Old-School Desserts In a Hipster Cafe

This quaint café in the hipster central of Bali Lane is fashioned after a 1970s-style kopitiam, with its name and logo reminiscent of the now-torn-down amusement park of the same name. Here they serve a cheap and cheerful menu of traditional Singaporean eats including Lemon Chicken Cutlet Rice and simple desserts like Bubur Cha Cha. They’ve also concocted a list of nostalgia-inspired drinks like a Bandung Spritzer and Teh Tarik Jello. Pity this place is closing down on July 7, less than a year after it opened its doors.

Bandung Spritzer, $3.80

Rose syrup gets a shot of soda water, a sprinkling of red tea jelly, a dash of yoghurt syrup, and a handful of lychee spheres (lychee syrup trapped in caviar-like pearls). It tastes exactly as its name suggests — like a soda version of bandung, with pearls and jelly for texture.

Teh Tarik Jello, $3.80

If we didn’t know better, we would have thought this was an ice yuan-yang, that classic Hong Kong-style mix of tea and coffee. That’s because the jello suspended in the black tea is coffee-flavoured. Milky and not too sweet, this drink could also pass off as chin chow-infused milk tea.

Ice Kacang, $3.80

This was quite a sad bowl of ice kachang. When we got to the bottom of the shaved ice, we found paltry strands of chendol jelly, a couple of stewed red beans, and no more than three attap seeds. Save your ice kachang fix for the hawker centre.

Bubur Cha Cha, $3.80

We really wanted to like this bowl of bubur, especially after we were told that it involves a painstaking process of steaming cubes of sweet potato before cooking it down with coconut milk and gula Melaka. Sadly, it just isn’t lemak enough, and swims with little more than a few sweet potato cubes and coco de nata. Not quite your traditional bubur cha cha, yet not novel enough to entice.

25 Bali Lane. S189861. Tel: 9148-9268. Open Mon-Thurs 9.30am-8pm, Fri-Sat 9.30am-8pm. Last orders 8pm. Closing down by July 7.