Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow

Despite the name, we went to Sunday Morning Coffee Shop on a Saturday morning.

We were cafe-hopping around central Johor Bahru and had several choices nearby, but one description caught us: “Homestyle Japanese Food and Film Lab.” That sounded sufficiently specific to beat another generic brunch menu, so up we went.

And when we say up, we mean up.

Sunday Morning Coffee Shop sits upstairs at 124 Jalan Trus, in a small second-floor space serving Japanese-style food, hand-drip coffee and film-related services. It currently opens 9am to 5pm and closes on Wednesdays.

First, Survive the Stairs

They are not exaggerating the homestyle part.

The cafe is tiny, warm and pleasantly unfussy. But reaching it requires climbing a steep wooden staircase. Every person going up or down announces themselves with a very audible thomp, thomp, thomp. If you are tall, pay attention to where your head is going. This is not the moment to walk upstairs while checking Instagram.

We got lucky with the last table for two. About 15 minutes later, a group climbed all the way up, discovered there was nowhere for them to sit, looked understandably disappointed, then performed the same wooden-stair soundtrack in reverse.

Sunday Morning is cosy partly because there simply is not much room to be anything else.

That intimacy works if you enjoy slow, compact cafes. If your preferred JB brunch involves more breathing room, something like Seven Oaks Bakery Cafe is an entirely different proposition.

Katsu Curry Rice: The Chicken Saved the Plate

We ordered the Katsu Curry Rice, which came with slow-cooked curry, fried chicken katsu, lotus roots, white rice, egg and salad.

The first surprise was the curry. This was not the thick, almost gravy-like Japanese curry we normally expect. It was noticeably thinner, with a gentle tang from the spices. We did not dislike it. In fact, once we stopped expecting the usual heavy curry blanket, it was quite easy to eat.

But the katsu was clearly the better part.

The chicken arrived properly hot, crisp without being oily and tender inside. That sounds like a low bar until you remember how many chicken katsus arrive looking crisp and somehow taste as though they spent ten minutes absorbing frying oil.

The roasted lotus root and salad were good supporting players too. Our main question mark was the egg mayo on the side. It felt disconnected from everything else. Personally, we would rather have had an onsen egg melting into the curry and rice, but that may simply be our own curry politics.

Purin: Pleasant, Small, Done

Then came the Purin, Japanese-style custard pudding with blueberry compote and nama cream.

After dessert, we spent an unreasonable amount of time saying “purin” to each other which may have been more memorable than the dessert itself.

That sounds harsher than intended. The pudding was perfectly pleasant. Soft enough for the spoon to glide through, gently sweet rather than sugary and light enough that it never became jelak.

Of course, becoming jelak would have been difficult because the portion was small.

It is an honest little dessert: nice to finish with, not something we would climb those stairs specifically to eat again.

Would We Come Back to Sunday Morning Coffee Shop?

Sunday Morning Coffee Shop understands its atmosphere very well. The small room, wooden furniture, Japanese cafe mood and genuinely slow pace all fit together. The “Film Lab” identity is also more than decorative branding; film processing remains part of what the cafe does.

The food was good. The chicken katsu in particular was better than expected. But nothing we ate made this a destination cafe for us.

If we were already nearby and found an empty table? Sure.

Would we repeatedly climb the stairs specifically for the curry or purin? Probably not.

For a cafe where the journey itself is part of the outing, we would sooner revisit something like Yard & Co in Pengerang. Sunday Morning works differently.

Come here if you like quiet Japanese-style cafes, slow mornings and small spaces. Just make sure there is actually a seat waiting at the top before your legs get emotionally invested.