Illustration by Fig & Ginger, drawn from the review. The venue's own photo is on its way.
Australian brunch café in Bangsar (APW), Kuala Lumpur
Breakfast Thieves
Brisket Before Noon
The name is a joke about appetite, and the menu backs it up. Breakfast Thieves in Bangsar is the Kuala Lumpur twin of a Melbourne café of the same name, which started in 2012 inside an old chocolate factory in Fitzroy. The KL branch found its own industrial shell, a printing factory more than sixty years old in the APW compound on Jalan Riong. Concrete, daylight, long tables. It opens at nine every morning and the kitchen keeps going until nine at night.
The dishes are named like a heist crew, which would be insufferable if the cooking were lazy. It is not. The Terry Benedict puts black pepper braised beef brisket under poached eggs and brown butter hollandaise. The Legendary is shakshuka loaded with smoked duck, pulled duck confit and duck chicharrón, three ways of saying duck before lunch. Uncle Foo is a soft shell crab burger with chilli crab sauce, a Malaysian joke told in an Australian accent, and it lands.
There are no reservations, only walk-ins, so a weekend morning means standing around. Go on a weekday, or come after five, when an evening menu takes over with ox tongue gyutandon in a stone pot and salmon rendang on rice. The coffee list is the standard Melbourne lineup from long black to piccolo, and it is done properly. If one cup is not enough, PULP roasts in the same compound.
- Order this
- Terry Benedict, The Legendary (duck shakshuka), Uncle Foo soft shell crab burger, Gyutandon from the evening menu, A long black or a flat white
- The damage
- $$
- Go
- A weekday morning to dodge the walk-in queue, or after 5pm for the evening menu
- Find it
- Lot M, 29-5 Jalan Riong, Bangsar, 59100 Kuala Lumpur
- Website
- breakfastthieves.com