Eating in Kuching - Breakfast at Ipoh Town Kopitiam

Do you feel a sense of deja vu ? Haven't I just posted on this place recently ? Well this one is actually Ipoh Town Kopitiam - not to be confused with Old Town White Coffee which is a different chain. Ipoh Town actually ventured into Kuching earlier, with outlets at The Boulevard Shopping Centre and Jalan Song, and now their latest outlet at Tun Jugah Shopping Centre.

The idea is the same as Old Town - capitalizing on the nostalgia for Ipoh food, and also the sudden Malaysian craze for kaya toast. It is hard to imagine how the humble kaya toast can be the catalyst for a whole new wave of kopitiam culture sweeping all over Malaysia. Even Kuching has its home-grown chain called Kaya and Toast.


I ordered the signature kaya toast and a curry mee. Surprisingly the kaya toast took much longer to arrive then the mee, and it was soggy inside. Not very impressed.


The curry mee was also not very good. The taste is a bit flat, a sign that the sauce has perhaps been sitting around for too long. I have tried their nasi lemak which was much better then this, and their Ipoh Kuih Tiaw Soup is also not bad.


The saving grace was the Ipoh White Coffee - strong and rich, just the way I like it. It reminds me of Cafe Sua Da in Vietnam. I read somewhere that in Asian coffee roast they add sugar to the mix, giving the coffee a strong caramel taste which is quite different from the standard Italian roast.


Homegrown cafes like Ipoh Town and Old Town are giving imported ones like Starbucks a run for their money. If only they could improve on their food offerings, I think they have the potential to drown out the imports. So watch out, mermaid !

Comments

I went to a new concept hawker center in Penang, where they had a Starbucks and an Old Town White Coffee sitting right across from each other. The OTWC was packed, while the Starbucks was limping. Good for them, but I do hope they can be more consistent with their food.

I've had the white coffee, but I didn't think it was similar to cafe sua da.

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