there, and they need the business, but they know that they don’t really need any more exposure - and so it’s fun to explore these emerging cities, working with something different. We’re working with Vietnam, Taiwan, and just figuring how we can cross promote each other’s festivals or cocktail week.

This way, it’s not just Backdoor Bodega and our cocktails again, it's not just another guest shift, it’s instead branded as what Penang as a collective has to offer - and that’s how we bring it to the world.

 

Penang represent!

 

[88 Bamboo]: You’ve mentioned how beyond all the fun, laughter and drinks, a very important element for you comes in the form of the educational masterclasses and industry sharing sessions that not only gives local bartenders a chance to learn, connect, be inspired, and really have deeper conversations that don’t typically get adequate space in the context of a bar setting. We frankly have such deep admiration for your efforts in building up the local community and bar scene!

We know that helping to inspire and influence others to push forward and realise their dreams has always been your purpose, so to that end – beyond international aspects of Penang being recognised as a cocktail destination – what would success look like to you within the context of Penang / Malaysia? 

[Shen]: This is a very interesting question. I’ll go back to why I started all this in the first place, where I had moved back to Penang because of the clothing store and found that I didn’t have a place to hang out because there were no cocktail bars at the time. We’re talking 2014 or 2015, and at the time Kuala Lumpur already had a cocktail scene, and so I was always hanging out at these cocktail bars as a cocktail drinker. Moving back to Penang, there was no such thing. There were only beer bars and clubs, and that’s why I started this little bar at the back, so that I could hang out and drink cocktails with my friends.

And so I feel like at this point, with all the momentum that it has, even if I woke up tomorrow and decided I didn’t want to do this anymore, and I didn’t want to run a cocktail bar anymore, and I was going to just focus on my clothing line and be a designer or marketer again - well, I’m still living in Penang, right? And so what that means is I’ll get to go out on a weekend and there are so many cocktail choices for me today, all with amazing cocktails, and so it’s already a win for me. In a short 5-10 year frame, we now have so many great options, and I can have a good cocktail on a night out that I couldn’t have had back in the day. 

 

 

At the core, me not being a bartender and not having any bartending experience, just a designer guy who loves cocktails, and now I am able to go out on a weeknight in Penang and grab a cocktail - that’s a win for me! And then the scene would just continue growing.

 

"At this point, even if I closed Backdoor Bodega, the scene is not going to die, and it will have a life of its own, which is great for me as a consumer who still gets to go and hang out when back then I didn’t have any of those choices. That’s what success looks like to me."

 

[88 Bamboo] What would you look out for in the local spirit or scene that would tell you that this is headed in the right direction? And of course, what direction or areas do you want to push PCW forward in in future editions (what is the goal moving forward)? What does Penang (or Malaysia)’s cocktail scene need to kick it to next gear?

[Shen]: That’s a good question. I actually believe that guest shifts are very overrated. And so the past two years I’ve been trying to move these cocktail festivals away from being just about guest shifts - don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, without a doubt it’s fun, and it’s amazing to be able to bring your bartender friends from around the world to Penang to show them what Penang is - but ultimately we do guest shifts because it’s what justifies the cost of bringing them in. So it does have to happen, but a cocktail festival that’s purely based on guest shifts will just get boring very quickly.

This year we’ve worked with a lot of our restaurant or cafe friends to do these different crossovers; we did a beach party, a "Tiki Bowl", a bowling event where you had cocktails, even a Char Kway Teow session with tequila, so we’re trying to move away from just generic guest shifts even if they are inevitable. And so what I would like to see the cocktail festival evolve towards is moving beyond doing guest bartending even as it still serves as a marketing campaign for these brands. These brands engage us and we do that marketing for them in return, and so I really enjoy figuring how else I can put that marketing budget to use. We’ve got some projects we’re working on for next year that focus more on branding and marketing - for example, it could be a merchandise collection that’s a collaboration between two bars from different corners of the world. At the end of the day, people are still having fun and there’s room to think about how else we can maximise that.

 

 

But at the end of the day, I think what’s most important is for the bars to be of quality. Beyond all of this, it is really a platform for Penang bars to showcase what they’re good at, and if the bars are not up to mark, no matter how big the festival is, it won’t succeed. The platform has to be supported by quality, and then hopefully people come back not just for these bars, but really for everything that Penang has to offer. It’s a new generation of F&B in Penang and people are no longer here for just one place - we want to make sure that when a tourist comes, that dollar is stretched across all the places Penang has to offer.

 

[88 Bamboo]: So much of your work has been to champion Penang – it’s culture, it’s people, it’s recognition internationally – and certainly part of that we could theorise is a synthesis of your ceaseless creative energy that has then be applied to this great mission. Along the way, you’ve worn many different caps – we’re curious if there was a cap that felt particularly snug? 

[Shen]: At the end of the day, what I enjoy most is just being front of my computer designing and executing ideas, that’s where I feel I’m the most at peace. Coming up with brands, taglines, logos, things like that, and as to whether or not it pays the bills, well, that’s a whole different thing altogether. This is really me being a designer at my core.

Take for example cities. I’ve always been inspired by cities that are beautifully designed in terms of branding. Whether it’s a tagline or a city logo that the government created, it could even be signboards, I think that symbolises a mature city, which is also one where the people are able to understand and embrace creativity. I would love to be in a place where I could design a unique logo and that people would understand it, otherwise it’s like being a comedian and having to explain a joke. And so for me, whether it’s bartending, clothing or rap music, I feel most at ease when I’m designing and putting out my ideas and hopefully people are able to appreciate it, and we could live in a city where we can see creativity everywhere.

 

 

Just to dive into that, even something as granular as the way “Georgetown” is spelt - we can’t even even universally agree on whether it’s one word or two words, and to my mind that’s an issue. I’m guilty of that too! The “Georgetown” in “Georgetown Gimlet” is spelt as one word because it looks nicer for the sake of design, but really it’s something we as a city can’t even get right. And if I had the time, I would love to fix all of these, but I am also not the man to do it.

We need to get all these right and then only can we move on to how we can create a branding for our city to sell itself and present itself. Penang is going to be a tourist city, we’re doubling the airport volume with big investments, and they’re building up the rail infrastructure, so in 5-8 years time the number of tourists are going to double or triple. How we present ourselves to these visitors is very important.

 

[88 Bamboo]: And conversely, given how your creativity seems to meet no bounds, manifesting itself in so many different shapes and forms, have you ever found yourself constrained by being limited to working with what Penang has to offer or what is currently available locally?

Are there ideas or ventures you would have liked to pursue elsewhere, or if you were to start over with a blank slate today (say in the age of AI), are there other endeavours you would have liked to pursue?

[Shen]: Y’know I feel like it’s always been very organic for me in terms of my growth and you can see that in how my career turned out, being very much a matter of one thing leading to another. I started with rap and graffiti and that became design, and that in turn became clothing, which led to the bar. The bar eventually led to Penang Cocktail Week, which I don’t know yet what that would lead to. But I’m quite a happy go lucky person whose just been very fortunate that somehow all of these managed to pay the bills. At my core, I always try to do what makes me happy, which is very important to me, and is how I’ve been most of my life.

And this sequence of events being one after another is also why I think Backdoor Bodega succeeded, because I used whatever creativity and experience I had with clothing and put that into the bar, having already been exhausted with t-shirts by that point. There’s only so many ways you can design a t-shirt. Being exhausted, I took whatever I had learnt and whatever resources I had and put that into this whole new canvas where I could express all of this, which made it fun. Maybe if I now take whatever I’ve learnt from the bar and put it back into clothing design, perhaps it’ll produce something different. Or perhaps my experiences with events might translate into something F&B in Penang where I just try to improve the industry.

 

 

But just for fun, to answer your question - and I don’t know if this will happen or not - something I would really, really want to try - and although they say don’t work with your other half - I would love to work with my wife on her veterinary animal clinic. It seems really random, but I want to explore taking everything I’ve learnt in design, marketing and even business, and put it into the clinic and see what comes out of it. Her clinic even takes in exotic animals and does cataract surgery for cats and dogs, but it’s based in a small town in the mainland, which is where the challenge lies, because not everyone has a dog or cat. Also there’s always this sense that the person operating the business might not always enjoy the business side of things, which applies even for bars. For me, it’ll be a really fun project to look at the veterinary clinic from the perspective of growing the brand and seeing how much bigger the business can grow.

Although realistically that’s not possible because I’m already up to my neck with work that I have to do for the bar. So going back to it, if I wasn’t working the bar, it would just be me at home with my computer being a designer, or even helping to grow a business. I’m not a doctor, so if she can do the vet care side of things, and I can do the business side of things, it’s a very exciting possibility!

 

Grafitti has brought Shen a long way.

 

[88 Bamboo]: What then, would you like your legacy to be? 

[Shen]: That’s a tough one. I feel like as I grow, it's changed a lot. Back in the day I just wanted to be the coolest clothing brand. But after that it became “I want to win an advertising award”, and then after that it was about being the best bar. It changes, it always changes. And as much as I preach about the importance of having purpose, and with the Cocktail Week for example, I had a purpose of course, being that I had wanted to build up the industry, but really I’m still a work in progress. The bar [Backdoor Bodega] is not my final project, I know that. So I’d still very much want to see how far I can go, perhaps in particular where it comes to contributing to the city’s development that goes even beyond the [bar] industry. At times I don’t know how far it will take me given that it’s hard to focus on everything else when the bar requires being so hands on. The bar would have to be something that can run on its own - and in a way it’s helped that because I have a baby now, I now have a legitimate reason to not have to be involved in so many things.

 

About time Penang embraced its own.

 

Now I can slowly start getting back to focusing on design work whilst the baby is sleeping for an hour, even though I’m starting to feel that sort of comfort creeping back up on me already. The truth is I don’t know what that legacy would be, and in fact I don’t even think that’s up to me. It’s ultimately what people perceive of me at the end of the day, and so for me, I’m content just being a nice person and letting people decide what they think of me. Of course, you want to be known for being a good person, and not someone who’s only doing something because it’s for their own benefit or with an ulterior motive. I feel like that’s what’s most important - to just be known as a good guy who’s doing things for the right reasons.

"They [the Backdoor Bodega team] have been with me and I want to continue to give them that motivation and purpose to keeping doing what they do, and I feel that there’s still much opportunity left."

 

[88 Bamboo]: With everything you’ve been through and have done – what is the statement you’re making?

[Shen]: I actually think it can all be encapsulated by a saying that I’m going to paraphrase from the Batman movie, The Dark Knight - and it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot - and that is that you either die a legend or live long enough to see yourself become irrelevant.

That’s something that I’ve found resonates with my clothing brand, and to a certain extent the bar as well. [Backdoor Bodega] is in a good place right now, but you have to wonder how long can you be at this good place, and even how long more do you want to be doing this? 

With my clothing brand, it was at its peak and then I got distracted with the bar and I pretty much stopped releasing new items because I didn’t want to do either things half-heartedly. I really didn’t want to put out designs for the sake of it and have people say, “Oh yeah, these guys are passé”, “they’re past their peak”. And so out of the blue I just stopped. I stopped dropping new clothing designs and focused entirely on the bar. And till this day we have people - they don’t know I’ve been working on the bar - who just see that there was this brand that was doing so well, and now all of a sudden they’re gone. And they text me every other week asking if we have new stuff, or to check in if we’re okay.

 

 

After a two year hiatus with the clothing brand, I started to realise this more so.

I’m currently still in fact designing new batches of clothing that will go into a new release, and I’m still planning for new releases, but I want to carry this same sensibility with even Backdoor Bodega. Do I want to force myself to do this for the sake of making money or do I want to quit whilst I’m ahead? That’s been going through my head a lot, because it motivates me to do new things, better things, knowing that I might not get to do it forever. Backdoor Bodega doesn’t have to a thing forever. And that’s okay.

I’d just want to do the next thing and hopefully that takes off as well, and do my best to make it a good thing. And that’s what that statement means to me, that it’s okay that things don’t last forever, and that we have to give it all we’ve got while we have it. 

That said, I do have to add that unlike anything else I’ve done before where it was just me, this time [with Backdoor Bodega] I have a team and that’s really the only reason I continue pushing - because I want them to have a purpose. I want to see them push for a career for themselves, and to that end I’m very happy with where the team is at. Y’know every time I hire someone, I tell them that my only goal for them insofar as they work here [Backdoor Bodega] is that they get to be successful here so much so that they can find a job anywhere in the world, because they’ve previously worked here. That’s my goal for them and is really what makes Backdoor Bodega different for me from everything else that I’ve done. They [the Backdoor Bodega team] have been with me and I want to continue to give them that motivation and purpose to keeping doing what they do, and I feel that there’s still much opportunity left. And that’s easy for me to say because I’m the one trying to run the business, but for them, they’re young and have the whole world ahead of them - so really it’s no longer what’s in it for me, but rather it’s for them because they’ve put in so much for the bar.

 

 

[88 Bamboo]: Finally, what’s been the best advice you’ve ever received?

[Shen]: Woah, there’s been so many, and from numerous mentors throughout the years. There’s maybe one that sticks out from back in my days in advertising. It’s rather cheesy but at the same time rather profound in its simplicity. In those days of advertising, there was a lot of money to be made, yet at the same time when you’re just starting out as a designer you get paid peanuts and you work terrible hours, beyond just being a very small industry. As an offhanded remark, my boss, one of Malaysia's advertising legends, Kevin Le, had said in passing to me that if you want to make money, be famous, and to be famous, do the quality of work that is worth recognition; do work that wins awards! 

It’s not something I completely live by, but what struck me was the truth in it, that we do live in a world where recognition is highly regarded, and whilst not all awards are of the same quality, what it’s about is having to do good quality work that is worthy of recognition. In other words, don’t do things for the sole purpose of making money, instead do things with the goal of simply doing good work, and when that work gets recognised, the money will follow. 

 

 

[88 Bamboo]: A big thank you once again to Shen for doing this interview with us! We’re really privileged to share our conversation with someone whom we deeply admire and is such a community leader and inspiration for so many!

 

@CharsiuCharlie