Roti canai @ Kopitiam Sentral
1 Upper Duke St, Liverpool, L1 9DU
When it closed in late 2024, Yuet Ben was the longest-lived Chinese restaurant in Liverpool — two years older than Let It Be; ten years older than the Anglican Cathedral; 30 years older than the Chinatown arch that overlooked it.
Lots of restaurants are declared to be institutions but Yuet Ben was the real deal. Generations of scousers ate here, often around the same table.
On its menu — alongside the beef in black bean sauce and special chow mein — were several regional specialties of Shandong, the Northeastern province where chef-founder Yuh Ho Yau was raised. Cold smoked fish; stuffed steamed tofu; chicken with sour cherry.
I’d always intended to add their crispy lamb breast to this list — I just wanted to try it again. In the end it didn’t happen; I missed my chance.
Just a few weeks ago, on the same site, a new restaurant opened: Kopitiam Sentral. The decor — red paper lanterns, painted fans and bamboo screens — remains, at least temporarily, the same. But the food on offer is quite different.
Found across Southeast Asia, kopitiam are something between a coffee shop and a food hall, serving almost exclusively Malay-Chinese cuisine. The menu here reflects this with curry puffs, kaya pandan toast and salted egg dishes all featuring.
The sambal sardines are a marriage of the complex and the simple — rich, salty tinned fish and sharp, sliced red onion drenched in fruity, fiery chilli sambal — each element adding layers of sweetness, sourness, savouriness and heat.
The chicken curry is prepared in classic Malay-Chinese style — pieces of tender, bone-in meat in a slow-simmered, aromatic sauce thickened not with coconut cream but by huge chunks of yellow potato.
Whatever else is ordered, the essential accompaniment are the roti canai — flaky breads, saturated with oil, at once both perfectly crispy and beautifully soft. They come in portions of two, served with a bowl of mild but warming curry sauce, thrumming with cardamom and anise.
We can only hope Kopitiam Sentral will be around for as long as Yuet Ben before it — I certainly won’t miss my chance to eat here again and again anyway.
