Cafe Food

We were lucky to try their pancakes before they close their Singapore outlet for good! The pancakes resembled that of mcgriddles muffins but more fluffy! The maple syrup was really thick and fragrant. However as the serving size was pretty big, this could get quite jelak towards the end. Nevertheless, still a wonderful plate of pancakes!

We chanced upon Amika, which is a pretty new cafe in the Serangoon area. The cafe wasn't very crowded at lunchtime on Sunday and we could get a table with ease. The cafe provides pretty standard brunch fare, and we decided to try out the rosti with chicken sausage!

First off, we were surprised at how big the chicken bratwurst was and it was pretty filling. The bratwurst and the scrambled eggs were great, but we were honestly quite disappointed by the rosti because it was a little too tasteless. Perhaps the restaurant did not add enough salt, but thankfully, there was the sour cream that we could pair with the rosti! The rosti could also have been a little more crispy as well.

The dish cost around $18++ although we thought that overall, it was rather mediocre and nothing really special. At least the cafe was relatively quiet and it was a nice place to have a chat with friends. 😁

As our Burpple voucher also offered a one-for-one discount on iced coolers, we decided to order two iced coolers ($5++ each) to try. For our first, we ordered the butterfly pea flower iced cooler. While we certainly expected a purplish/bluish hue, we didn't expect the drink to taste sweet because our impression was that the butterfly pea flower tasted slightly floral, albeit almost tasteless. We are guessing that honey might have been mixed into it but we are not able to tell!

The drink wasn't very impressive and we wouldn't recommend it unless you have a Burpple Beyond voucher to spare.

For our other pizza, we ordered the truffle mushroom pizza, which is a cheese-based pizza that comes with a pretty decent amount of mushrooms and a really generous serving of truffle oil. Nonetheless, while the pizza was pretty fragrant, we were slightly disappointed that the egg was overcooked because we expected the yolk to be runny, yet it was more like a hard-boiled egg. 😑

The pizza costs $24++ but you get to enjoy a one-for-one discount if you use a Burpple voucher!

We were at Assembly Ground @ Cineleisure to use a Burpple deal today. We decided to order 2 pizzas as they sounded pretty interesting. The first was the laksa pizza, which was a pizza imbued with laksa sauce, and was complete with ingredients such as quail eggs, prawns, squids, fishcakes and laksa leaves. Seems like the only ingredient from your usual laksa dish that is missing would be the 粗米粉 😂

The pizza wasnt spicy at all although we felt that the laksa sauce could be a little more flavourful to bring out the laksa element more. Nonetheless, we loved the thin-crust pizzas, as they were crisp and wouldn't make you full. The pizza costs $25++ but you get a one-for-one discount if you use a Burpple voucher.

We were at the restaurant soon after it opened on a Saturday morning and there wasn't much of a crowd then, but the restaurant was full once it came close to 12 noon. Hence, you have to be prepared to queue for a table as the restaurant doesn take reservations.

We were looking for great eats in the Novena area and we came across La Ristrettos, which is a cafe hidden on the 8th floor of Novena Medical Centre. It is pretty crowded if you are planning to head there for lunch on a weekday, so do be prepared to head down at 11+ if you wish to head down to avoid the queue.

We ordered the fried tilapia bruschetta as their savoury bruschettas seem highly-raved on Burpple. Note that these are not your typical bruschettas as they are pretty big and are definitely enough to fill your tummies! The fish comes with tartar sauce and generally resembles a dish of fish and chips without the chips, and was served atop a slab of sourdough toast. The toast was fairly hard and definitely required some effort to bite. Nonetheless, while the dish was an interesting combination (fried fish on top of hard bread was a first for us), we thought it wasn't exactly wow. The dish was priced at a pretty average level of $15++, but it was certainly sufficiently filling!

We would be happy to head back to La Ristrettos to try out their coffee as we heard that their coffees are great.

For our mains, we decided to try out the panko chicken sandwich as it sounded like a really unique dish! The sandwich were basically two slices of toasted ciabatta bread, which actually resembled baguettes. The bread was actually pretty tough so this dish does require some effort (and strong teeth) to eat.

The mainstay of the dish was the breaded chicken cutlet sandwiched between the two slices of bread! It was really thick and it was very crispy - you can definitely hear the crunch each time you take a bite! The chicken cutlet was breaded with panko, together with a small amount of cheese and paprika although we couldn't really taste either of these. The sandwich also includes lettuce and tomatoes! Overall, it was a great dish and the sandwich was pretty filling; it was much larger than it looks in the photo!

We were pretty impressed by the lower-than-average prices at The Clueless Goat as well! The sandwich costs only $9.80 and we were surprised that we could get such a yummy dish at a cafe near town at such prices. Little wonder that they are so popular! 😁

We chanced upon The Clueless Goat, which is a quaint cafe with a cosy interior that is located in Novena! If you are planning to visit the cafe for breakfast or brunch, do be prepared to go early because the cafe is popular for its lower-than-average prices and its decent food. We visited on a Thursday morning and the cafe was full a short while after it's opening!

For dessert, we ordered a mint chocolate brownie and it was a dish that was served cold! The dessert comprised two layers of chocolate-based cake that sandwiched a layer of mint-flavoured cream. The chocolate layers were not overly sweet and the mint flavour was definitely pronounced. However, we felt that the dessert was a bit heavy even when we shared it between the two of us. Hence, we would strongly recommend not to try this alone as it can get very gelat. Decent dessert for $7!

How could we visit Thus Coffee without trying out their filter coffees! The cafe roasts their beans in-house and today, they were serving an Ethiopian blend for their filter coffee. The coffee was served piping hot and it tasted slightly sour at the start, although it seemed to have a little more fruity aftertaste when it has cooled down and we were near the bottom of the cup. Pretty interesting and definitely heartwarming to have this on a rainy day!

We have heard a lot about Thus Coffee but given it's slightly-inconvenient location at the Sembawang Hills area, it was hard to find a chance to visit! We finally had the chance to head down today and we were pretty impressed by it's quaint and cosy interior. Even though it was a rainy weekday afternoon, the cafe was surprisingly still pretty crowded!

We got a crowd favourite for lunch - the prawn aglio olio! The dish uses linguine and a really generous amount of garlic, coupled with mushrooms, (pretty big) prawns and a decent serving of cut chillies. Pasta texture was just right and it wasn't too hard or too soggy, although we thought that the serving was a little small for the $19++ paid for this dish. The prawns were big, although we suspect that they were of the frozen variety, although this is small matter to us. The dish wasn't that spicy but if you are unable to take spicy food, you might want to tell the staff to reduce the spice level even further!

Percolate is one of our favourite cafes in the east and we are back today for their pastries and coffee! We tried a kaya croissant which was good as usual - the croissant was crispy and really buttery, and it paired really well with the Kaya which was really gao. Definitely very comforting for breakfast, and it was reasonably-priced at $5!

For our filter coffee, we decided to get the Enciso blend (Colombia), which was on the sweeter side as it had notes of apricot, cocoa and honey. For those of you who don't like coffees with very strong notes, we strongly encourage you to try this if it's available. It costs $7, which is pretty standard for filter coffee too!

Percolate wasnt too crowded when we went at late morning on a Sunday, and you can still find seats fairly easily unless you are heading down in a big group!

For the month of June 2022, Baristart has launched a limited-time series of matcha-based desserts and drinks and one such item is the matcha cream puff! The item is based on Baristart's famous cream puff - it contains the same choux crust albeit with green tea powder sprinkled over it's exterior, and the interior contains a thick matcha-based cream filling! We liked the matcha filling a lot as it was pretty bitter and concentrated, and it was definitely a big change from the sweet fillings in their usual cream puffs. The choux crust retained it's crisp texture even with the cream filling so you can take each bite with a nice crunch.

That being said, the matcha cream puff is pretty pricey and it costs $9++, which is a notch above the usual cream puff. Nonetheless, it was a great dessert and we might try it once more while it is available!