Breakfast in a Kopitiam: Kaya Toast, Soft Eggs and How to Order Coffee
The old coffee shops of Singapore and Malaysia serve one of Asia's great breakfasts for a few dollars. A guide to what to eat, where it came from, and the code for ordering kopi.
In Singapore and Malaysia the day begins in a coffee shop. It is called a kopitiam, from kopi, the Malay word for coffee, and tiam, the Hokkien for shop. Singapore alone has about two thousand. The breakfast they serve is the same in almost all of them, and visitors who find it tend to return every morning of their stay.
Where it came from
The kopitiam was largely the creation of immigrants from the island of Hainan, in southern China. They arrived later than other Chinese groups and found the established trades closed to them, so many took work as cooks and houseboys in British households and on ships. There they learned to make toast, coffee and boiled eggs. When they opened shops of their own, in the early twentieth century, they served a version of the colonial breakfast adapted to local taste and local ingredients.
The breakfast
Kaya toast. Thin slices of bread are grilled over charcoal, and sandwiched with a slab of cold butter and a layer of kaya, a jam of coconut milk, eggs and sugar, scented with pandan leaf. The best shops still make their own.
Soft-boiled eggs. Two eggs, cooked so briefly that the whites are barely set, are broken into a saucer and seasoned with dark soy sauce and white pepper. The toast is dipped into them.
Kopi. The coffee is made from Robusta beans, which reached the region from Indonesia. They are roasted with sugar and margarine until almost black, ground, and brewed in a long cloth filter shaped like a sock. The result is thick and strong, and is poured over a spoonful of condensed milk.
How to order
The vocabulary is a mixture of Malay and Chinese dialects, and it is worth learning.
Kopi is coffee with condensed milk. Kopi-O is black with sugar. Kopi-C is with evaporated milk and sugar. Add kosong, meaning empty, for no sugar: kopi-O kosong is plain black. Siew dai asks for less sugar and gah dai for more. Gao makes it stronger and po weaker. Peng adds ice. Replace kopi with teh and the same words apply to tea. An order is called across the shop in a single phrase, such as kopi-C siew dai peng.
Where to go
In Singapore, Ya Kun Kaya Toast, founded in 1944, and Killiney Kopitiam, which dates from 1919, have grown into chains, and their original shops, on Far East Square and Killiney Road, remain the best. Tong Ah, in Chinatown, and Heap Seng Leong, an unreconstructed shop in a housing block where the owner still adds butter to the coffee, are favourites of those who know the city.
In Malaysia the town of Ipoh is famous for white coffee, made from beans roasted with margarine alone, without sugar, which gives a paler and smoother cup. In Kuala Lumpur the kopitiam also serves nasi lemak, rice cooked in coconut milk with sambal and anchovies. In George Town, Penang, the old shophouses hold dozens of them.
A kopitiam is also the simplest kind of food court. A drinks stall is run by the owner and the other stalls are let to cooks who sell noodles, rice or porridge. The larger version is the hawker centre, whose culture was recognised by UNESCO in 2020. The Michelin Guide to Kuala Lumpur and Penang lists a number of old coffee shops among its inexpensive addresses.