M2 Cafe - Disneyland Mickey and friends Restaurant Theme in Johor Bahru!

• Operating Hours: 2 PM - 1 AM (Last Order @ 11.45 PM)
• Operating Days: Closed on Mondays
• Address: 7-01, Jalan Austin Heights 8/3, 81100, Johor Bahru

Good news for the Mickey Mouse of Disney fans out there, finally, there is a Mickey Mouse themed cafe in Johor Bahru.

M2 stands for Disney famous cartoon character - Mickey Mouse and M2 cafe has a theme based on it. 

I'm sure kids will love it and adults will enjoy reconnecting with our favorite childhood cartoon. It situated nearby the Austin Heights water theme park. So why not give it a go while you’re at there.
Now you may not see where is the shop, the cafe is located on 2nd floor, so look out for the door with a Big M word to proceed.

They do open it till 1 AM so for those who are nearby, you can have supper with Mickey and friends!

Their entrance was locked so you will need to wait a minute for the staff to click their auto gate for entrance. 

So once we were in, we were welcomed with lots of Disney themed decorations! The cafe can definitely satisfy Mickey lovers as the wall are decorated with Mickey wall art. 

The cafe offers main courses, desserts, and coffee. 
Even the menu, cakes and drink cups are also in line with the theme.

"The store started in January of the year 2015, which the cafe is based on black, red, and white color plus hand-drawn wall art with DIY decorations. The store owner hopes to provide their customer with a comfortable and warm environment for their meal. This cafe is definitely for friends and family, business talks, or couple for their dates."
They stated that their cafe does provide board games, but I do not see them anywhere. Maybe need to ask them for it.

If you have a big group of people coming, they will provide you with these seats.

They sell souvenir like Mickey mug but I feel it's quite expensive. A Mickey mug cost 80 RM.

 They provide wifi and a clean toilet!

I am very impressed with their hand-carved world map of every Disneyland in the world, it shows where is each Disneyland theme park is and their current time. Very interesting!

Our first item came - Apple juice. The item tasted much like any fruit juice stall anywhere with added syrup to sweeten it. But their drink stand is cute!

Next is Ice Blended Chocolate! This cup really too cute! Tastewise is like a normal cocoa powdered drink, just that it was not fully blended, there was quite a lot of ice not totally crushed yet.

 I am attracted by the decoration of the place. However, the food has always been my priority. After a good wait of 10 minutes, here came the salted egg chicken chop, which they stated it's their newest invention and their signature dish!

Their chicken chop looks dry but when you cut it up, lots of the juice flew out and onto our clothing!

The chicken was tender, very juicy! What really makes it nicer is the salted egg sauce given!
The sauce is good that makes me feel delighted but if without the sauce, I will feel that that chicken chop is just a normal chicken thigh meat with satay taste like seasoning. The salted egg chicken chop was something I loved it immediately after trying for the first time. The owner gave just the right amount of salted egg and the sauce was also deliciously creamy.

The last item - Bittersweet tiramisu with a Mickey Mouse twist.

The Coffee Tiramisu came with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream and a slice of tiramisu cake. The vanilla ice-cream was yummy, it melts in my mouth. It is slightly milky and you can still taste bits of vanilla beans in the ice-cream. As for the cake itself, it was served cold. I believe it was frozen before being served. The spongy cake was moist with creamy mascarpone and espresso. What I do not like is the coffee taste was too heavy at the bottom. It was drenched with coffee. This would be perfect if the last layer was taken out.  

While the place is designed in Mickey and friends theme, the food is above average. Try the chicken chop that comes with the salted egg sauce.

Nice cafe with nice environment. Food tastes good with reasonable price. Worth to give it a try. If you are looking for a place to hang out with your friends or family, this would be a great place to enjoy food and their decorations. If you love Disney productions cartoons characters, you wouldn’t want to miss this place. It is seriously too cute to be missed!

Hoki Cake Bakery 福气本铺古早味现烤蛋糕 - Tradition Cake improvised with their chocolate cake in a good way!

• Operating Hours: 12 PM - 9 PM
• Operating Days: Closed on Monday
• Address: 67, Jalan Austin Heights 8/5, Taman Mount Austin, Johor Bahru
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Taman Mount Austin is an area in Johor Bahru where hip cafes, nice restaurants, and bakeries are found. It has slowly gained popularity amongst the locals and Singaporeans for its wide variety and relatively cheap restaurant food (Please continue to maintain like this!). A good 10-20 minutes drive from Woodlands custom if you are going to visit Taman Mount Austin.

When talking about 鸡蛋糕, I bet most people will say Taiwan Danshui 淡水 has a stall that sells the best 鸡蛋糕. The craze for this traditional cake has been increasing constantly since a few months ago. Be it in Singapore or Malaysia, people are literally seen spending 1-2 hours queueing just to buy these cakes.

Just a few months ago, Hoki Cake Bakery 福气本铺 opened its very first traditional 鸡蛋糕 shop at Taman Mount Austin. Claiming to be the first shop in Johor that brings in Taiwan 淡水's famous traditional cake, it was not difficult to see endless long queues when it just started. I was one of them who queued for almost 2 hours to get these cakes. 

And just a few months later, the crowd at Hoki Cake Bakery has died down. As many similar shops were now seen at big shopping malls like KSL and City Square mall, it is inevitable for a shop like Hoki to lose its appeal to the consumers. However, it does not define their products are "not nice". It is in fact very nice and I will be sharing more in the later portion.

Big ovens and trays were seen at the shop front. There were many more ovens in the kitchen area, and imagine I used to queue up for 2 hours to get the cakes when there are so many ovens. Can you imagine the crowd?

This is the famous traditional cake with cheese filling. I tried once and I like it a lot. The generous amount of cheese really enhanced the sweetness from the cake, and yet it's not too overwhelming. Personally, I like to eat it with a cup of coffee as breakfast or tea break.

Rows of traditional cakes on the table waiting to be sold.

The chocolate flavored cake is Hoki's latest creation, and this is the main reason why I am back here again. Hoki is really very generous with the amount of chocolate chip used in their cakes. 

I don’t normally reach for chocolate desserts but for this but I would gladly grab one. Seriously, just look at the amount of chocolate stuffed inside the cake! I really like the chocolate version as it is really like a fusion kind of cake traditionally made with the simplest ingredients eggs, sugar, flour, and with very generous amount of chocolate given. The chocolate is not too sweet and in fact just nice for my liking. Really thumbs up for this!

Facing many competitions in the market, I like the way Hoki does it's business - friendly staffs, nice cakes, fresh ingredients used and most importantly, being the first to bring in this traditional cake to Johor, Hoki knows when is the right time to introduce a new flavor for their cakes so as to bring back the curiosity of the customers. Hoki's traditional chocolate cake is definitely a must to try and it is worth all your effort to travel there just to get one. Heard that if you put the chocolate cake in the fridge, they will taste better. As I have already finished the chocolate cake before knowing this fact, do leave me a comment and let me know how does it taste like when chilled, when you happen to get one!