Nearly Five Decades of Chicken Rice: Chua Joo Cafe on Ong Tiang Swee, Kuching
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The first packets of poached chicken rice at Chua Joo Cafe leave the counter before seven, wrapped for neighbours who need breakfast before work. It has been this way for nearly five decades, give or take: the Goh family has been feeding this stretch of Ong Tiang Swee Road longer than most of today's regulars have been alive, and the second generation is dishing out the same plates today.
Source: DayakDailyThe current boss, Goh Hui Nah, was not raised for this trade. She spent more than fifteen years in Singapore's hotel industry before her father's passing tipped the family eatery onto her and her mother, a two-woman operation that later brought her husband into the kitchen as well. Her mother kept cooking into her eighties and only hung up her apron about five years ago, after the pandemic. Nothing here is complicated on purpose: the same poached chicken rice, the same savoury kolo mee, quick plates with generous portions that the morning crowd wants before the day starts.
Source: DayakDailyWhat should you order? The chicken rice, obviously — succulent poached chicken over rice, fast to serve and easy to eat — and if you are with a friend, add the kolo mee, which is her husband's domain and has built its own following among patrons. By mid-morning the fast-food stations open up with more substantial dishes for the lunch rush. This is a working kopitiam rather than a showpiece: the pleasure is in watching regulars order the same dish they have eaten here for thirty years, served by the same few faces across the counter.
Source: DayakDailyI would come early, between 6.30 and 8am, when the chicken is at its freshest and the crowd is mostly neighbours who already know what they want. Arrive at the right hour and you will understand why a cafe named for the owner's grandfather and father — Chua, then Joo — has outlasted almost every other shop on this road. It is the kind of meal worth planning a Kuching food trip around, not for novelty but for a plate that tastes like continuity.
Chua Joo Cafe (泉裕茶室) is at No. 14, Ong Tiang Swee Road, Kuching, open daily from 6am to 3.30pm except Sundays and public holidays. For enquiries, call 012-8878745.
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