Have heard about the highly-raved Tiong Bahru Bakery for sometime, but yet to try it until this day.. Cleverly taking the name from one of Singapore's oldest residential estate, "Tiong Bahru" subconsciously lead consumers thinking that it is an old establishment of a local traditional bakery shop. In actual fact, you will be surprised with many French pastries and cakes, which are very unlike the usual confectionery in Singapore.
P.S: They have a more accessible 2nd outlet situated at Raffles City Shopping Centre
P.S: They have a more accessible 2nd outlet situated at Raffles City Shopping Centre
The main store @Eng Hoon Street is a small shop with maximised seating arrangement. You have to squeeze yourself in between tables and chairs to get to your seat, and find yourself sitting super close to the other customers around you. From the picture below, you can notice that there are 2 different queuing lines. What it means is that - if you are only ordering coffee/drinks, you can go straight to the cashier at the end, without joining the longer queue on the right-hand side. But seriously, after seeing their wide array and enticing display of pastries and sandwiches, you can't stop by just for coffee!
Note: Available coffee are painted on the wall next to the cashier
Savoury items are bigger in size, can definitely fill your stomach rather than the usual brunch items.
Last but not least, the sweet items (not much are left by mid-noon).
If you like something warm and soupy, you should try their soup items to go with nice toast. Smart fusion of east and west.
The infamous, Lemon Calamansi Tart! The sourness was overpowering, and it was like having lemon cream placed into the tart base. Tart was plain normal and kind of hard to "fork" through it. (Frankly speaking, Antoinette and Carpenter & Cook serve better lemon tarts.) Each of us merely took 1 bite and that's it. Overrated.
My Choice: Chocolate Kouign Amann. I am usually a croissant person, but have chosen to give it a miss that day. Nothing too fanciful about its appearance, but once you try it, you will realise how special it is. The layers of pastry are carefully circled around, with tinge of chocolate infused in the top core. It turned flaky and fragile the moment you try to cut it open (can be pretty messy eating this). Its taste is pure and clean, nothing more or less. Am falling in love and craving for it more each day! *grin*
Millefeuille Marron Cassis (NEW!) - One of their new inventions, made up of three layers of puff pastry with alternating layers of chestnut and blackcurrant filling. Pretty interesting combination. Rather difficult to eat it as the puff pastry were not fluffy enough to be cut through easily. Best to eat a small portion of puff pastry with the cream filling in each bite, as the filling itself was on the sweeter side.
My usual caffeine fix, Latte was alright. Only strange thing was that it bubbled up when we are halfway drinking it (and the bubbles lasted quite a while). Later on, I searched through the internet to find that it is normal to have such bubbles for it is a sign of fresh brewed coffee, due to the natural oils in the coffee beans.
Can always come back to try out more of their pastry items whenever convenient (never cos' of its fame), especially their pricing is affordable.
