KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 10 – These are a couple of bowls that wouldn’t be out of place at your neighbourhood coffee shop.
First a bowl of piping hot broth, concentrated and sweet, topped with some siu bak choy for the requisite greens.
The true treasures are the porky treats within – tender slices of pork meat; fresh innards such as pork intestines and liver; good, bouncy meatballs.
The second bowl offers oodles of noodles, each strand coated with the simplest of dressing – a few flicks of dark soy sauce and the aromatic oil from frying pork lard. All crowned with nuggets of fried pork lard.
Slofee has a casual, minimalist vibe. — Picture by CK Lim
That this is the signature Pork Noodles at a heavily matcha-centric café in Taman Segar, Cheras comes as a mild surprise.
Located on the mezzanine floor along a row of shophouses, Slofee has a casual, minimalist vibe that jibes with the usual orders of vibrant green tea beverages.
Take their popular Iced Matcha, for instance. The slow ooze of thick, freshly whisked matcha foam sinking into cold milk is the stuff of Instagram dreams.
Iced Matcha. — Picture by CK Lim
That’s to be expected, even customary for cafés of a similar ilk. Less predictable are the aforementioned bowls of pork noodles and decent ones at that.
Be it the long-simmered broth or the lard and oil slicked noodles, everything is full of delicious porky flavour.
Which can be disconcerting when you raise your head from the warm embrace of the bowl, still licked with wafts of steam, to discover you are, in fact, inside a matcha-themed shop.
Full of flavour. — Picture by CK Lim
This might sound like a bit of exaggeration until you realise the café’s entire décor is accentuated with neon lime green tones.
(The emerald-hued, half-sphere plexiglass window offers a pirate’s view of the shop from the outside stairwell; a clever bit of marketing to draw any curious, would-be customers.)
Look closer and you’ll notice whimsical images of adorable sloths peppered here and there.
A neon lit sloth in a meditation pose, indulging in a bit of mindfulness practice. A superhero sloth, with the requisite red cape. And so on.
The café’s décor is accentuated with green tones and images of adorable sloths. — Picture by CK Lim
(That’s where the establishment’s name hails from – “SLOth” + “cofFEE shop” – or at least that’s my guess. It might just be “slow coffee” but given the speed that espresso and matcha based drinks are made and served, this seems far less likely.)
Beyond the pork noodles and matcha beverages, Sloffee also offers a variety of baked goods and cakes. Given their chosen colour palette, it’s no surprise that the most sought after item is their Triple Matcha Cake.
The cake promises a different layer of matcha bliss in every bite, from the brownie-textured matcha cake to the decadent matcha ganache in the middle, followed lastly by a generous dollop of cream dusted with powdered matcha to finish.
Triple Matcha Cake. — Picture by CK Lim
Given all the matcha inspiration finding its way into the beverages and bakes (not to mention the furnishing too!), one wonders if the proprietor might not be tempted to include matcha in their savoury offerings next.
I have had Japanese curry intensified with matcha powder in Kyoto and odd as that sounds, it works really well.
The way Mexican chefs would add chocolate at the end of cooking to their mole recipes; the resultant sauce is darker and tastes subtly more potent.
Perhaps pork noodles with matcha next, then?
Slofee
9 Mezzanine,
Jalan Manis 3,
Taman Segar, Cheras, KL
Open Wed-Mon 8:30am-5pm; Tue closed
Phone: 012-624 3886
IG: @slofee.cafe
* This is an independent review where the writer paid for the meal.
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