Was walking through the Circular Road / Boat Quay / North Canal Road / Lorong Telok area some time back and noticed that there is a new addition to the neighbourhood that was still undergoing renovations at that time. Named Kwaasong Bakeshop, these folks had recently moved into the ground level shophouse unit located at 13 Lorong Telok and are direct neighbours to Naga House which we had also been to some time back. Kwaasong Bakeshop was still undergoing some finishing touches when it came to the fittings within the space and also outside the space; that being said they are open for soft launch, and have been accepting pre-orders for their pre-launch menu for the Christmas season which is available between 20 to 26 December 2023. Despite most of the dining establishments around the area the area being dine-in dining establishments, Kwaasong Bakeshop operates primarily as a takeaway store / order collection location. It is a little difficult to predict on how the establishment would look like eventually once everything has been set-up proper (there were no prominent signages when we dropped by during their soft launch phase), but there is a pretty interesting mural on the wall illustrating a variety of pastries with a croissant that has eyes with the words “看爽” written on the very top — translates to “see for fun” in English and can be said to be a direct translation from the phonetical pronunciation of Kwaasong in Hokkien. All pastries available for the day are displayed prominently in the display shelf at the counter — the variety includes items such as various viennoiserie, danishes and an egg tart. Interestingly enough, Kwaasong Bakeshop actually does serve up specialty coffee using beans roasted by Padre Coffee; the brand itself originated from Melbourne, Australia.

There were only a limited number of bakes which were available when we made our visit to Kwaasong Bakeshop during their soft launch on a weekday afternoon — they were seemingly busy with getting ready the items to be packed for the pre-orders. While there a few items which caught our attention when having a glimpse of the pastries which they were offering in the display shelf, we found ourselves gravitate towards the Egg Tart especially since we had been some mentions of it via social media. We liked it how Kwaasong Bakeshop had apparently made their Egg Tart a little more distinguishable from the rest that are available in the market; a little bit like how Tong Heng has a diamond-shaped egg tart, the one at Kwaasong Bakeshop is of a long oval shape that is quite unlike any egg tart that we had seen before. One thing that Kwaasong Bakeshop prides itself for would be the use of Insigny AOP French Butter and Nuyolk Eggs for their pastries — first bite into the Egg Tart and we already noticed how crisp, flaky and buttery the pastry base itself is; one that was pretty light and also pretty much free from grease as well which found to be pretty delightful. Even the egg curd filling itself was well-balanced in its flavour; there is the egginess that we found to be pretty apt — the egg curd also being suitably sweet as well. We also managed to try the Bacon Emmental Fold — despite the use of Emmental here, the pastry was nothing too cheesy; also well-laminated being consistently flaky, light and buttery like how pastry of the Egg Tart was. The bacon helps to add a bit of saltishness and slight smokiness typical of cured meat with a bit of chew. Found all of Kwaasong Bakeshop’s offerings to be of pretty good quality at least from the items that we had tried — perhaps even surpassing that of some artisanal bakehouses that we had previously tried. With prices of each item in the pre-launch menu kept below $7, Kwaasong Bakeshop does seem to be quite a promising addition to the Lorong Telok neighbourhood indeed!