VIDEO | 2:39 min

A kangkung-for-coffee deal has drawn a mix of first-timers and regular customers to a café in Section 13, Petaling Jaya today.

 

Instead of parting the usual green RM5 note for a long black, the customers paid for their caffeine fix in another shade of green - leafy green vegetables known as water spinach or kangkung.

 

In return, customers received a leaf from the water spinach as a ‘receipt’, and some of the best coffee in town.

“Our barista teams at both Artisan Coffee’s Section 13 Petaling Jaya and Bangsar Village outlets thought it would be fun to reward our customers this way,” said Artisan Coffee managing director Carmen Yap, when asked to comment.

 

Artisan Coffee was voted as the best place for coffee in Time Out: Kuala Lumpur magazine’s annual food awards in 2012, and was a finalist in the same competition in 2013.

 

The offer was only available today from opening until 1pm at Artisan Coffee’s outlets in Bangsar and Section 13. Its other outlet in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Kuala Lumpur is not participating as it is under another management.

 

By 11.30am, baristas at the Petaling Jaya outlet told Malaysiakini that customers had redeemed 30 cups of coffee in this manner, after starting operations at 8am.

One of the customers, 19-year old student Lionel Kueh, said he is unfamiliar with how the ongoing buzz about water spinach came about, but found out about the offer through signage posted at the café several days ago.

 

He showed up today with two other friends, but only two bundles of water spinach between the three of them.

 

However, this did not appear to be a problem for the regular customer, who claims to visit the café daily.

 

“The other one is free because I am very close with the baristas,” he told Malaysiakini , after savouring his coffee.

 

He added that he had purchased the bundles of water spinach for RM1 each, and described the offer as ‘affordable’.

 

The kangkung joke started when Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak used water spinach and other vegetables as examples to illustrate the volatility of prices of goods.

 

“There are times when the price of vegetables, sawi (mustard green) and kangkung goes up and there are times it comes down.

 

“I read in the newspaper that some prices have come down. Kangkung price once went up and now it is down.

 

“When the prices come down, why are there no praises for the government? When it goes up, the government gets the blame.

 

“This is unfair because (such issues are determined by) the weather conditions,” he said in a speech on Jan 12, which quickly drawn public ridicule .

 

One patron at Artisan Coffee today, Loo Cheng Feng, said the prime minister’s remark was inappropriate.

 

“People are unhappy with the prices of goods and we hear leaders saying that they will keep prices under control, but what we see, around my home for example, is that prices of food have gone up at least by 20 percent.

 

“On top of that there are other increases such as petrol and electricity prices. The fee for the futsal court that my friend goes to has gone up by RM20 per hour, that is a 40 percent increase.

 

“By saying that kangkung prices have dropped at this time, it would make a lot of people unhappy,” said the 28-year old engineer.

 

Loo, a first-time customer, came to the café with a friend, who paid for the two cups of coffee with only two stalks of water spinach that she rescued from her mother’s wok at the last moment.

 

Artisan Coffee’s use of kangkung saga for promotional purposes was not without backlash however, as a Facebook page was set up calling for a boycott against the café on the night before promotion begins.

 

The anonymous page claims that the café chain adds lard to all its food and drinks, but failed to gain any traction. The page has no ‘Likes’ at all as of 2.30pm today.

 

Kangkung giveaway

Meanwhile, Artisan Coffee staff say they are unable to comment on the promotion at all other than providing the figures on the number of long blacks redeemed for the vegetable.

 

However, its Facebook page announced it will be giving away the water spinach collected today to customers once the promotion ends.

 

“We realized we may end up with lots of kangkung when the #PayKopiWithKangkung promo ends at 1pm today.

 

“We were scratching our head on what to do with it...until we saw a Facebook comment.

"Thomas is a kangkung lover (like us) and refuses to part with his kangkung for a cup of kopi O.

 

“So from 1pm onwards today, we'll be giving away kangkung when you buy a cup of black or white (milk) coffee…

 

“By the way, you may want to inform your mum, wife or chef earlier to get the (shrimp paste, onion, cuttlefish, and wok) ready for dinner time,” it said.