The Coffee Academics (Scotts Square)

This was the free dish we got with Burpple Beyond main dish redemption.

There’s an option to have the bowl with rice or mixed greens as a base - and we went for rice this round. After TCA’s menu revamp, they only have one rice bowl protein option on the menu, which is quite sad as I did enjoy the salmon grain bowl! The crispy pork belly grain bowl is quite enjoyable as well, but I did find that the pork belly was too salty to be eaten on its own. It has to be eaten with the other components of the bowl to mellow out the saltiness, but it does really add a lot of flavour. In addition, the pork belly was too fatty for this to be considered a healthy grain bowl. Bring back the other protein options please!

Al dente pasta cooked with shrimp, and topped with shio konbu and an onsen egg. It’s quite cute to watch the konbu flakes crinkling and moving about as the bowl sat on the table.

After giving it a good toss, the resultant bowl of pasta was seriously umami as it’s name suggests. If you don’t know what umami means, just take a bite of this pasta. I’d suggest sharing this dish with someone else, because it did start to get a bit salty after a few bites although it was delicious.

Modern, cosy cafe located at Scotts Square.

Went on a Monday afternoon and the cafe was fairly full. Recommend making a reservation so you can sit inside the cafe and not the tables outside.

Ordered Eggs Ben with guac ($22), Umami Pasta ($21) and Iced Jawa ($7). Eggs Ben with guac was badly done - the English muffin and eggs tasted stale. Th Umami Pasta on the other hand, was delicious. Highly recommend it if you like a little spice in your Pasta.

Iced Jawa was a nice cuppa coffee but lacked the taste of pandan and coconut. Total damage was ~$35. Relatively worth the money if you order the right stuff - would probably replace the Eggs Ben with pizza the next visit (it looked so good on the other table!)