PETALING JAYA, Dec 11 — In the Malaysian coffee scene, cafes usually aspire to roast their own coffee after they have stabilised their operations. For micro roastery The Roast Things, it is the other way around with the opening of their cafe Cream on November 17.
“Opening the cafe is a way for us to showcase our coffee to our customers,” said Chiam Tow Jin, one half of The Roast Things. Together with Ving Lim, he started roasting coffee in 2014.
The seasoned coffee roaster is a qualified Q-grader, meaning he meets the requirements to be a coffee judge. His partner Lim used to own a cafe and has been roasting coffee for a long time. At The Roast Things, they roast coffee for 10 cafes in Malaysia on top of selling their own retail packs.
Located in the same building where The Roast Things started out, Cream is a cafe-cum-roastery, event and workshop space. The cafe’s main focus is coffee while cakes and sandwiches are supplementary to what is offered. It’s an airy, light-filled space that makes it the perfect place to just chill for the day.
At Cream, you get to discover filtered coffee served two ways; hot and chilled. “We serve it iced to give a different experience for filter when it’s cold... as it also highlights very different inherent characters of the coffee, which is truly a sign of the quality of the coffee we use.”
The cafe also offers cold brew coffee which is getting a good response from the customers. There are two options, black cold brew and white cold brew which is milk-based. The cold brew coffee is seasonal as Chiam will change the beans from time to time.
Other than coffee, Cream also serves premium quality loose tea leaves which originates from Yunnan. The tea is brewed in a traditional cup with lid known as gaiwan. ”I recently became interested in tea so I learned about it,” said Chiam.
The offerings include oolong, jasmine and Pu-erh. “We don’t offer English teas because they are usually blends. Also they are very commercialised. I want to highlight the characteristics of the tea such as species and origins,” he said.
Accompanying their coffee, there is a small range of cakes, baked by Cream’s barista Theng. Every two to three days, she bakes a fresh batch of cheesecakes and bundt cakes.
The cakes include a Gula Malacca Coconut Cheesecake and a Mango Cheesecake that is reminiscent of a mango lassi drink. The best-selling cake is the Golden Cheesecake which is made of pumpkin and sweet potato.
Later this month, Chiam will launch a range of sandwiches; grilled cheese, turkey or chicken ham and vegetarian. The bread used will be sourdough and panini bread sourced from a cafe in Subang that The Roast Things supplies coffee beans to.
Previously, customers who want to source for fresh beans had to buy from The Roast Things and get them delivered which can be costly. Now you can easily pick up the beans here in 200 gram packets; the price ranges from RM45 to RM60. “There are two factors that affect the prices of the beans. One is the cost of the beans itself and another is the exchange rate,” said Chiam.
Cream doesn’t plan to serve food in the future because of space constraints. Also, they prefer to focus on coffee instead.
Cream is located at A-G-01, Prima Avenue, The Tube Jalan PJU 1/39, Dataran Prima, Petaling Jaya. Opening hours: Mon to Fri, 9am to 6pm;, Saturday, 10am to 6pm. Open during public holidays.
