SuNDay VIbeS
Where, 93-95, Jalan Sultan Yusof, Ipoh, Perak
OpeninG hOurs Wed to Fri — 9am to 5pm. Weekends — 9am to 9pm, Closed on Monday and Tuesday lampshades and a smattering of greens complete the eclectic feel of the cafe. “Actually, we’ve just brought in an old sewing machine to add to the decor. We thought it’s a nice nod to the building’s origins,” adds Teoh.
Burps and Giggles, which is a family business, finally opened its doors in 2012, when the hipster cafe scene in Ipoh was fairly non-existent. The coffee-scape was still dominated by kopitiams serving the famous Ipoh local coffee.
Elaborates Teoh: “Before we opened our cafe and introduced ourselves into the scene, there were very few cafes in Ipoh that actually offered espresso-based coffee. The scene was still very much inclined towards bubble teas or colourful cocktails. In fact, if you wanted something remotely resembling designer coffee, you had to go to hotels.”
Teoh aspired to bring the ‘alternative’ coffee to her hometown, and along the way, educate people on its merits. “We use a blend of beans from Brazil, Guatemala and Honduras. Ultimately, we wanted people to be able to enjoy more than just Ipoh white coffee!” By the time Burps and Giggles got into their groove, more hipster cafes began sprouting up, attracting the patronage of many Western tourists and well heeled students, in particular.
Of interest is the fact that Teoh doesn’t have an F&B background. She’s a medical research scientist by qualification! But, she confides with a chuckle, her dream had always been to open her own coffee place. “Isn’t it like everyone’s dream to have one,” she poses, eyes dancing. “The opportunity came when my well-travelled grand aunty suggested for us to have a coffee shop where people could enjoy more than Chinese coffee. My grand aunty travels a lot to Australia and really loves the Australian coffee culture. I guess she wanted to bring that back to Ipoh!”
Ever since they opened their doors almost seven years ago, Ipoh’s coffee culture has grown tremendously; today it’s a very competitive landscape that she’s playing in. There are at least 20 cafes within walking distance from Burps and Giggles alone. In fact, this whole stretch on which the cafe is sandwiched, is just one cafe after another. Thankfully, they’re not all serving the same things.
“We keep our menu very limited but we ensure quality is good. We try to master every little thing,” shares Teoh.
Signature offerings here, in addition to the great coffees which have fruity base notes, are burgers and fish and chips. The patties are made inhouse and the fish used for the fish and chips is Norwegian whitefish, which is similar to codfish albeit of slightly lower grade.
“Our food menu is nothing too fancy,” confides Teoh. “We don’t have a specialised chef or anything. All our workers here are trained to be versatile so they’re able to play various different roles. They clean, cook, make coffee and so on. But the major stuff like baking the cakes and pastries and making the sauces and gravy, I handle.”
Teoh makes everything from home before bringing them to the shop, which is why she’s not normally in the cafe on weekdays. Today, she tells me that the barista is away so she has to run the show.
Continuing, Teoh shares: “If you go a couple of doors up, the cafe serves really good nasi lemak. At the end of the row is a French cafe and they pride themselves on their cakes and pastries. The good thing here in this part of the old town is that instead of competing with each other, we actually work together quite harmoniously.”
Smiling broadly, Teoh adds: “We try to sell different things. On and off, like on Halloween or Christmas, we join up and try to create small events together that would draw the crowd to all our shops. During off days, we sometimes even go for clay making workshops together. All this helps to create a nice close-knit community here.”
As more customers begin to trickle in A tailor’s wooden mannequin that points to the building’s early history.
through the wooden door for their late afternoon coffee fix, and I can see that Teoh is needed to assist her grand uncle on the shopfloor, I couldn’t resist throwing the soft-spoken Teoh my final question: “Why Burps and Giggles?”
And just like the name, the genial proprietor breaks into a hearty giggle. “My niece was the first grandchild in our family,” shares Teoh, adding: “Every time she finished her milk, she would burp and then start giggling. My grandmother would always be cheered by the ‘scene’. It was she who suggested that we named the cafe Burps and Giggles.”
intanm@nst.com.my