Ange Branca’s restaurant career, less than a decade in, is hard to believe. She’s opened—and been forced to close—two James Beard Award-nominated Malaysian restaurants due to outside forces. First, because of the pandemic. Then, a devastating restaurant fire. But one glance at Kampar’s Instagram page shows another story: one of tenacity and resilience.
In 2016, just after leaving IBM, Branca opened Saté Kampar, which garnered a “Best New Restaurant” nomination the following year. When a rent hike during the pandemic forced her to leave her Passyunk Avenue restaurant, Branca quickly pivoted to launching Kampar Kitchen in a different space with meal kits highlighting underrepresented cuisine cooked by immigrant chefs. This was more than a pandemic-era response, as Branca used Kampar Kitchen to feature emerging chefs originating from Haiti, Trinidad, Mexico, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. When Branca lost that space in the summer of 2021 due to a fire, Kampar Kitchen remained active through memberships and delivery service.
Branca said she wouldn’t open another restaurant without owning the building. After two back-to-back closures balanced by years peppered with sold-out pop-ups, catering, fundraising dinners, research, and development, Branca made her comeback in March 2024.
Enter Kampar, just south of Philadelphia’s South Street in the Queen Village neighborhood, featuring a ground-floor tasting menu-only dinner service; above it, Kongsi, its casual counterpart, pairing Malaysian street food flavors with exciting cocktails. Opening both spaces was a much-needed win years in the making, with a cherry on top: She purchased the Kampar building in the process, fulfilling her promise to herself.
This wasn’t just Saté Kampar version 2.0—no beloved spicy peanut-sauced meat skewers on the menu.
“Opening award-nominated places is easy, but sustainability is the challenge of the restaurant industry,” Branca says.
Kampar opened to a ton of buzz and early acclaim, like being named one of Philly Mag’s “Best Restaurants.” A new team ushering in an expanded culinary and cocktail program made Kampar feel like a social club, netting yet another James Beard Award nomination, this time for Outstanding New Bar.
The accolades are appreciated, but one of Branca’s main goals with evolving Kampar into a bi-level, multi-concept restaurant and chef residency program is to guide emerging talent through the murky industry. She would help them monitor how their food business performed; how to make sense of complicated bank loans and prohibitive interest rates; how to use restaurant space strategically; and to understand the importance of sales and seasonality to sustain operations. “Everyone should have access to owning their own restaurant business,” she says
In February 2025, just one month after the Beard nomination, a morning restaurant fire forced Branca to halt operations—again. The restaurant’s second floor was destroyed while the rest of the space suffered significant water damage, according to reports from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but an extensive rebuild has prolonged plans for reopening indefinitely. Still,
