The surprise when you encounter a café in the Klang Valley with properly decent food is akin to discovering a fifty in your jean pocket. The very revelation has the power to redeem all the days wasted on café after café of tediousness and sheer soul-sucking duplication.
Classic Rebel – our case study – is a saviour much needed in the current café climate, a modest operation that impressively veers from multi-stack pancakes, but manages to retain a sense of comfort and familiarity. All of it while completely zapping out pretention.
You’ll run into squad-pose types, no doubt. But serving my table on a weeknight is a lovely lady who runs through the signatures with a tireless smile, like that of a kind stranger in a children’s fairy tale. In fact, she’s so lovely I think of all the extra stars I could’ve handed out in the past if all the ladies in all the cafés were as lovely.
With her recommendation, I start with the salmon gravlax (RM28), a Scandinavian classic brought to the fore of the café scene by Nutmeg. Here, the fish is placed atop hash browns, looped within a crunchy bouquet of pickled onion, fennel, radish and dill, and upon it, dollops of sour cream. Texturally, it’s textbook perfect, but I wish for the hash browns to be less oily.
The main of lamb confit pasta (RM28) knocks it out of the park. It’s spaghetti, threads of lamb, caramelised onion, coriander and tomato tossed in a punchy garlic and olive oil combo. It’s exactly the sort of pasta you’ll want to throw together on a weeknight and serve up sloppily in a bowl with a side of ‘Friends S8’. My one minor gripe is that the onions – sweated till very sweet – could’ve been better integrated with the dish instead of intermingled in clumps in and around the noodles.
The beef short ribs (RM75) are the headliners that don’t quite match up to the high levels of execution this dinner has seen so far. While I appreciate the tamarind marinade and the suitably smoky crust, some parts of the meat turn out to be dry and stringy. The fridge-cold cranberry orange chutney on the side is plenty Christmassy and sweet on its own (or I imagine, on crackers), but with the beef, it doesn’t do much lifting.
But by golly, you must order the burnt cauliflower (RM15) as a side, with its charred florets countered with seasoned yoghurt, a brilliant anchovy-chilli dressing and a smattering of almonds. It’s right out of a Yotam Ottolenghi fantasy, and therefore, mine too.
Dessert is a brownie sandwich cookie that is simply, utterly divine. They’re gooey, crackly, flat brownie cookies spread with salted caramel filling and squished down with a second cookie. You may nod. You may like it. You may have a moment. You may let this one linger in your brain. And sometimes, in your sleep.