Toh Soon Cafe, Penang

Operating from a narrow covered alleyway in George Town since 1950, Toh Soon is one of Malaysia's most photographed kopitiams — a lane cafe whose tables spill into the dark passage between shophouses where the kopi panas and charcoal-grilled kaya toast are served in an atmosphere of authentic, unreconstructed Malaysian Chinese coffee shop culture that no amount of gentrification has managed to affect.