In London’s ever-shifting food landscape, Zao An Collective is doing something quietly radical, building a café that runs like a family, feeds like a home, and holds space like a community centre.
早安 — Good Morning, and Welcome In
The name says it all. Zao An (早安) — “good morning” in Mandarin — captures exactly the kind of warmth you feel when you walk through the doors of this ESEA diaspora café. Co-founded by Irene and Rihlan, Zao An began life at the ESEA Community Centre before finding its current home: a light-filled space that somehow feels both brand new and deeply familiar.
“When people first walk in,” says Rihlan, “I think it feels like you are going to someone’s house and their parents cook for you.”
From Community Centre to Collective
Irene has been working in hospitality for over a decade, cafés, restaurants, ESEA food, European food, but Zao An is something different to anything she’s done before. When the ESEA Community Centre decided it no longer wanted to run the café, the team could have scattered. Instead, they came together.
“We were looking at ways to stay on but kind of take it into our own hands”, Irene explains. An offer on a nearby space came through almost by coincidence, and they took it. The core team moved over together, roles shifted slightly, but the spirit stayed the same.
The Food: From Taiwanese Breakfast to Everyday Canteen
The menu has evolved alongside the space. Zao An originally launched with a tightly curated Taiwanese breakfast menu — congee, you bake to (turnip cake), and dim sum — chosen because these dishes were either beloved ESEA breakfast staples or genuinely hard to find well-made in London.
“The Dan Bing 蛋餅 was really hard to find in the UK and London — that was the initial idea behind putting that on the menu. It’s a very classic breakfast item.” — Irene
Now, the menu has expanded into something more canteen-style. Monday to Friday, there’s a daily-changing specials board set up buffet-style for lunch, always rice, soup, vegetables, and a main, and the offering shifts in the evening and at weekends. Irene describes it as led by whoever’s working that day, which means it carries the warmth of a home cook who genuinely cares.
The Collective Model — Why It Matters
What sets Zao An apart isn’t just the food. It’s the structure. Zao An is run as a workers’ collective, and that’s a deliberate, considered choice.
“The magic of hospitality is when everybody who works in it has a stake and feels like they have a stake,” says Irene. “If you’re trying to think of a sustainable future in hospitality, why wouldn’t that include giving people ownership and long-term opportunities?”
In practice, it’s challenging, she’s the first to admit that. But the intention shapes everything: who they hire, how they work, how they treat each other. Most of the team has an ESEA background, and Rihlan describes them as genuinely creative and rare. “It’s really rare to work with a team that really cares,” she says simply.
A Safe Space Worth Showing Up For
Beyond the menu, Zao An has become a hub for ESEA community, hosting markets, pop quizzes, and an open call for independent ESEA brands to stock in their shop. At their winter market, the space was filled with small, independent ESEA-owned brands, many of whom had never crossed paths before.
“There was a real atmosphere of everybody trying to uplift everybody’s projects,” Irene recalls. “Just taking an interest in supporting each other in all our various side projects.”
For Rihlan, who says she didn’t have many Asian friends in London before joining Zaoan, the sense of connection has been transformative. “It’s probably a connection,” she says when asked what the space means to her. “Connect with people, have similar experiences.”
Irene describes a safe space not as somewhere always comfortable, but somewhere honest. “A safe space is a space where you can agree to disagree — without shame, with a lot of compassion for different approaches, different origins, different forms of communicating.”
When the community centre chapter ended and messages flooded in, Rihlan says that’s when it really landed: “People said we created something they’d never seen in London. That’s when I realised, maybe we should open that again.”
They did. And London is better for it.
Visit their lunch bar yet? Tell us in the comments!
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