Juice Up is difficult to miss where it sits underneath the escalator in the mall area of Warisan Square, surrounded by bright red strawberries plastered on the escalator overhead, and the vivid greens, orange, yellow and reds from the fruits lining the fridges.
With a line-up of pure juices, juices mixed with low fat milk, juices mixed with sorbet or smoothies, Juice Up caters to the on-the-go crowd who wants a pick-me up, but are looking for an alternative to coffee. A range of speciality mixes can either boost your appetite, encourage weight loss, provide an energy boost or calm you down. It seems there is a combination of fruit to suit every mood.
Prices start from around RM5.80 for juice mixes and go upwards to RM7.90 for elaborate concoctions, which feature skimmed milk, honey, sorbet or sometimes all of the above. Portions are reasonable and are served to go, but feel free to linger by the juice-bar in the colourful surroundings.
When you’re up, or down, feeling bloated or hungry, to soothe your mood and replenish your reserves, drop by for a squeeze of fruit at Juice Up in Warisan Square.
Wedged in between KK’s Waterfront, Centre Point Shopping Centre and Le Meridien Hotel, Warisan Square has a remarkable offering of shops, hotels and restaurants, considering its relatively small size.
Featuring brand name clothing stores such as Esprit, Roxy, Quicksilver, Body Glove, Padini, Island Shop and Charles & Keith, it’s supported my many other lesser known, but equally popular brands.
Warisan Square also features furniture stores, including Living Concept, which is as close to Ikea as you can find in KK, with their inventory of almost exclusively Ikea branded furniture.
Of restaurants Warisan Square is in no short supply. Fish & Co, La Manila, Secret Recipe, Hong Kong Recipe, Veda Blue, Juice Up, Yoshimi and Fratini’s all combine to bring to you flood of culinary choices, ensuring that you can frequent Warisan Square regularly without having to eat the same thing twice.
Warisan Square is not just a hip shopping centre though, it also features two hotels. Radius International is a boutique hotel, marketing itself under the niche tag of Boutech, denoting it’s technologically advanced rooms. Basic accommodation turned super efficient for the modern traveller as Radius International features wi-fi, flat panel TV’s and funky decor.
In an adjacent block, the Imperial International Hotel is 4-star offering right in the heart of Kota Kinabalu’s happening area, surrounded by shopping offered by Warisan Square and the adjacent shopping centres, combined with the entertainment of the nearby Waterfront.
Please browse the Warisan Square section of this blog to discover more detail about the tenants of this shopping centre in Kota Kinabalu.
Big Apple Donuts in City Mall is Kota Kinabalu’s (KK) first donut shop of its type, and beyond the initial teething problems, it’s proving quite popular.
Called Big Apple Donuts & Coffee in full, Big Apple Donuts do more donuts than it does coffee, which isn’t surprising, as it’s wedged in between Starbucks Coffee and Old Town White Coffee on the mall-front of City Mall in Kota Kinabalu.
Big Apple Donuts started operations in KK late in 2007 to seemingly little fanfare, however, it proved popular virtually from the day it opened. Its success bamboozled itself initially, as quickly queues developed with which it was unable to cope, often leaving long lines and too few donuts.
Today, a month or two later, the queues seem to have quieten down. Whether this is due to better management, or whether already its popularity has waned, is difficult to tell. What remains certain is that Big Apple Donuts at City Mall KK is doing brisk business and the punters love it.
The official website of Big Apple Donuts is very well hidden, or it doesn’t exist, which makes it more difficult to tell where Big Apple Donuts are from, or any Big Apple Donut history for that matter. Unlike J. Co Donuts, the more prominent and better marketed cousins, albeit only because they have a website, Big Apple Donuts are shrouded in a veil of mystery.
Nevertheless, Big Apple Donuts offers a simple menu of 24 different kinds of donuts, likely at least one to suit every taste. Ranging from the vanilla of donuts, Glacier, which is just a plain glazed donut, to the more exotic Say Cheese and Spicy Flossy donuts, which feature cheese and flossed chicken respectively, Big Apple Donuts has a few offering worth exploring.
Big Apple Donuts’ dough is of the light and fluffy variety, which means, to me at least, that you can gorge on more donuts compared to their competitors in KL, J.Co, makers of a solid, heavy based donut. The fillings are sweet and for the most part quite delicious, although I did choke somewhat on Spicy Flossy. In my opinion, chicken floss should be kept well away from donuts. Although I didn’t try Say Cheese, and I’m first to admit I love chocolate-chip-cookies-and-cheese, I also feel cheese and donuts might be a bit much.
Donuts prices are reasonable, although predictably more expensive then their KL counterparts. A single donut will set you back RM2.30, whilst a half-dozen box will cost RM12 and a dozen, as is standard in the industry, is most economical at RM22 per box (or a R5.60 saving compared to buying 12 single donuts).
For those who actually care about Big Apple Donuts’ beverage selection, and I doubt many do, the cheapest beverage on the list is RM2.50 for Skye Juice (mineral variety), RM4.50 for a variety of teas, RM5 for an Americano coffee, and at the top end, Latte’s and Flavoured Latte’s at RM7 and RM7.50 respectively. Their beverage selection has so far gone untried by this Blog.
To the question of background and history on this fine donut company, I guess we’ll have to approach the source for the answer: Big Apple Donuts & Coffee, City Mall, KK.
City Mall in Kota Kinabalu is the newest, completed shopping centre in Kota Kinabalu to date.
This mid-sized shopping centre is located on the Lintas/Kolombong highway, just past the turn-off to Damai in the direction of Kolombong. With a variety of shops, including a multitude of eateries and restaurants, combined with boutiques, jewelery stores and computer shops, it’s a popular shopping and hang-out destination.
City Mall is on the fringes of Kota Kinabalu, about 5 minutes from Damai and 8 minutes down the road from Lintas. City Mall is approximately 20 to 30 minutes drive from the centre of Kota Kinabalu, depending on traffic conditions. For tourists taking a taxi, the fare should be between RM15 and RM20 depending on your starting point.
City Mall is serviced by a selection of unscheduled minibus taxis, but is not on any set bus routes as far as we are aware. No other forms of public transport is available to this shopping centre and few, if any, hotel shuttle busses frequent this mall.
For those who are driving, when City Mall is at her busiest, parking is inadequate. There is one underground level of parking and several around the perimeter of the mall. Additional, temporary parking, has been made available towards the back and right of the mall, to help cope with additional parking during peak periods.
City Mall is a spacious shopping centre consisting of 3 main levels and a mezzanine level. It has open areas with wide walkways and shops both inside the shopping centre, as well as the outside areas. The anchor tenants are Giant Supermarket, CT Department Store and Popular Express Books.
The main food and beverage outlets are located along the shopping centre’s front and includes Veda Blue, Olde Station White Coffee, Pizza Hut, KFC, Starbucks Coffee, Big Apple Donuts and Old Town White Coffee. On the mezzanine level with outside entrances, you’ll find San Francisco Coffee and Halo Cafe.
On the third, or top, level of City Mall, is Food Paradise food court. A wide variety of cuisine is on offer here at affordable prices. The variety of cuisine include Malay, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Western and several others. Popular for the affordable range of food and drinks, Food Paradise is usually bustling with a lunchtime and snack crowd.
The bigger tenants of City Mall, especially those located inside the shopping centre itself, usually close around 10pm. The outside tenants, in particular the restaurants and coffee shops, tend to stay open until late, and it’s not unusual to find them open past 11pm on a week day and past midnight on a weekend. Most of City Mall’s tenants open around 10am daily.
For a varied, unhurried and uncrowded shopping experience, the place to be is City Mall in Kota Kinabalu.
