In Bengaluru, several restaurants open every month, but few manage to generate a fervent curiosity within a few days of launching. Kopitiam Lah, positioned as India’s first kopitiam, started service in Indiranagar, Bengaluru in mid-July, and since then, the chimes on its front door have not stopped ringing nor have the reservations slowed down.
Bengaluru has a strong coffee and café scene. Amidst the filter coffees, Americanos, espressos, and Turkish coffees, Kopitiam Lah attempts to explore a coffee culture significant to Singapore, Malaysia and the South-east Asia. The name is a combination of three words—kopi is Malay and Indonesian for coffee, tiam is Hokkien Chinese for shop, and lah is a commonly used Malaysian slang added to a word or sentence for emphasis. The kopi is made from Hainanese-style caramelised roasted coffee beans giving it a thick, dark, syrupy look with an earthy, bitter-sweet flavour. The roasting processes were set up for the restaurant by Cap Arnab, a leading Hainanese coffee roaster in Malaysia. Paired with an extensive menu that boasts of local breakfast and meal dishes, there is a lot to experience.
Kopitiam Lah is helmed by Chinese-Malaysian pastry artist Joonie Tan and head chef David D’Souza. Tan also spearheads the custom cake decoration team at the Bengaluru-based Lavonne Cake Studio, and D’Souza brings a rich experience of working at hotels in Mumbai and Bengaluru. The idea for Tan was to respectfully showcase the traditional, rustic kopitiam culture, often with no professional-grade equipment and village-style cooking, in a modernised way to Bengaluru.
The 40-year-old explains what it means to her: “Growing up in Malaysia, visiting a kopitiam was a daily ritual. On the way to school, my mother and I would stop at one for a Milo (chocolate-flavoured drink), my favourite dry Wan Tan Mee noodles (there is a soupy version too), and some Kaya Toast (slathered with butter and coconut jam). After school, if my mother hadn’t cooked, we headed to another one. On weekends, we visited specific kopitiams for different kinds of noodles like the curry laksa, char kuey teow (stir-fried noodles) and mee rebus (Malay noodle soup dish). Each one had its star dishes, and these little shops have been part of my life. The food is local, made by old uncles or aunties, with home-style recipes."
While Tan’s family moved from their village Teluk Intan in Perak to the bigger city of Kuala Lumpur, she still visits the village often and never fails to stop by the kopitiams that she frequented as a child. “The third generation of families now manage these shops. For me, these places are like home," she adds.
In Malaysia, Tan worked with a prominent property company, Sunway Property and part-time as a cake decoration artist. With a strong artistic sense since her school days, she trained with different cake artists and studios in Malaysia. In 2009, she was sent to India to handle marketing for a joint venture in Hyderabad. There she met and began dating chef Vinesh Johny, co-founder of Lavonne Hospitality. A year later she returned to Malaysia, and simultaneously Johny began Lavonne in Bengaluru. “We were in a long-distance relationship then. He asked me to come and handle the cake decoration department at Lavonne Academy of Baking Science and Pastry Arts. I wanted to explore this and joined him,” Tan shares. She has been in India for 15 years now and goes back to Malaysia almost half a dozen times a year–to visit home, meet family and eat. Johny makes frequent trips too, and the common refrain for the good part of a decade was that Bengaluru needed to have a Malaysian restaurant. This thought was put on a back-burner as the couple got busy with building Lavonne. The Malaysian restaurant conversation was picked up again last year. Once the couple discussed their initials thoughts about the restaurant with their team and had everyone on board, the idea was not to do anything that was not well researched. Tan’s stamp of approval was sought after for everything, and preparations began with having the design and architecture teams spend time in Malaysia and eating at different kopitiams to get a feel of them. The kitchen was fully operational much before anything else at the restaurant was put in place.
In the run-up to planning the menu, chef D’Souza spent several months in Malaysia eating and studying kopitiams to understand the culture they are rooted in, and how the different communities of Malaysia developed a sub-set of cuisine in the country. He even trained extensively at Tan’s aunt, Tan Gaik Suan’s Lau Fong Kopitiam in Teluk Intan. Consultant chef Darren Teoh, chef-patron of Dewakan, Malaysia’s first two Michelin-starred restaurant spent months with the Kopitiam Lah team in Bengaluru, curating dishes and perfecting flavours to bridge unpretentious hawker-style treats with ingredients and techniques in modern Malaysian dining.
The menu has several of Tan’s favourites–the Wan Tan Mee (Wonton noodles), which she wants everyone to try, the soft-boiled eggs, Lo Mai Kai (glutinous chicken rice), and Beef Rendang. This last dish was a surprise to the team because D’Souza got it almost perfect on his first attempt during trials. “There is a whole process to it and you can feel the work that has gone into the rendang, from the first bite,” says Tan.
Some dishes on the menu are not found in kopitiams, but rather in homes. Like the Steamed Eggs with XO sauce, which Tan’s mother makes regularly. There is also the Steamed Okra with homemade soy seasoning. Kopi in its many versions – O (black in Hokkien), C (fresh in Hainanese) with evaporated milk, Peng (Hokkien for cold)--are the best accompaniments, as is the Milo Peng (cold Milo). Tan and D’Souza also introduce Bengaluru to kuih, steamed sweet and savoury bite-sized snacks that are a signature of kopitiams.
Throughout the day, the Maneki Neko (Japanese beckoning cat) placed on the bakery counter welcomes guests. Their baked items are a complete departure from Lavonne. They focus on Asian techniques of baking, and all goodies are made petite-sized like the Rendang pie, char siu puff, Chinese-style egg tart and more. While Tan continues to oversee her cake decoration department at Lavonne, her focus is now on this restaurant. “I want to make sure everybody gets a sense of my culture, food and my home. I want them to feel the way I do when I step into my home – nice and cosy,” she says.
Ruth Dsouza Prabhu is a features journalist based in Bengaluru.
