Old Style Coffee House

Let us go back to coffee story. I wrote an article about coffee once, actually it’s about a nice coffee house called Killiney. What I’m going to tell you this time is about another coffee house. But there’re certain differences between these two coffee houses. The second coffee house has no certain name. But people usually recognize this place by calling it Kopitiam Jalan Hindu. This coffee house exterior itself is so simple. Just an old kind of building (some says the building already exist since the Dutch invasion to Indonesia) with old furniture too. You can only find wooden tables which can be found in almost every Chinese place. Some of the wooden chair there has been broken due to their ages. So be careful when you pick your chair.

The room is small and narrow because every round wooden table is placed unorganized. They don’t use special interior design unlike fancy coffee houses you can find in malls, hotels or plazas. They just put the tables as well as the chairs every where they considerer fit, as long as people can sit there nicely. There’s no air conditioner because the place stands right in road corner. And the giant windows give way to every wind to flow freely. But the owner of this coffee house also prepares a big fan in his place just in case the weather is getting hotter. But it rarely used.

Do not expect a clean shiny floor like in Killiney or maybe Ya Kun Kaya Toast or Starbucks here. You can’t even find a fancy bar with expensive espresso machine on it, just an ordinary table which sometimes looks fuzzy.
The color of walls looks a bit hazy, it also full of pictures with Chinese alphabets. The owner also puts an article about this coffee house that has been written on a national daily, Kompas. That’s all for the decoration.
But the coffee tastes really great! The same recipe has been used in this coffee house for a very long time. They can assure that the taste is still the same like it used to. They also served other kind of food beside coffee because you can order kaya-toast too. Our favorite is kaya-toast with touch of salt-butter. Yummy..
There’re other food-stands together with the coffee house owner. There’s an Hindi man who sells nasi briyani and martabak. A Minang man sells nasi soto. And a Jawa man sells nasi uduk for breakfast. Everything is complete, right? Almost every people who lived along this street are Chinese. That’s why sometimes it’s a bit hard to find a rightful kind of food for almost all of them contain pork. So these three kinds of food really make a difference for those who need it.

Eventually, this coffee shop is famous enough up to other countries nearby. We saw a few visitors come to this place from Singapore and Korea. They said they had their friends recommended that place. The other visitors come from the haves. Most of them are become regular customers and have a close relationship with the owner himself.

Every visitor is so welcomed here. Every customer knows each other. Or at least they say hello and smile to each other every time they met. The coffee shop owner always greet his customers with ”Halo..” or ”Thank you for coming..” Maybe, this is why this coffee shop will always have regular customers for a long time.