In a small alleyway in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, Malaysia, an 80-year-old coffee shop becomes a site of memory and rediscovery
It was the first time coming back to Kuching after my father died. Each year I’d return to eat at the places that were his favourites, to fit into his schedule (he’s busy, I’m on holiday), to make the annual trip to reconnect with his side of my Indigenous Bornean identity, and to eat the durian he always found for me even when out of season.
I haunt the places we went the last time I saw him, six months before the world closed down and a virus took him along with millions. I find that they are still the best: laced with nostalgia, the taste is sweeter. Being in the city that was his but without him is both dislodging and full of discovery. I have no schedule but my own to eat by.
Central Kuching, on the waterfront, is one of the oldest parts of town. It has become touristy, with its old shopfronts and small, winding streets. I sometimes forget that it’s still a place for locals. Friends of mine, cultural academics who are also coffee nerds, tell me about a spot in an alley, ironically named Hiap Yak Tea Shop. A Chinese kopitiam (‘coffee house’) that serves coffee and kaya toast is one of the oldest in Kuching, and it has been run by the same family for over 80 years. It is small, with a few tables and plastic chairs. It reminds me of childhood, when travelling upriver with my dad and stopping at riverside towns.
They serve a particular type of coffee, or kopi. It’s hot and served in small, cream ceramic cups with a green pattern and a knob of butter, a tradition that few places still do. The coffee is roasted dark, rich with chocolate and caramel flavours, and very often has sweetened condensed milk sitting at the bottom to be stirred. Everything about it is straight from a Malaysian and Singaporean’s nostalgia fever dream.
Sarawak’s food, drink and coffee culture is exciting, innovative and delicious – where traditions meet modern approaches that feel organic and natural. Specialty coffeeshops are rethinking the kopitiam, and are introducing Indigenous fine dining and traditional rice wines brewed by Gen Z. Yet these snapshots of the past are not about romanticising Sarawak: they are about remembering the rich and complex culinary heritage of this part of the world. This little kopitiam was a rediscovery of how my past sits beside my present and my future.
Photography Amani Azlin, shot on location at Hiap Yak Tea Shop in Kuching, Malaysia
This article is taken from Port issue 37. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here
