Best of 2014 – Motormouth’s 14 Dining Highlights
December 24, 2014 | 24,042 views#14 – Invasion of Cafes in Ipoh
Now you must be familiar with this tradition of revisiting highlights of the year (read 2012’s Top 12 and 2013’s Top 13), compiling a list of eateries that may NOT be necessarily new to Ipoh, but have left a mark in my memories among the hundreds of dining experience within the past 12 months.
And so, let’s kick the list off with #14, a bucket list of cafes that were mostly new (sorry as I could have missed a few significant ones such as Patisserie Boutique; the odd hours destroyed all my planning thus far) in Ipoh.
While I tried to pick ONE out of the many and place this in a spot among the Top 14, it proved to be not an easy exercise with more than a couple of dozen new cafes mushrooming across the city; dwarfing the almost stagnant growth of traditional kopitiams and even the in-betweens; Old Town White Coffee outlets and the likes.
Ben & Lynette, The Happy 8, The Roquette Cafe, El Negra Distro and Vanity Haus were but a few of the cafes covered during the festive CNY 2014 run earlier this year, though none among the list made an exactly impactful impression. Something’s Brewing on other hand, exceeded expectations slightly with the unconventional spread and fine choices of loose leaf tea brews, while Bougainvillea City Cafe capitalized on the chef’s training from Le Cordon Bleu. PT Grande whipped up a mighty delicious squid ink pasta, Tea & Tattle (ex co-owners of Something’s Brewing) upped the tea-loving fanaticism ante by creating more than 100 (!) choices of tea while Scenic Cafe Garden won hands down in the ambience category with a vivid reimagining of what a traditional kampung house would look like as a diner in the modern city.