Capital Café
Space is scarce. It makes little difference which part of the street you decide to stand on – you are always in someone’s way. If not a motorcycle from the back, there’s always a car daring a ten-point turn in an illegal parking space. I seek refuge in Capital Café. This time I have to myself a single wooden chair and a third of a table, shared with two gentlemen. A glass of kopi peng and a plate of the best satay in the city is the perfect remedy for exhaustion and hunger.
The man who runs the place, together with his siblings, is Lim. ‘My father came here when he was about 12 or 13. Worked and saved up some money, then he went back to China when he was 20 and got married. Then he came back here. I was born here.’
The recent government-organised Chow Kit 2.0 concert, held in conjunction with Merdeka Day celebrations, were held right in front of this café, ironically a fair distance away from Chow Kit, where the original concert was held by Sudirman on April 14 1986. All his fans who couldn’t possibly afford any of his shows, more than 100,000 souls, poured out to see him perform. That night, KL was alive. A distant memory for those who remember it.
‘Things are so different today. Not the place it used to be. Things changed very quickly when they repealed the Rent Control Act.’
From 1966, the Control of Rent Act regulated the rental of privately owned buildings built on or before January 31 1948, due to the shortage of housing during that period. By 1997 it was decided that the act had outlived its purpose and a new Control of Rent (Repeal) Act 1997 set in motion a transitionary period of two years and four months (1997-1999) in which rent would be gradually adjusted to the market rate. Tenants who’d been there for decades could no longer afford the exponentially increasing rent; landlords were eager to convert private residential spaces for commercial use.
A time capsule that feeds both the hungry and the nostalgic, the café has witnessed the change of many generations. The monochrome photographs of old Kuala Lumpur in the glass cabinet were taken by Lim’s brother, who helps to make drinks and roti bakar in the kitchen. This is one of the very few kopitiams that don’t put themselves on a pedestal. No framed newspaper cutouts. No photographs with VIPs. No thumbs-up stickers left behind by food shows. Not even an electronic cash register.
‘Nothing has changed for 50 years. The number of tables and chairs are still the same. The tables on the right used to have partitions between them but then we removed it.’
A small sign – City Hotel (upstairs) – offers a glimpse of its former days.
‘We used to have a hotel upstairs for backpackers. Most of them came from Europe, back in the ’70s. From the ’90s onwards, all the other hotels shifted to Chinatown (Petaling Street). It was easier to just stop operating. My father still lives upstairs.’
Every year, as the calendar inches closer towards National Day on August 31, journalists from various publications descend on the café for an annual centre-spread on its multiracial proprietors and customers, a symbol of the diverse flavours which make up the Malaysian identity. The same stories are repeated year after year, about how three races (Malay, Chinese and Indian) are sharing the same table without any issues, how the café is a representation of the oft-repeated, government-introduced ‘1Malaysia’ concept, as if the country has lost its memory, desperate to claim a shared table as a confluence of identity. KL wears the café like a badge of honour.
