« Forest Walk | Home | My Cards Collection »
Ya Kun Kaya Toast
By Peace | July 14, 2007
Kaya toast is a popular snack in Singapore. Since young, Kaya is a common spread eaten with fresh bread or cream crackers. Not all brands of Kaya is nice. My parents are very particular about buying fresh and tasty Kaya. Kaya and butter goes hand in hand when eating bread, whether toasted or not. My father loves butter, and so do I. My mother does not dairy products. She does not eat butter nor drink milk. My father is very particular about the brands of butter used for bread spread. He prefers butter to margarine. Me too.
Kaya Toast served with a hot cup of beverage and half-boiled eggs are typical breakfast menu at Singapore coffee shops. Olden days coffee shops used to be located near the streets where one can smell the odour of the drains. I never like that. My father loved to take a sip of coffee, kaya toast and half-boiled eggs during day break or tea break in the day. He had a special way of drinking coffee, the typical traditional way — many old people did that. They would pour the hot coffee onto the saucer to cool it off a bit and then they will drink the coffee from the saucer than from the cup. I never do that before. I don’t like to drink coffee.
Nowadays to enjoy this traditional breakfast menu of kaya bread toast and half-boiled eggs, there is no need to go coffee shop. One can eat them in Shopping Centre, no more ‘drain odour’ and no more heat from the sun. There are air-conditioned, hygienic and comfortable. These, we can eat at Ya Kun Kaya Toast in Singapore.
I love to eat the bread with Horlicks. There are Cheese flavour at Ya Kun , but I still prefer Kaya and butter.
Ya Kun Kaya Toast was founded in 1944 by Loi Ah Koon from Hainan, China at Telok Ayer Basin. After 15 years at Telok Ayer Basin, the stall moved to Telok Ayer Market (now Lau Pa Sat). It was renamed Ya Kun which is the Hanyu pinyin equivalent to Ah Koon. The stall remained there until 1984, when restoration works of the Telok Ayer Market began. The stall then moved to the now-defunct Telok Ayer Transit Food Market. In 1998, the coffee stall was passed down to his children and it moved to a new location at Far East Square.
Ya Kun International was incorporated in 2001 in Singapore, to expand the chain of coffee stalls islandwide and regionally. Ya Kun has 24 stalls in Singapore, with franchises in Indonesia, Taiwan and South Korea.
This is a cup of coffee, with the finished-eaten half-boiled eggs on the left. As soon as the half-boiled eggs were served, they were quickly eaten, as they are best eaten when hot. There is no time to take pictures : P. The half-boiled eggs must put black soy sauce and pepper to taste good.
Even though I do not drink coffee, I know how to smell coffee. I drink coffee once in a blue moon. The coffee at Ya Kun, 亚坤 is the really traditional coffee which my father used to drink at coffee shop, and it smells the same like those that my mother made at home. My parents are very particular about buying quality coffee. Any inferior coffee they would know. Those 3-in-1 packets of coffee that we buy from departmental stores and also coffee bought from normal coffee shops cannot be compared to this coffee at Ya Kun. Ya Kun Coffee is the coffee smell and look so much like those that my father used to drink at coffee shops, and even at my home where my mother had made them. It is just so nice to be able to smell them again — the familiar smell makes me think of my father and my mother. I remember how my father would drink coffee and the way he sit, with one leg resting on the chair and one leg down the chair — the typical ‘coolie’ man sitting style.
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:18 pm
[…] is no air-con for people who love to drink coffee and eat the kaya bread and eggs. But nowadays we Singaporeans are much more luckier than our older generations of people, we get to […]
November 25th, 2007 at 12:18 am
[…] previous post I had written about Ya Kun Kaya Toast, I had not put up these pictures of half-boiled eggs. I was […]