KLUANG RAIL COFFEE

We will be back for more Kluangnites!


Kopi O kao! Haikal bringing home some coffee powder


Hafizah and Haikal looking dazed before their coffee.
Notice the walls with newspaper articles and reviews

Shall we meet here again in a month's time?

A helpful local who drew a map for us to reach my cousin's house

The rear end of the railway station

Serious conversation taking place outside the cafe

The train bell used to announce the arrival of the train

The track leading north to KL

The entrance to this rustic and charming station

Kluang Town is behind my husband

Down memory lane with this building

To Chamek and Mengkibol

If you miss the train I'am on....

Then you know that I'm gone

The last of the train masters in Kluang....

I think Chamek and Mengkibol are names of rivers

Where parcels are collected and loaded onto the trains

To Singapore and Kuala Lumpur

Commuters waiting for arrival of the train from Singapore

Check out the old cupboard and the utensils used to make coffee in the olden days

Charcoal toast round buns

The coffee preparation area

Wash hand area, Basin tucked around antique wooden cupboards and wall mirror

Patrons swappping stories and secrets


Nasi lemak priced at RM 0.70

Nasi lemak with peanuts. Sambal is syiok!

Light streaming in through the wire netted windows

We reached Kluang Rail Coffee for breakfast

The roung buns dripping and oozing with kaya

KOPI AND KAYA

While in Kluang, don't miss a visit to its railway station, in service since 1915. It was an hour morning drive for me and hubby from Singapore to reach the 137km journey. The railway road crossing gave us our first clue that the station located at Jalan Station, right opposite Pejabot Pos and Telekom Kluang would be just round the corner. True enough, after taking a left turn from the main road, the nostalgic and charming station resting on a slight slope, welcomed us with its brown and beige wooden structure. Anyone interested in history and nostalgia and reminiscing of the past should bring along a good camera to preserve its looks in well-taken photos while here.

The track passes through Kluang and halves it, just like the nearby Sungai Mengkibol. As the main road into town regularly temporarily closes for trains to pass, local residents once said that when the trains approach Kluang Railway station, the entire Kluang town stands still. I suppose transpotting must be one of the local pastimes during the good old days then. However development has contributed to two railway bridges being built to ease the converging bottleneck traffic towards the station. Today, the trains with its Mail and Express Services still plays its function faithfully as a practical transportation mode to those who need to travel north or south of Kluang. We saw about twenty two passengers waiting for the train - students, families, workers and the ocassional tourists.

We walked to the canteen - the sole purpose of us stopping at the railway station. The Kluang Rail Coffee triggered old memories of times when nobody knew what inflation meant and you could feed a family of eight with just two dollars daily. My father did and we survived! If you have been dreaming and craving for the best roasted coffee in the whole of Malaysia, drop everything and head here tis' moment. You can find really good coffee, reputedly the best local coffee in Malaysia, toasted bread, half boiled eggs, nasi lemak, fried mee and curry puff. No visitors to Kluang should miss this treat that is available for breakfast between 7.00am and 12.00noon and for afternoon tea between 2.30pm and 6.00pm all priced at a steal.

The walls of the humble cafe run by the Lim's family, were graced with raving newspaper reprts and reviews and pictures of VIPs who had dropped by to be their patrons. These included the Johor state minister and Dr Mahathir. The Kluang Rail Coffee offers franchise and the nearest joint you can visit from Singapore is at Kota Raya shopping mall in JB. Since we tried the one at JB and found the coffee and the toasted buns irresistable, we thought we might as well find our way to where it all had originated last Friday morning.

The cafe is always packed and it is not unusual to find customers waiting at the doorway for an empty table. Inside was like a picture taken on a postcard depicting the multi-ethnicity of Malaysia where the Malays, Chinese, Indians and Caucasians meet to share a common interest - to savour the best coffee offered in the peninsular. There was no racial segregation here - all Malaysians speaking the same language and singing to the same tune of enjoying their cuppa.There are wooden tables, stools and plank walls with wire-net windows and lots of natural light streaming in from the entrance and back portion of the cafe. Patrons mingle freely as they share tables. I suspect a lot of business deals were also sealed here and a lot of dating couples had tied up the knots while enjoying the dark black coffee.

We had to wait for ten minutes before we quickly grabbed a table even before the two office workers could drain their last drop of coffee. I noted the menu on the wall (I should have taken a photo of this) and almost fell of my chair at the prices - hot beverages range from RM1.30-1.50 while the sliced toast and round buns start from RM 1.20. Every table had packets or nasi lemak, mee goreng, mee hoon and curry puff placed on a big round plate. You would be charged whatever you consume only.

The packets of nasi lemak and mee were tagged at RM0.70. They come in small portions so you can try a packet of each, which I did greedily. Those offered at Kota Raya JB were more expensive but not prepacked as the ones you find at Kluang. The rice and mee were wrapped differently, some in banana leaf while others in greaseproof paper. This indicated the different suppliers who send their food there to meet the demands of the non-stop crowd. The packets were also marked to show whether the rice is served with peanuts or fried anchovies.

The sambal tumis was cooked to perfection like how my mum used to cook, and which is a must in all nasi lemak, was flaming red. Blended chilly and not those chilly boh (commercially blended chilly with vinegar used as preservative) was used. However the colour defied its expectations and screaming attention. It was not that fiery to the tongue, but tangily sweet and went well with the fragrant rice wrapped in the banana leaf. The banana leaf added an extra fragrance to the rice and it opened my appetite more. The taste would be marvellous if you use your hands instead of using the non-biodegradable disposable plastic spoon. Use your fingers and mixed the sambal thoroghly with some anchovies or peanuts hidden in the balls of rice. The mee goreng was plainly fried with a little chilly, soya sauce with no towgay or been sprouts. The mee was a little uncooked and fearing my senstive stomach would put up with a protest later, I stopped after having three mouthfuls.

One rule of the thumb to observe - don't stuff yourself with the staple rice dish and the mee unless you have tried the cafe's famous charcoal toast which comes in an array of varieties. There is butter and kaya charcoal square toast which also comes in the steam toast version. Then there's the normal roti bun toast and the whole meal bun too. Whatever toast you order, they will slap the two pieces of bread with pieces of thick butter and guey gluey soft gula melaka homebrewed secret recipe kaya (gula melaka-coconut jam).

As I took a slow bite at this ingenious man-made creation, the kaya oozed from the spaces in between the bread, dripping lazily into my mouth. My tongue stuck out like a spade waiting for the the salty tasted butter to melt in my mouth. It was a fusion of sweetness and saltiness all mixed into one, all perfectly matched like in a blessed marriage, tiltilating the tastebuds bite after bite. No wonder people call roti bakar or toast bread spread with butter and kaya as 'roti kahwin' (marriage bread). The kaya is so rich and addictive and one set of order is never enough. Trust me! We ended up up ordering several sets of different versions.

My favourite is the circular roti bun cut in threes because you can see the kaya pushing its way out from each sliced part, flooding your mouth with it morsel after morsel. The cafe also offers Pau Sambal and Pau Tuna made of mantau in the menu but we did not try them. I did it on purpose. It's one of my well-planned strategies into giving me an excuse to magnetise my husband for another drive to Kluang.

My husband wanted two half-boiled eggs. He always says that Malaysian eggs are creamy and taste so much better than those I purchase from our local stores. I can't vouch for that because I don't take half-boiled eggs. He cracked both and they had the same consistency - smooth, runny yellow yolks, inviting him immediately. After sprinkling some pepper and the light soya sauce, he gave the mixture a few swirls with the spoon. Once he was satisfied that he had achieved the right proportion of the condiments, he dipped the egg with the toast. If I did not hold him tight to his kopi tiam dark mahagony chair, I swear he would smash through the roof of the cafe in estacy with some words and sounds only heard in the privacy of the bed room!

The Kopi 'O' and Kopi Susu brought to our table left a trail of freshly-brewed aroma from the back of the cash counter where it was prepared in the old fashion way. I lingered at every sip of the Kopi O, trying to figure out how dark the beans have been roasted. Darker roasts are generally smoother, because they have less fiber content and a more sugary flavor. Lighter roasts have more caffeine, resulting in a slight bitterness, and a stronger flavor from aromatic oils and acids otherwise destroyed by longer roasting times. My flaring nostrils detected the lighter roasts.

Before we left Kluang the next day, we dragged my family connoisseur Latif and his wife Hafizah for tea at the cafe. I was glad that I still had space for a cup of coffee and more roti buns together with them. Both are coffee drinkers and would only use freshly brewed coffee every morning to perk their waking hours. They ended up buying 2 kilos of fresly robust grounded coffee powder. What more could I say about the coffee at Kluang Rail Coffee.

For your info: Each packet of 20 coffee bags is selling @ RM 7.00. 500 gm of coffee powder costs RM10.00. One can also purchase the homemade kaya selling @ RM 3.50 only.

Another place to try on our next visit to Kluang is The Kluang Rail Café located at No. 33, Jalan Manggis. It opens daily from 7am to 10pm. Closed on Mondays. You can reach Kluang either by rail or by road on the scenic route from Johor Baru or via the North-South Highway and turn left at Exit 244 at Air Hitam/Kluang. Turn right after the toll to Kluang town.