Food, Lifestyle, Travel & Photography: YY Kafei Dian

Monday, April 25, 2022

YY Kafei Dian

Nothing much changed since 9 years ago ~ The same shopfront with old school charms and likewise, bustling filled with people even on a weekend.

YY Kafei Dian

Here's the corridor of YY Kafei Dian, just look at the queues forming under the shades. It just seems like everything is back to normal even in the pandemic state.

The Morning Sun Shines

The queue is still as confusing for people who don't patronize the place much. There is a separate queue for Bee Hoon and Noodles from the usual Toasts and Coffee Queue.

Hearty Breakfast while waiting for the Bun

While I blindly join the long queue behind thinking to order the traditional breakfast set soon I realised it leads me to the counter for Bee Hoon, I had no choice and I ordered them so that my effort of queueing will not be gone to waste.

Counter to Order Bee Hoon

The Bee Hoon standard was well maintained. It was moist like before and very smooth for swallowing. The plates of Bee Hoon were warm too. My choices of items are fried chicken drumlet, mixed vegetables and Wu Xiang.

Bee Hoon Plate

On the second portion, we had a mixture of fried noodles with Bee Hoon. Our preference will be the latter as it was wet and was not oily. Tau Gua, Luncheon Meat and Otah were added to this plate. It costs $7.80 for both Bee Hoon & Noodles.

The chilli on the plate was mildly spicy and enhanced the taste of the fried items on the plate.

Bee Hoon & Noodle

Here comes the traditional half-boiled egg for breakfast.

Half Boiled Egg

Beverages like a cup of coffee and Teh C cannot be missed out from sets of Traditional Chinese Breakfast.

Kopi & Teh C

Completing the Traditional Breakfast, we had ordered the Kaya Bun and were given a buzzer to grab it when its ready.

Buzzer for Kaya Bun

While a lot of coffee shop serves the usual toast, YY Kafei Dian has this additional Bun that you should not step out o the place without.

Bun - $1.60

While many modern cafes are increasing, this makes coffeeshop like this a gem for retaining their traditional heritage. It does make us feel restored and charged going places like this once a while after sinking ourselves into those uptrends cafe.

Posted on 6th October 2013

I first came to know of YY Kafei Dian's existence when my Hong Kong pal told me that this was under her list of Must Go places in Singapore. Decided to give it a try and see how it fares.

YY Kaifei Dian

It retains the old School Singapore Kopitiam Culture could be probably the reason why it was recommended in the page of Singapore's tourist guide. Selling old-styled local breakfast (half-boiled eggs, big fluffy kaya toast with Kopi or Teh) and other local breakfast items. It also serves zi char during lunch and dinner times.

Breakfast Items

Kopi O was lacking in fragrance, I could not smell the aroma of roasted coffee, unlike other traditional coffee like Nanyang Coffee.

Kopi O

Fluffy Bread with Kopi O

The toast was fluffy on the inside and crispy toasted outside. Nothing to shout about as I could get the same type of bun from many other places in Singapore. Kaya was spread sparingly on the toast and the taste was somewhat unique. It had overpowering of coconut sugar.

Close Shot of Bread & Kopi O

The plate of fried vermicelli was served warm. Surprisingly, the bee hoon was rather tasty and was fried just nice. It was neither too dry or too wet. However, the side dishes were standard-fare.

Bee Hoon with Luncheon Meat and Egg

Not forgetting the ambience, it drew us back into the 80s, 90s where coffeeshop (kopitiam) were much more simple and humble unlike the modern fanciful decorations we had in most of the breakfast places right now. In fact, I should say, we can hardly find such places nowadays in Singapore but they are readily available in Malaysia.

Old school type of Coffee House

The food served was pretty run of the mill and one could probably get them from any coffee shop.
Service was turned off, especially when beverages were wrongly served and the worker was rude to take the cup away even customer had drunk it.

Nasi Lemak was factory made with packet of sambal chilli sauce in it. Unlike traditional nasi lemak, there was no fried egg in it. Just deep fried kuning fish and ikan bills served together with rice which was hard and very cold. The fish was over-fried & the rice was not fragrant.

Factory Made Nasi Lemak with Packet of chilli

It's kind of wasted or rather a disappointing trip for us to travel all the way down on a Sunday morning and experienced its slow and blur service.

Perhaps if one is going for its environment, it's still acceptable. For food and service-wise, there were definitely better eateries nearby.