Discover the artistic Yi Café in Cheras, where you can enjoy comfort food, learn to paint and even get a haircut!

February 4, 2025
11:23 am

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 — More often than not, we feast with our eyes first. Our taste buds are employed afterwards, when our appetite has already been whetted by tantalising visuals.

Truly, it can be a curse when the dish in question is a bowl of greyish slop, straight out of a Charles Dickens novel. It might be ambrosial but we might never know as our eyes prevent our lips from sampling even a smidgen.

Fortunately this is far from the case with our order of the Red Sea Island at Yi Café in Taman Taynton View, Cheras.

The unique name of this signature dish comes from the “moat” of vibrant red sauce encircling the “island” of omuraisu (Japanese style fried rice topped with a soft, jiggly omelette).

Break into the golden, eggy crown crown and reveal the treasures within — steaming hot fried rice with morsels of chicken and mushrooms. A single sprig of fresh rosemary completed the dish, its heady fragrance a welcome presence.

And so we do feast well indeed, first with our eyes and again with our taste buds.

Emphasis on the visuals here at Yi Café, located on the second floor of a row of shophouses along Jalan Dato Haji Harun, which are far from subtle.

\Customers are first greeted by a striking wall mural on the feature wall — some might call this a bubblegum siren.

Wall mural — Picture by CK Lim

We began with coffee — an Americano and a Dirty — but we soon switched to cocktails. Was it perhaps a little early in the day for a hit of liquor, however tiny?

We told ourselves this was brunch, the perfect meal for champagne and cocktails if ever there was one.

Certainly the cruel, gleaming sun outside convinced us we needed beverages that could keep us cool.

The Plumato certainly fit the bill; the mix of plum and rum, tomato juice and sparkling water, was refreshing.

For something more traditional (perhaps too conventional but it’s a Puerto Rican classic), the Piña Colada offered a chic respite. Rum, coconut cream and pineapple juice — how divine!

Plumato (left) and Piña Colada (right) — Picture by CK Lim

Sipping on our cocktails, we took in the well-used art space in the opposite corner where customers can join art classes and learn to paint.

Streaks and smears of paint a rainbow kaleidoscope, brushes of different sizes, canvases emblazoned with dragons and spaceships, model motorcycles encased in plexiglass prisons.

An artistic mess or chaotic order, either way it is a beautiful scene. One that inspires creativity… and maybe just the odd bout of hunger in customers.

Art space — Picture by CK Lim

It certainly did with us. Or it could be that our order of Boxing Chicken had just arrived from the kitchen, freshly fried and not too spicy, we were told.

This is the perfect finger food; just enough moist meat on each bone to dip into a spicy-sweet sauce and to finish in a couple of bites.

Boxing Chicken — Picture by CK Lim

The same goes for our other appetiser: Garlic Bread and Mushroom Soup. Dipping each aromatic slice into the thick, creamy soup is an act of seduction, if one were titillating one’s own taste buds.

Perhaps we weren’t the only ones captivated by the scent of our appetisers. We could hear the scurrying of the hamster (or was it a gerbil) in its hutch in the corner and the Bearded Dragon that was basking by the windowsill, absorbing the sun’s heat, turn towards us, its sharp claws clattering.

Garlic Bread and Mushroom Soup (left). Bearded Dragon (right) — Picture by CK Lim

Which is to say Yi Café is a very pet-friendly place, which in turn means it’s fantastic for family with small children who are very curious about all manner of creatures, furred or scaly, at their tender age.

Beyond such light bites, the café does offer more substantive fare. There is the aforementioned Red Sea Island, of course.

Regulars might go for the house specialty risotto cooked with chicken, mushrooms and green beans.

Comfort food staples reign here: grilled salmon, pasta carbonara, chicken chops, sourdough.

We go for their Chicken Katsu Curry Rice on account of the mild tasting Japanese curry, neither too sweet nor too savoury.

Chicken Katsu Curry Rice — Picture by CK Lim

Dishes that wrap around you like a hug or a blanket, heartening without being too hearty.

The café even has a small barbershop further inside, a trend that I have noticed at other cafés in town.

It is a good way to share space and bring in more customers for each business; in this case, three of them — the art workshop, the barbershop and the café.

As we head out, we noticed a bright neon sign on the wall that announced “Art Coffee Now”, which might seem a stern instruction to some but really is an invitation. Make art. Drink coffee. Eat well. Enjoy life. Right now.