Coffee magic...

In my many travels during work, I always take the opportunity to sample what food is good in the towns I passed through. Through my enquiries with my clientele and also with the locals I meet on the road, I usually get to go to a lot of interesting places for my meals. As I do speak moderately good BM ( no Chinese slang!) , "cukup makan" Hokkien, some caplang Mandarin and some "closer to home" Hainanese dialect, I usually get to these places with ease. I guess, a lot of us are quite "muted" during our travels and that's why some of us would always frequent the certain shop for food all the time. To me, personally, I would like to sample new food from new places. I guess, I could do this only during my work travels which usually involves going to small towns for some work. If I share with you the places that I have been , you would probably balked out the contents of your lunch/dinner/supper all in one go! Afterall, some people are health conscious and health freaks while for me, I would like to borrow Andrew Zimmens's favourite line : "If it looks good, eat it! "

Yesterday, I had a great cup of coffee and oats butter-kaya combo spread bread at Cafe Hainan at Parit Raja. This place is DEFINITELY NOT the cafe we think. It is situated in a middle section of a row of wooden, run-down and "help-me-God" wooden structure shophouse. The front section is tenanted by a Malay lady who serves nasi lemak, mee goreng, kueh teow goreng, bee hoon goreng, lontong and the usual Malay dishes fare and kuih muih. As always, I got this info from my clientele who took the trouble to explain to me about the good stuff at the shop - the coffee and the steamed oats bread! He told me this " Die, Die must try one! Then you come back and tell me ,ok? " So, I took his advice and off I went to the shop. Found it rather easily, sat myself down and ordered the kopi-o and the oats bread spread with kaya & minimal butter. When the coffee came, I could smell the aroma of the coffee beans......hhhhhmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnn....... I tell you, it was really nice. The taste of the coffee was quite exquisite, actually. It tasted very much like Long Black/Americano from Starbucks,actually. Strong, deep aroma and with a small tinge of bitter burnt. I like it. I really liked it. In fact, I had two cups that day. No worries, I had it with very little sugar and it tasted just nice. But a lot of the locals told me that it has got to be sweet so that you could actually develop that flavour. For me, a little is enough because the star of the drink is in the coffee beans, man! Moreover, I don''t want my beloved doctor to give me a long long lecture over my glucose readings! Sweet tooth or not, I have to tone that own considerably,man.

As for the oats bread, well, it tasted really good, I mean....really really nice especially with the slightly charred centre and the smooth kaya spread. I also tried the regular Hainanese bread spread and it's great too. BTW, it's a Hainanese thing,man! Sure nice one!...........like me-lor!