Mr Bean (National University Hospital)

Soft serve texture and taste are both good as usual but the service today was really quite a downer.

The auntie at the cashier was pretty aggressive when I walked in at 6pm as she grunted “你要什么？” before giving me the stink eye when I ordered an ice cream instead of a prepacked soy milk or something. She proceeded to ignore me after collecting payment (without bothering to tell me to wait) and served three customers who came in before she finally walked over to the soft serve machine, made my ice cream cone, and thrust it at me without any eye contact. Ok can.

What a satisying $2 pancake. The portion is just right, not too much and not too little. Order this with the soy ice cream $1.6. Perfect combo

Whoever thought of this combination had an interesting idea, but interesting ideas don’t always work out the way we want. In theory I guess pandan and cheese might have been a viable sweet-savoury combination, but this pancake is an abomination.

Upon cutting into the pancake, we were greeted by an artificially green custard filling which didn’t look appetising at all. Steeling myself for the first bite, my tastebuds were first assaulted by sweet pandan, followed by a second wave of savoury cheesiness. It’s a wonder how both of these flavours didn’t meld together but ended up presenting themselves as two separate flavours that just don’t go well together. This was such a weird pancake I really would not recommend it to anyone.

Looks like almost all the pancakes at Mr Bean have been made healthier with wholemeal batter and you can see the grains inside. I think the change in flour and batter composition made the pancakes more dense and slightly less fluffy, but it wasn’t a deal breaker for me. My colleague was much more annoyed by this change, citing that the pancakes were a lot stickier and that the batter recipe wasn’t changed to accommodate the change in flour. Oh well. Can’t please everyone but I’m glad for this switch to healthier ingredients.

For the peanut pancake, I recommend eating it while it’s still hot or at least toasting it up first. Since I only got to eating it a few hours after and couldn’t be bothered with heating it, you can clearly see the peanut filling had hardened into a hard ball. The peanut filling was sort of like an extra-crunchy and thick crunchy peanut butter. There’s loads of peanut chunks in there, and I think the sweetness balances nicely with the pancake. Despite the solidified filling, I still enjoyed this anyway!

Yes it’s back! Love how gooey and chocolatey the filling remained despite having bought this hours ago. This is my absolute flavour from Mr Bean as the thick hazelnut filling even comes with small crunchy bits that add to the variety of textures in one pancake - the spongy and chewy pancake, creamy hazelnut and crunchy pops. Love!

From 15 July - 31 August, Mr Bean is running a promotion on their Singafour Eggwiches where you can enjoy two for $5.40 instead of $7. The two eggwiches available are the Butter Chicken and Chilli Crab. Unfortunately there wasn’t any Chilli Crab left, so I could only try the Butter Chicken (which I was most excited about anyway).

Cutting into the pancake, it’s immediately clear that they are really generous with the filling and chicken. The Butter Chicken filling is really fragrant and aromatic. The gravy is thick and creamy, while the chicken is soft and tender. I felt that the egg was quite tasteless though, but maybe it’s because the taste of the butter chicken filling overshadowed it. What was an unexpected treat was that the egg yolk was slightly runny, adding a luscious mouthfeel. While this pancake filling may not reach the level of a Butter Chicken dish at an Indian Muslim stall, it way exceeded my expectations. This would be suitable for someone craving a snack, in the mood for some Indian, but not willing to commit to a full Butter Chicken order. While it’s quite expensive to buy at regular price, I think the 2 for $5.40 offer is reasonable. Catch it before it’s gone!