There’s plenty of competition nearby for good coffee - Sarnies, Free the Robot, Common Man Stan, etc - but this is a great spot if you’re looking for a quiet place to chill.
They use Common Man’s Lucky Basterd blend for their beans, which give the coffee a vibrant fruity taste. Lucky Basterd’s cup profile: blueberry, biscuit and vanilla, with a strong earthy aftertaste.
It’s 31 degrees outside, but it feels like 37 degrees - really, that’s what my weather app says.
In times like these, in cold brews I trust ;)
Forty hands uses Common Man’s 22 Martin blend - think dark chocolate, molasses and hazelnut with a heavy body and lingering finish.
There’s plenty of competition nearby for good coffee - Sarnies, Free the Robot, Common Man Stan, etc - but this is a great spot if you’re looking for a quiet place to chill.
They use Common Man’s Lucky Basterd blend for their beans, which give the coffee a vibrant fruity taste. Lucky Basterd’s cup profile: blueberry, biscuit and vanilla, with a strong earthy aftertaste.
Took a gamble with this dish and it paid off :) The haloumi satisfied my craving so kudos to the chef, cos haloumi isn’t the easiest cheese to get right. Done badly it can be too hard, too rubbery, or oily - trust me, that has happened in my kitchen.
The fried haloumi was done well - crispy on outside yet soft on the inside, with the right amount of saltiness, and a good amount of stringiness. My only wish is that it could’ve been gooier.
The basil & mint leaves, Japanese cucumbers, lemon & olive oil dressing perfectly balance the saltiness of the haloumi cheese. Wasn’t a fan of the bread - strangely - since I am generally fond of Sarnies’ breads. But this still makes for a refreshing lunch on a sunny afternoon!
WOK HEY has many great things going for it: you get to customise the ingredients you want to add to your dish, watch the chefs toss your dish in their woks, and savour a delectable stir-fry dish that is worth waiting for.
The Egg Fried Rice ($5) with extra spinach (+$1) hits the spot with just enough ‘wok hei’ without the cloyingly oily taste that you might usually get with other dishes with ‘wok hei’. The egg fried rice is almost on par to Din Tai Fung’s egg fried rice in my opinion. Plus, you get to upgrade to premium brown jasmine rice for free if you want to :)
My go-to drink here is the D’ White ($7.50) which has chocolately, nutty & fruity flavours :) One of the rare chocolately white brews around which satisfy my chocolate cravings while still giving me my caffeine kick.
The other cold brews they have here are: D’ Black, D’ Infusion, D’ Unknown.
For affordable Italian pizzas, this is the place to go to :) Their pizza base is soft and fluffy (pretty bread-like) and most of their ingredients are pretty fresh & delicious. The sauce could be more flavourful - but hey for this price, I’ll take what I can get :)
Da Paolo brings back its gelato after what feels like a 5-year hiatus, and it tastes even better now :)
Not all gelato is made equal, and there’s something special about the gelato here. The density of the gelato, coupled with the intensity of flavour that shines through, makes their gelato far from forgettable.
We chose a regular cup (2 flavours, $8.90) of pistachio and dark chocolate. The lady at the counter was the sweetest, and was sharing with us how dark chocolate is her favourite flavour when we were trying out their array of flavours that day.
The dark chocolate is almost truffle-like, and way better than Awfully Chocolate’s Hei ice cream! The pistachio has a smooth consistency, yet its full of nutty, roasted goodness that gradually surfaces.
Dish: Really fresh & leafy vegetables (the dark greens especially were very tasty), nicely cooked tau pok (which have a slightly crispy skin), and moist brown rice.
Tea: An interesting twist to Lei Cha with blended peanuts (suspected) which adds that extra creaminess and saltiness the tea. A tad bit saltier than usual teas because of that.
Sides: Didn’t get to try their speciality meatballs and tau pok, but they looks decent.
As a lover of pancakes & waffles, this dish brings together the best of both so I don’t have to choose between them ;)
The batter is an organic gluten-free and wheat-free pancake mix, which comes close to your typical waffle base but with a familiar pancake-like softness and chewiness. But what’s more an amazing about this dish is the banana and mixed fruits compote - it’s caramelised just right so that it bursts with flavour when it touches your tongue. It’s so good on its own that you probably don’t even need to touch the agave syrup on the side.
Anyone who’s a pesto fan can tell you how hard it is to nail down the perfect pesto. The variations come from the use of different types of nuts (walnuts, cashew and even almonds) and combination of greens (basil, arugula, parsley).
This dish uses the classic basil pesto recipe which originated from Genoa, and it works. Sometimes simplicity is all you need :) Loved the unique spin on the dish with crumbled boiled potatoes and grilled cucumbers, which is well-blended with the pesto and goes surprisingly well with the other elements. Altogether, a pretty comforting dish.
We’ve seen many instagrammers flock to this place to capture that picture-perfect cheese pull, and heard about it in reviews - so does it live up to its hype? Nah.
This stall currently gives you 4 options for your toast: Original, Chocolate, Charcoal, and Matcha.
At $3.80 a slice, it’s pretty pricey given its portion. Surprising to us, the toast was on sweet side, when we expected a savoury taste. We went for the Charcoal toast - the toast itself was crispy, but a tad too buttery for our liking (we saw them slathering heaps of butter on it). The cheese itself which should be the star of a cheese toast - was disappointing. It was too sweet and flat (with a semblance of condensed milk) and too chewy (like gum), which leaves you missing the melt-in-your-mouth experience of a good cheese toast which unveils the distinct taste profile of the cheese bit by bit.
So while it’s fun to see how far you can stretch your cheese, it probably doesn’t stretch your dollar. You’d probably get a better cheese toast elsewhere :/ It hits the sweet spot, just not the cheese spot.
