With its easy-on-the-eyes mint green façade and scoops of ice cream in Malaysian flavours (kaya toast!), Chaplang Kafé is a welcome addition to the OUG café scene. Previously known as Butter + Beans, the rebranding introduces a new menu and look (goodbye communal tables, hello wall mural about our chapalang language).
For the best seats, we say go for the outdoor area with matching mint green furniture. Come early in the afternoon and make yourself at home for a session of people watching – elderly OUG residents passing by on the kaki lima, families heading to a nearby bakery, motorists honking at each other occasionally for crowding up the narrow roads.
Inside the café, small round tables are dotted about, with a long slim table by the wall for those looking to get some work done. If you’re here to work, look up from your laptop every once in a while and take in the motivational quotes on the wall for a mental boost. The gleaming black-tiled wall behind the cashier from the café’s Butter + Beans days is still here, and that’s where the menu is.
Food-wise, Chaplang Kafé serves pizzas, sandwiches, pastas, breakfast platters and coffee. While those are decent (popular dishes are the rendang chicken pizza and white spaghetti with sausage and turkey ham), it’s their selection of ice cream and waffles that shine. Sourced from G-Lat (local ice cream producer Forty Licks’ new Malaysian range), flavours run the gamut from durian to coconut gula Melaka.
On our visit, we had the recommended Bulatan Kampung Pandan waffle and paired it with four scoops of G-Lat ice cream: kaya toast, bandung, soursop and Neslo. The ice cream (studded with popcorn) complemented the dense pandan waffles, but became too sweet towards the end. Wash it down with the subtle gula Melaka latte. That’s your afternoon tea sorted.