Ya Kun Kaya

Last time in Singapore (Jan 2007), we tasted kaya toasts at a café inside Raffles City. The toasts gave us a new taste of sweetness. In Hong Kong, we often eat toasts with butter (牛油多士) or peanut butter (花生醬多士) or a combination of jam and butter (油占多士).

My brother told me that the kaya toasts (加映多士/咖央多士) at Ya Kun (亞坤) Coffeestall were the best in Singapore. Ya Kun also sells bottled kaya, Singapore-styled coffee and tea, half-boiled eggs and other beverages.

Let us look at a little history of this coffeestall from Wikipedia:

The coffeestall/company was founded in 1944 by Loi Ah Koon from Hainan, China at Telok Ayer Basin. After 15 years, the stall moved to Telok Ayer Market. It was renamed as Ya Kun (equivalent to Ah Koon). In 1984, owing to restoration works at the original market, the stall then moved to Telok Ayer Transit Food Market. In 1998, the coffee stall was passed down to his children and it moved to a new location at Far East Square.

Ya Kun International was incorporated in 2001 in Singapore, to expand the chain of coffee stalls islandwide and regionally. Ya Kun has 24 stalls in Singapore, with franchises in Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.

It was this summer that my brother bought me a bottle of Ya Kun kaya from Toyko. The cover of this bottle showed the pride of having established this coffeestall for 65 years. The "logo" bears a picture of a cup of coffee with white smoke of steam coming up. The bottle was put inside a box made of cardboard. The package looks cute like a small house with a handle at the top.

The green to yellow kaya is paste-like, mainly made from egg and sugar (maybe coconut oil has been added too). The slightly sweet taste is very different from butter, peanut butter or jam. We agree that kaya provides another choice of taste to our toasts at breakfast or tea time.