Johor Bahru Cafe: Sunday Morning Coffee Shop @ Tan Hiok Nee

9 July 2023

Where to go for coffee on a Sunday morning? Sunday Morning Coffee Shop sounds good.

Sunday Morning Coffee Shop is a little Halal-certified cafe located above a lottery shop near to Tan Hiok Nee Heritage Walk, just few units away from Hua Mui Restaurant, along Jalan Trus.

Sunday Morning’s entrance is to the left of the lottery shop with wooden steps leading to the second floor where the “coffee shop” is — it is a cafe rather than the “coffee shop” we thought.

The cafe is a small setup with few tables. Decorations are sparse in the limited space of the cafe, but a display shelf in one corner showcased some vintage cameras and Japanese artefacts.

A set of specially-made glass apparatus, known as “drip tower”, is setup to make coffee via a percolation brewing method known as “cold dripping” — not cold-brewing, which is an immersion method. Cold dripping uses normal-temperature water to drip onto the coffee bed slowly and collect the brewed coffee after filtering. It takes several hours to brew.

Sunday Morning Coffee Shop serves both cold drip and (hot) hand drip coffees using Japanese hand-roasted coffee beans, and some non-coffee beverages (tea, juice, soda, Japanese soda with ice-cream), with home-style Japanese food as its main dishes. There are toasts (shokupan) and desserts as well.

I have tried their hot hand-drip coffee using single-origin Mandheling coffee beans from Sumatra, Indonesia, and also the “Japanese Ice Coffee” which is brewed hot via hand-dripping over ice. The cold coffee emphasised the taste profile of the blended coffee beans with lighter body.

Sunday Morning’s Mentaiko Udon looks pretty simple with thick udon, fresh pollock roes, mushrooms and seaweed in a white creamy sauce. But the taste is really great — no wonder it is greatly recommended by those who have dined at the cafe. It is a dish full of flavours from the ingredients used.

The Sunday Morning Bento Set is served with sweet and savoury minced chicken and scrambled egg on white rice, accompanied by a bowl of miso soup and some sides — it was beancurd with seaweed and a slice of red pomelo for my meal. The mildly sweetened minced chicken and egg is truly Japanese-style. It is a light tasting dish and not too strong-tasting.