4 Retro Cafes and Kopitiams in JB for a Taste of the Past
Photo Source : @UiHua Cheah
For some reason, breakfast is something that always takes us back to the past, whether it's the comfort of toast and kaya or the creak of the wooden chairs when you sit down.
Johor Bahru may be changing fast, but there are still parts of the city where breakfast is served with a side of nostalgia. Multi-generational kopitiams still serve old-school chicken chops swimming in brown gravy, while newer cafés are bringing the aesthetics and flavours of 1960s Malaysia back for another generation.
So if you’re looking for a little taste of the good old days, here are four retro cafés and kopitiams in JB that all take you to the same place: memory lane.
1. Restoran Hua Mui: 80 years of Hainanese comfort food
Photo source: Google Maps
Founded in 1946, the original Jalan Trus outlet has been serving generations of Johoreans from the same pre-war corner shophouse for nearly eight decades. Hua Mui is particularly known for Hainanese-Western cuisine, which traces its roots to Hainanese cooks who worked in British colonial households and adapted western dishes to local ingredients and tastes.
This led to a dish every Hainanese kopitiam is judged by - the Hainanese Chicken Chop, a crispy, deep-fried deboned chicken thigh drenched in savoury brown gravy with onions and peas, accompanied by chunky fried potatoes. And Hua Mui’s chops have kept customers coming back for decades.
If you’re feeling more like noodles, try the Hua Mui Mee, with yellow noodles braised in a thick, dark seafood gravy. Either way, there must always be a plate of charcoal-toasted Hainanese bread layered with kaya and satisfyingly thick slabs of cold butter at the centre of the table.
Head upstairs and enjoy your meal amidst high timber rafters, old floorboards and terrazzo tiles. But don’t just look at your plate. Hua Mui’s most charming relic is still hard at work: a manual wooden dumbwaiter operated using ropes to transport food between the ground-floor kitchen and upstairs dining area.
What to order: Hainanese Chicken Chop, Salted Egg Chicken Chop, Double Butter Kaya Toast and Iced Kopi-C.
2. Restoran Kin Hua: For a proper old-school JB breakfast
Photo source: Google Maps
Kin Hua is the quintessential corner coffee shop that’s fully open air with whirring ceiling fans, tightly packed tables and faded posters from a different decade. There’s no elaborate retro décor required here - that’s just the regular decor.
If you’re a traditionalist, start with a cup of traditional kopi and pair it with thin, crisp roti bakar with kaya and butter dipped in half-boiled kampung eggs served in those floral saucers that have seen more eggs than coffee cups.
If you’re a little more adventurous, chwee kueh (steamed Teochew rice cake) topped with fragrant preserved radish, yam cake, mee siam and little packets of nasi lemak are waiting to join your breakfast spread.
What to order: Half-Boiled Kampung Eggs, Kopi O or Kopi Peng, Roti Bakar with Kaya & Butter and Chwee Kueh.
3. IT Roo Café: Chicken chops and root beer floats
Photo source: Google Maps
IT Roo Café has occupied its corner of Jalan Dhoby since 1961, but its biggest claim to fame came decades later when The Star named its chicken chop the “Best Chicken Chop in Malaysia” in 2003.
Naturally, that means you should probably order the chicken chop.
IT Roo uses thick deboned chicken thigh, with your choice of fried or grilled. You also get a choice of black pepper or mushroom sauce. Either way, it arrives with chunky potato wedges and coleslaw completing a hearty meal.
The wood-shuttered shophouse keeps things simple inside, with vintage furniture and old newspaper articles documenting the restaurant’s history. The decor is reminiscent of a time between the ‘70s and the ‘90s depending on whether you’re looking at the walls, floor, or ceiling. There is one modern luxury though: air conditioning.
And nothing completes the time warp quite like a Root Beer Float in a tall glass, crowned with vanilla ice cream and looking like it came straight out of an Archie comic.
What to order: Fried Chicken Chop with Black Pepper Gravy, Grilled Chicken Chop with Mushroom Sauce, Hainanese Fried Rice and Root Beer Float.
4. Roast & Coffee – Retro Garden 1968’s: Fusion food, fusion nostalgia
Photo source: Google Maps
Roast & Coffee – Retro Garden 1968’s takes a different approach to nostalgia. Housed in a restored two-storey building along Jalan Tan Hiok Nee, the café recreates the atmosphere of late-1960s Malaysia through vintage advertisements, antique telephones, vinyl record covers, mosaic tiles and plenty of other details to discover.
There’s even a central courtyard garden, making this the most photogenic stop on the list.
The menu takes the same old-meets-new approach. You can still get your traditional toast and Nanyang coffee, but there’s also the Tiga Rasa Toast that combines kaya, butter and peanut butter on crisp Hainanese bread, while the Salted Egg French Toast takes a distinctively western turn.
Instead of the usual coffee, get the Hor Ka Sai, which translates literally to “tiger bites lion”. It’s a rich combination of Nanyang coffee and cocoa that delivers a punch of coffee, chocolate and malt in the same glass. Hokkien labourers drank this concoction to give them the unstoppable power of a tiger biting a lion.
It may not have been around since the 1960s, but hey, neither was Wi-Fi and air conditioning - and you get both here.
What to order: Salted Egg French Toast, Tiga Rasa Toast, Hor Ka Sai and Curry Laksa.
No time for memory lane? Get your kopitiam favourites at Berjaya Waterfront
Photo source: Google Maps
Photo source: Jubilee’s Nanyang Coffee
Of course, sometimes there just isn’t enough time to go hunting around JB for a nostalgic breakfast - especially when you’ve got a ferry to catch.
The good news is that you can still squeeze in one last kopitiam stop at Berjaya Waterfront. D'JB Kopitiam and Jubilee's Nanyang Coffee both serve familiar favourites like kopi, toast and other local comfort foods, so you can get your kopitiam fix. Because it will be a little hard to turn back time if you miss your ferry.
