When is a cafe not completely a cafe? Maybe when its founders consider the coffee-selling business to be incidental to their main mission: In Battery Acid Club's case, to serve as a space where designers meet & share ideas in a creative collective.
Battery Acid Club co-founders Aaron, Swiss & their three partners have carved out a place that they insist is not intended to target cafe lovers. Their community is meant to consist mainly of designers, though it's easy to envision that casual & curious customers will want to check out this venue, the sole F&B outlet on a shop-house row, tucked without a signboard underneath the offices of SWOT Design Group in Damansara Utama's residential section.
The venue stands in stark contrast to many Klang Valley cafes - there's a clean, clinical vibe that some will like & others won't. The aesthetics here feel polished & professional, though there seems to be a chill that's hard to shake off (perhaps because we visited on a rainy night, when the cafe was nearly empty), coloured up a little by a retail room that's like a mini-exhibition, with vintage stationery sharing shelf space with spectacle frames, socks & watches.
Make no mistake though: Battery Acid Club puts a lot of thought into the food & beverages it serves. Ling's Kitchen tarts are a terrific choice - there's one with coffee-infused dark chocolate ganache & mascarpone cheese cream, & another with layers of apple cubes, cream cheese & almond crumble.
Cakes come from respected indie baker Petiteserie Desserts, with options like The Cendol (pandan sponge, sago gula melaka, coconut cream & jelly), Gula Melaka Banana (caramelised bananas & crushed almond brittle) & Salted Caramel Chocolate. RM13 each; these chilled cakes do need to left out for quite awhile after ordering to be properly enjoyed.
Pastries (RM3.50): apple strudels, pain au chocolat, mocha whirls, raisin cream cheese combs & cranberry custard lattices.
BAC relies on DeGayo beans; piccolos & flat whites clock in at RM11. Trivia: Aaron had a stint as a barista at Artisan Roast.
Even BAC's juices have a design quirk, as far as their labels go; where else would you find apple-grapefruit juice that's named after a Swiss-French architect who's been deceased for half a century, or orange, strawberry & pink guava juice which carries an Italian designer's surname (RM10 per bottle)? Bottled lattes, sweetened with honey (RM12), are available too.
There's a budding library here, but we knew it wasn't really our kind of reading material (Towards A New Architecture?).
The 'No Wi-Fi' rule is imposed on patrons at BAC too, & is explained in a more in-depth fashion than 'Talk To Each Other.'
Battery Acid Club
21 Jalan SS21/34, Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya, Selangor
Open Tuesday-Friday, 8am-9pm; Saturday-Sunday, 9am-9pm
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