How do you open a cafe from scratch in 10 days? Ask Lim Cheng Cheng, who signed a tenancy contract for half a shop-lot in Damansara Uptown on her birthday this past January 22 & started sourcing for furnishing & fittings over the next several days before launching this new branch of cake-&-coffee specialist Swich last week.
Swich is one cafe that means more than meets the eye - there's a story to practically everything here, from the tables crafted by Myanmarese refugees, to the white paper butterflies that flutter on the wall, to the love-birds that land in front of customers.
Folks know Swich for concocting some of KL's most creative & compelling cakes in the past two-plus years, but Cheng Cheng isn't content to rest on her laurels. Here's a preview of what should be served at Damansara Uptown's Swich within a week or two: The Klang Valley's first mix-&-match cake combinations, empowering customers to customise their cakes by selecting a series of sauces & garnishes to complement chocolate or vanilla cakes. Likely to cost RM12 or so for a slice with two sides.
Have your cake how you want it, with Valrhona choc ganache for an ultra-creamy boost, or perhaps Swich's own-roasted peanuts & pistachios or dehydrated coconut chips for a fun crunch, or some Philippine mangoes, blueberries, unsweetened cempedak cream or jackfruit cream for natural-tasting fruity lusciousness. With thoughtful & top-flight ingredients throughout, it's a novel way to experience cakes; Swich's stance is, if you can customise your own ice cream nowadays, why not cakes?
Rest assured though, Swich's signature repertoire remains available by the slice here, as it is in Publika, from our favourite mangosteen, avocado or cranberry-carrot cakes to Valrhona chocolate with peanut butter cakes & Belgian chocolate with jackfruit cream cakes. Warm meals will be offered beginning next month - cempedak fried chicken, anyone? Yep, it's coming.
And if enough customers clamour for 'em, you might also find these sometime - eclairs, fluffy with durian or cempedak cream.
Swich's Brazilian dark roast coffee constructions seem inimitably idiosyncratic too - you'll find the likes of lattes laced with Gula Melaka painstakingly sourced from a Malaccan plantation that Cheng Cheng insists is superior to Jonker Street wares - on her regular trips south, Cheng Cheng purchases 50 kilogrammes of Gula Melaka at a go to bring back to KL.
And how about those mugs, each bearing beautifully embellished symbols of star signs - Aquarians, unite! Capricorns, begone - & hailing from a cobwebbed warehouse that Cheng Cheng explored? You'll want to take them home (but no, don't!).
Finish with a floral affogato, tinged with Swich's special lavender flower essence. And leave with the appetising anticipation that Swich is slated to open yet another outpost this year - Damansara Jaya, you'd better be ready (yes, we mean you, Atria).
Swich Cafe
54, Jalan SS21/58, Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya, Selangor. Currently 11am-9pm daily.
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Sausages to sambal. Muffins to marshmallows. Peanut butter to mango chutney. Cornflake ice cream to honey aloe yogurt. Lavender-laced lemonades to lychee-&-guava juices.
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