The Tea Garden (古文茶) is a 21-year-old cafe chain from Johor Bahru which has expanded significantly across the Kuala Lumpur/Klang Valley area in the past decade, offering Malay and Chinese-Malaysian street food rice & noodle options, served in a sit-down cafe environment. Younger Malaysians as well as most working adults tend to gravitate towards similar chains like this (Oriental Kopi, Hock Kee Kopitiam, Hometown Hainan Kopi, OldTown White Coffee, amongst others) for their daily lunches and other meals.
We stopped by the Tea Garden outlet at Paradigm mall for a late lunch:
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Hainan Chicken Curry Rice - this is a cafeteria-style take on traditional Hainanese-style rice with curried and stewed meat & vegetable sides. Since the menu here, like at all the other chains are made Muslim-friendly, in order to cater to Malaysia’s majority Malay-Muslim clientele, the usual soy-braised pork will not be available here. The resultant plate lunch more resembles a Malay nasi campur, with its curried chicken and vegetables.
Taste-wise, it’s on par with similar offerings at Oriental Kopi (the current top dog, where chain cafes are concerned in Malaysia).
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Lontong - one of my favorite Malay dishes since my Singapore days. It used to be close to impossible to find during my period of work/living in Kuala Lumpur back in 2011-2017. The dish is of Javanese origins - commonplace in Singapore, where there is a strong Javanese influence, and where Singapore-Malays’ cuisine display strong Javanese influences. Not so much in Kuala Lumpur, where the Malay cuisine is strongly impacted by Minang/Sumatera culinary culture - spicier, bristling with chilis. I used to traverse all over KL, looking for lontong, before having to resign myself to getting it only when I am back in Singapore every 3 months or so.
But the version offered here at Tea Garden is pretty respectable. A pity the chain didn’t start in KL till long after I’d left the city. The fact that the chain is Johorean - Malaysia’s southernmost state situated right next to Singapore, and which shares a similar Riau Malay-Javanese culinary culture with Singapore’s Malays - probably explains why lontong is available on its menu.
Lontong comprises of compressed rice cakes, called “ketupat” in Indonesia, and “nasi himpit” in Malaysia (Malaysians also have “ketupat”, but in another form, and with a different flavor/texture profile), covered with a coconut milk-rice, turmeric-accented spicy broth, with cabbage, carrot, long beans and tofu. A hard-boiled egg and a sweet-spicy sambal relish complete the ensemble. Taste-wise, it doesn’t hold a candle to the ones in Singapore, nor the excellent version from Penang’s Rumah Lontong.
- Drinks: Michael Jackson (chilled soybean milk + grass jelly).
Both soybean milk and grass jelly drinks are common drinks in Malaysia and Singapore - each with its own distinct flavor. Some people will ask for a blend of the two, which will result in a drink of its own unique flavor.
Then, when Michael Jackson released his popular hit “Black or White” in 1991, street vendors in Malaysia and Singapore started using the term “Michael Jackson” to refer to the blended soybean milk-grass jelly drink. No one could trace who started it - perhaps as a lark.
Nowadays, “Michael Jackson” appears as a menu item, or on signboards, to refer to the drink.
Address
Tea Garden @ Paradigm Mall
Lot CF-53, Concourse Floor, Paradigm Mall, 1, Jalan SS 7/26a, Ss 7, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
Tel: +6010-240 4235
Opening hours: 8am to 10pm daily
