Kuching ABC: Bernice Gan's 18-year shaved-ice counter at Little Sky Cafe, Tabuan Heights
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By mid-afternoon the heat sits heavy on Jalan Song, and the small brass bell on Bernice Gan's counter inside Little Sky Cafe rings almost without pause. Whenever Bernice steps away to pour another Kopi C, the bell pulls her back — customers waiting for their ABC as if the stall itself is calling for her.
Bernice has been shaving ice at this Tabuan Heights cafe since 2008, eighteen years that began even earlier in her father's kitchen. He taught her traditional sweet desserts and the art of working the ice before he retired, and after a three-month office job that never suited her, she turned the family skill into her livelihood. Her mother runs the kolo mee stall in the same cafe, so one family carries both ends of the day here: noodles while the sun is low, ABC when it climbs.
The house ABC is a layered bowl — red beans, sweet corn, assorted jellies, sago jelly and green cendol under crushed ice, finished with gula apong and a pour of coconut or evaporated milk. Gula apong, the nipah palm sugar of Sarawak, is the caramel-sweet, faintly salty note that separates this bowl from a generic ice kacang. Regulars also cycle through White Lady, cendol kacang, fruit ice and the odd Metahorn, and her Kopi C — thick local brew smoothed with milk — is the quiet star of the morning side.
Source: DayakDailyIf I were visiting Tabuan Heights, I would come in the lull just after lunch: one ABC and one Kopi C, shared between two people, because the bowl is generous and the gula apong flavour deepens as you dig down. Arrive before nine instead and you are there for the family's other act — the kolo mee stall that draws the breakfast crowd.
Source: DayakDailyLittle Sky Cafe is on Jalan Song, Tabuan Heights, Kuching, open daily from 5am to 4pm. For orders or enquiries, call 017-400 0819.
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