M and I had lunch this afternoon at a little restaurant/coffee shop near our place. This place, Wang’s (王) Cafe, is a pretty common type of restaurant from the Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia area called a ‘kopi tiam’ (‘kopi’ = coffee, ‘tiam’/’店’ = the local Chinese dialect word for ‘store’ or ‘shop’). They usually serve strong coffee brewed with a ‘sock’ (see here) wherein the coffee is placed in a cloth bag (the sock), and hot water is poured over it and collected in a pot. This is then poured over the grounds again and re-collected in a second pot; then back and forth a few more times for quickly-brewed yet very strong coffee. This can be served as kopi-C (‘C’ for cream, although it’s actually sweetened condensed milk), kopi-O (the letter ‘O’ for zero, i.e. no cream), or kopi-O kosong (‘kosong’ being the Malay word for ‘empty’, meaning that there’s no cream and it’s also empty of the sugar that’s usually put in the cup before pouring the coffee). I, of course, always have kopi-C because why settle for less?

Kopi tiam fare most stereotypically consists of kopi, kaya toast (kaya being a jam or spread made from sugar, eggs, and honey or pandan leaves, depending on the area) which is kaya and a giant thing of butter sandwiched between two thin pieces of toast, and soft-boiled eggs, usually eaten with heavy Chinese soy sauce. All in all, sure heart-attack fodder, though the locals seem to live to a ripe old age nonetheless. More recently they’ve also started serving other simple things too, usually noodle soups or Malay-derived rice-chili-and-fish dishes. In the first picture above (my lunch) there’s ‘mee rebus’ (‘mee’ is the local dialect’s word for ‘noodles’, which is ‘mien’ in standard Chinese, and ‘men’ in Japanese, from whence the word ‘ramen’ comes), kaya toast and kopi-C. The mee rebus is yellow egg noodles served with a hard-boiled egg, bits of friend bean-curd (the crouton-looking stuff which is the curd layer skimmed off the top during tofu production and then deep-fried), bean sprouts and a lime, all in a thick, mildly sweet curry sauce.

M’s lunch in the second picture is laksa, a dish native to the mixing of southern Chinese and Malaysian cuisine which was originally found only in Singapore and parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, which consists here of white rice noodles served in a thinner, yet still quite heavy, broth flavored with chili paste, coconut milk and chicken or vegetable stock with fish cake, egg and sprouts thrown in for good measure.

The total cost of this extravagant meal was 11 Singapore dollars.