KUALA LUMPUR, April 6 — The rise of the “modern” kopitiam is perhaps the easiest of food trends to grasp. Unlike hotpot or bingsu, this is our food, our heritage.
There’s nothing to ease diners into; it taps into the nostalgia of older generations while offering their middle-class children the only kind of kopitiam they’d go to — one with air-conditioning.
It even fascinates younger Malaysians who didn’t grow up with the kopitiam as a fixture.
I am, admittedly, still slightly sceptical, but there’s no denying the revival’s appeal. It has reached far beyond the Klang Valley, its popularity punctuated by a certain buzzy IPO.
But in my snobbishness, I may have been missing out.
The restaurant was completely full on a public holiday.
Kopitiam 7, which has been open for just under two years in Cheras Business Centre, won’t win any creativity awards with a name like that — but then again, they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, so there’s that.
Despite the name, the extensive menu includes all the expected classics like half-boiled eggs and roti bakar, but the focus here is their wantan mee and roast duck.
Yes, roast duck can sometimes just taste like roast duck, especially from a place that serves a million other things and isn’t explicitly a siu mei spot, but as with anything, there are levels to this stuff.
The roast duck ‘wantan mee’ comes with a bowl of ‘wantan’ soup and green chilli.
A plate of roast duck wantan mee (RM12.80) is a testament to this, with glistening pieces of tender duck lining a bed of springy noodles.
Not only does the crisp, beautifully bronzed skin shine in the sunlight, but the flesh is moist and supple too, with pockets of white fat that fill the mouth with the intense flavour of duck.
This isn’t just a pretty good roast duck “for where it is”, this is a very good roast duck, period.
The entire lower quarter of the duck arrives deboned.
Oh, and every piece is deboned, so your kids can eat while gawking at that guy’s ridiculous, Saratoga-water-fuelled morning routine on their phone without fear of choking on a bone.
It’s hard to believe you can eat roast duck like this at a kopitiam, air-conditioned and all, but it was the only thing hanging in view (there’s even a number just to book roast duck), and it showed up on nearly every table on a busy public holiday.
A few pieces proved insufficient, so we added an order of the lower quarter (RM28), which was again deboned, but this time more luscious, sitting in a pool of its own rendered juices.
Look at how moist the duck is yet how crispy the skin is.
When served on the wantan mee, those juices get masked by the old-school dark soy sauce mixture the noodles are tossed in.
Instead of the typical sticky-sweet plum sauce, the duck is served with a soy-based dip that somehow enhances it, bringing its strong, gamey flavours to the forefront.
Unfortunately, not everything is quite on the same level. The wantan soup (RM4) comes with five small, largely forgettable orbs of meat in decently smooth wantan skin, but the bigger disappointment was the roast pork dry noodle with curry sauce (RM12.80).
Unlike the duck, the pork lacked both savouriness and depth, the kind that usually comes from the seasoning mix on the underside.
The roast pork dry noodle with curry sauce was underwhelming.
Compounding matters was a watery, bland curry sauce that did nothing for the otherwise decent wantan mee.
Despite offering both roast pork and char siew as well, it’s clear that the duck is their forte by a wide margin.
Maybe there is something to this gentrified kopitiam business. If more places followed the example of Kopitiam 7, putting out good, honest food and rising above the usual with specialities like roast duck, rather than mass-produced slop, it could bridge the gap between function and form.
More than just a rehash of an old favourite, it would be a genuine revival, bringing Malaysian comfort food into the future.
Look for the green-ish sign on the corner of Block E.
Kopitiam 7 | 七号咖啡店
28, Block E, Jalan 1/101c,
Cheras Business Centre,
Cheras, Kuala Lumpur
Open daily, 8am-5pm
Tel: 03-9133 7940
Facebook: Kopitiam 7
* This is an independent review where the writer paid for the meal.
* Follow us on Instagram @eatdrinkmm for more food gems.
* Follow Ethan Lau on Instagram @eatenlau for more musings on food and mildly self-deprecating attempts at humour.
