KUALA LUMPUR, June 30 — Some brunches begin with hunger. This one began with catching up.
The first cups arrived before the menus had been properly studied. A flat white pulled from Rwanda beans. A pour-over of Kenya AA from Kopenhagen Coffee Roaster.
Conversation filled the gaps between each appearance of our coffees: updates on our lives, juicy gossip, meandering stories interrupted and resumed or never quite finished.
This is how the four of us catch up, a double date of sorts. It’s a pattern.
Only later did we realise what we ordered from the menu provided a different sort of pattern altogether. One that reveals itself gradually, then suddenly seems impossible to ignore.
The first clue was the Chicken Pancake Paradise.
The name arrives before the plate does, sounding less like a dish than a destination. When it appeared, it brought together crispy chicken, sourdough pancakes and an amaranth-infused maple syrup that settled into the folds of the stack.
Pancakes belong to breakfast, you say. We agree.
Fried chicken, on the other hand, belongs almost everywhere else. Good for brunch, which is the meal our quartet had at House of Wheat, located on the ground floor of Menara Mutiara Central in Cheras.
Next came the Blueberry Cheese Chicken Burger.
By now the coincidence had become noticeable.
Blueberry jam spread across a fried chicken fillet. Cheesy mentai sauce. Fries occupying the remaining space on the plate.
The conversation drifted elsewhere as other items made their way to our table.
Pain suisse dukkah. Cinnamon roll. Strawberry milkshake. Another sip of coffee. New jobs. Stagnant salaries. Family news. Questions answered with more meandering, not-quite-finished stories.
By the time our server brings over the buckwheat fried chicken — the dish the menu calls H.O.W. We Fried Chicken, a name that doubles as both a nod to the name of the establishment and a slightly boastful pun — one of us finally says what we have all observed.
“Is it just me or have we ordered fried chicken three times now?”
Hard to argue with that; it’s basically another iteration — this round, buckwheat-crusted chicken accompanied by in-house pickled kyuri and honey mustard.
By this point, the chicken had ceased to feel like an ingredient and started behaving more like a character.
Every appearance revealed a different costume — a different supporting cast, if you will, but with the star a constant, like Tom Cruise over more Mission: Impossible films than any of us can name.
This, too, is a side effect of each of us ordering from a QR code placed at our table. Our choices become a mystery; there is the delicious danger of two or more of us ordering exactly the same dish.
Ah, but that pattern is broken by the fourth main: the Fried Kailan with Wild Mushrooms. Buttered quinoa on baked pumpkin. Sautéed mushrooms. Feta crumbled over the leafy shards, a crispy crown for sliced bread.
Of course, we had to laugh at the one whose selection finally broke the spell.
This is the one outlier; the only order that does not involve a bird. Though its absence makes the pattern more visible by contrast, I suppose.
Even the title retained a trace of our morning’s accidental motif. Fried, once again.
(Naturally we dissolve into laughter again once this was pointed out. We are easily amused.)
Looking back, it is difficult to remember the precise order in which the dishes arrived. Easier to remember the conversations.
Easier to remember merriment — first, the giggles, then the guffaws — whenever another chicken-centred plate found its way to the table.
Fried chicken may have provided the theme for our brunch, but the true high point might well be the particular gaiety of four friends with the same juvenile sense of humour.
Who have known each other long enough to finish each other’s sentences or to leave them unfinished.
As we stumble out of the café, we promise that we will do this again in some other month. Sooner rather than later. We know who will be early, and who will be the last to arrive.
Some things remain stubbornly, blessedly, the same, you see. Perhaps that’s what being friends is all about.
House of Wheat
1-5, Menara Mutiara Central,
Jalan Desa Aman 1,
Taman Desa Aman,
Cheras, KL.
Open Mon-Thu 8:30am-7pm, Fri-Sun 8:30am-10pm
Phone: 03-9134 6668
IG: https://www.instagram.com/houseofwheat.cafe/
For more tales from the table and beyond, visit lifeforbeginners.com.
* This is an independent review where the writer paid for the meal.
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