Overdoughs [Food Review]

We made our way to Overdoughs after dinner because of a friend's recommendation.

Overdoughs is a small take-away deli/bakery that specializes in pastries and breads, but they have a big rectangular table for sitting space as well if you want to have your desserts there.

The peach tart (2 pictures above) and the passionfruit tart (picture above) cost $5 each. It was quite nice when you first bite into it, the crust was a tad too hard for my liking, but the soft cold center complements the crust well. But as you can see from the pictures, the whip cream is a bit too much and too thick and it makes you sick after a while.

This is the lemon cake, also $5. I preferred this to the tarts because it wasn't as hard. It also comes with a runny center. Everything was quite nice on the first few bites, but it soon became a bit too sourish.

Maybe because we went after dinner and it was near closing time for them (we went around 7 plus), there weren't much stuff on display. Whatever was on display didn't look very appetizing as well, kind of like it's been left out for quite long. Plus the place was really reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally hot despite one small aircon and a fan. I was sweating buckets the whole time, which made the whole eating process quite uncomfortable.

I would say that the dessert here is okay, but nothing much to rave about, and the ambience didn't help. I might drop by again if I'm in the area, but definitely will not be making a purposeful trip down again. Also, taking out would probably be a smarter option.

Bakerzin cheesecake: the best that I've had

The boyfriend bought a whole cheesecake from Bakerzin this year for my birthday, just like how he did last year. Haha. It's fast becoming a tradition because poor me's birthday always falls during the exam period.

Look at the amount of candles on this thing. It's like a reminder of how old I'm becoming. Haha.

But seriously, Bakerzin's cheesecakes are the best that I have ever had. It is super thick and creamy and it just melts in your mouth. Totally awesome feeling when you're craving dessert.

We're The Furballs (Dog Cafe @ Katong)

Went to We're The Furballs this evening and they've got two additional members to the dog family. There are a total of 8 of them now. :)

But it was quite crowded today, probably because of the public holiday. 

 Duchess and Slinky fighting over a straw they found. Lol. They were just grabbing on to it for a full 10 minutes with both sides refusing to let go.

 Still fighting...

In the end Duchess won. Lol. She was like dragging Slinky all the way across the floor until she won.

 Bui Bui!

Super cute right!

The dogs make me so happy. :D

Hatched

Went to Hatched for brunch because my friend liked to explore fresh food places.

Hatched was quite easy to find, but relatively inconvenient if you don't have a car. The nearest MRT station is Botanic Gardens, but because the walkway here is not sheltered, it can get quite hot during late mornings or early afternoons. And there were a lot of alive/dead millipedes along the way so you can imagine how much squealing there was coming from two girls.

We ordered sir benedict and the sausage platter to share. The eggs were really quite nice, with a creamy after taste. But the muffins that it was resting on was nothing memorable. For Hatched, you have the option of "just one", or "do two", but I recommend you do two because the serving is really small and its not very filling. The sir benedict was $18, quite pricey since the food wasn't really impressive.

The sausage platter was priced at $17, with three different types of sausages. I thought sausages couldn't go wrong since they're preserved food and preserved food usually taste quite nice by my standards. But holy heavens no, the two types of sausages to the left is really really horrible, especially the centre one. We both left it untouched after taking one small bite.

But the mash potato is quite nice though. So at least it wasn't all bad.

The cafe was smaller than we expected, but the decorations were quite unique. If you scrutinized the photo on top, they have this wrath thing made from chicken eggs and quail eggs which I thought was really cute.

We were seated at the sofa seats and it was quite comfortable. And the drawings on the wall really added life to the place.

The service were really good though. The girl serving us was smiley all the time and promptly refilled our cup of water even after we were done with the food.

This place would be worth coming to if you, like my friend, like to explore new food places around Singapore. Otherwise, I wouldn't really bother because the price does not match up to my expectation of the food.

Hatched is closed on Mondays.

The Book Cafe

Had a free day so decided to go to a cafe to catch up on some reading since I haven't done that for damn long. K doesn't like to read (although he denies it) but I'm a bookworm. Or I used to be until uni took up all my time. 

Have wanted to visit the Book Cafe for damn long since I read so much positive reviews about it online. But I've got to say, unless you have a car, it's really really inconvenient to go there. You've got to walk quite a bit, probably 500m to the nearest bus stop, and doing it in the middle of the afternoon with the sun beating down on you wasn't fun. But at least we didn't have much trouble finding the place thanks to GPS.

Passed by some really nice shophouses on the way there. 

I have got to say I was a bit disappointed with The Book Cafe. Having read all the positive reviews, I expected the place to be more spacious and cosy and home-y. But in reality it was actually quite small and crammed up. But I do still like the atmosphere that it gives. There were some ang mohs sitting outside using laptops and stuff (there are power points) but it was too hot so we headed inside.

It wasn't really crowded that day, probably because it's a weekday, so we had no problem snagging one of the famous sofa seats.

And yes, I admit that the sofa seats are really really comfortable. You kind of sink in into the cloth and just feel very enveloped. Quite a nice feeling I must say.

They have quite a large selection of books and magazines, as you can see from the shelves. But with the space so cram, I really don't think you'll have much desire to walk up/behind other tables just to take a look at the available choices. A guy (the one sitting with the girl in the previous photo) did, and he kind of bumped into another table. So I would say it's better to just read your own  book/use your own laptop/read the newspapers provided.

The staff were all really friendly, non of the black face attitudes you see in other cafes (like The Raindrop Cafe, urgh), and they won't really disturb you after you've made your order so you can just sit there for hours reading and you won't get chased away. So I actually did enjoy the ambience and environment. But K said he preferred Starbucks as he wasn't very impressed with the menu, and he also prefers the Starbuck atmosphere.

So like I said, K didn't really like the place that much (I felt that it was pretty nice though), so we weren't expecting to stay long. So in the end we only ordered a drink to share.

The ice cocoa with marshmallows ($7 after GST) was a bit too pricey in my opinion. It wasn't really thick and chocolatey like how I liked it to be, and there were only four marshmallows. :( Presentation wise it was pretty decent, but just felt like the taste did not match up to the price.

Raindrops Cafe

Went to Raindrops Cafe to celebrate Cheel's 21st. The place was suggested by Clar because she said the ambience is cosy, so we decided to head there.

Honestly speaking, I wasn't very impressed with the deco of the place. The only redeeming deco is the unique tiffany blue umbrellas they displayed outside the shop, but other than that, t was very bare and minimalistic.

I didn't manage to take a picture of the exterior since I was already running late for the meet up.

The interior of the shop was quite small, with a open-kitchen concept, so you could see what the chef was doing. There was only one waitress on duty that night, and her attitude was super bad. Black face through out our whole dinner and was behaving damn impatiently the whole time.

Asked her to refill our empty glasses a few times and she ONLY refilled the glass of the person that asked her even though everyone's glasses were empty. We even had to go get the water pitcher ourselves.

Also asked her to help us take a polaroid before we left but she snapped the picture even before we had positioned ourselves properly. Plus the picture was off-centre so half the picture was of the table instead of us.

We had the mushroom soup, don't like it that there's a layer of oil floating on the surface, makes it look very unhealthy. And as you can see, there's soup on the side of the dish as well, so it didn't look very appealing. Taste wise it was okay, merely acceptable. I actually read some reviews on hgw before heading down and they were quite bad, so I wasn't expecting much already.

We also had the raindrops burger. The flavours were chicken, beef and fish. Think the vege was just for decoration purpose cos they had no sauce on them whatsoever and tasted dry.

We also had the salmon, but didn't take any pictures of it. The serving was quite small and taste very ordinary. Definitely not those that will make you come back for more kind.

Double chocolate brownie with ice cream. Slightly better I must say, maybe their desserts are better than the main course? The brownie was slightly moist, and there was quite a generous serving of walnut mixed evenly, so not much complaints there. $9 for a dessert dish is quite normal for a cafe, but actually taste similar to the brownie that NUS sells, and at $1.30 per piece I'll say I'll choose the NUS one any time over this.

They didn't keep the cake that we brought over in the freezer and it ended up melted and ugly. So we had to order another dessert to replace the original cake. We chose the tiramisu since they said it was one of the better desserts. 

Presentation wise it looked quite good, with the blueberry swirls and all, tasted quite nice too, very moist.

All in all, I would say that this is a very forgettable place. People may drop by out of curiosity but they sure need some strong selling point to attract return customers. And while at it, they should also brush up on their service, I definitely would not want to pay for such bad service.

TWG (Takashimaya)

We couldn't get a reservation at our desired restaurant on new year's eve, so we decided to make it an impromptu day.

We were walking around town and saw the restaurant window view outside Taka, it looked quite promising so we decided to give it a try.

The exterior of the restaurant looked really nice, very old school I would say. I really like the ambience of the whole place. It gave a very cosy vibe, perfect for chilling out with girlfriends, sipping tea and exchanging gossip.

 The whole place was very well-lit but not harsh. They actually don't allow photography but I secretly snapped a few shots.

It was surprisingly empty when we went in, especially for New Year's Eve. But then again, it's dinner time and people wouldn't normally have dinner at a tea place right.

Only a few tables were occupied that night, and we even managed to snag a window seat.

The view from our seats.

The service was quite prompt that night, since it was relatively empty. We were given 3 menus, one for proper food, one containing an endless list of tea names, and another one describing each tea.

I would have preferred if they put the description of the tea below the tea name itself, so that it will be much easier to refer to. We had trouble matching the tea names to the ones in the description, nd in the end we just gave up and asked for recommendations.

We had the 1836 Black Tea, which was supposedly one of their popular teas, and another tea whose name I forgot. The tea were served in cute pots and poured into these shallow but cute cups. It was really fragrant and light, but I'm not really a tea person so I can't tell you if its good or not. Each pot starts from $11 (w/o GST and service charge) and is good for about 4 cups, which were shallow la.

I ordered the Seared Matcha Salmon ($26). The portion is quite small for the price I feel, the vegetables were not that nice honestly, quite bland. The salmon was okay, acceptable but nothing to rave about.

 K had the Chicken En Brochette (also $26). It didn't look too appetizing compared to mine. The portion was again, really small, but it tasted better. There were only a few chunks of chicken (with pineapple) so imo it wasn't enough to go with the rice. The rice was okay but what I liked was the sauce for the chicken. Creamy but not sickeningly so.

 We also had the Chocolate Fondant for dessert. I would say their desserts are loads better compared to the main course, so again, it's better to come here to chill, but not to fill up your stomachs.

The chocolate cake was very good. Sinfully rich and chocolatey, not sure what flavour the ice cream was though. Tasted a bit like red bean but I assume its some tea ice cream la.

I also heard the macarons and the Lasagne are good so you can also try them. The macarons are priced at $2 each.

On the whole, I would say that TWG is worth coming to for the atmosphere, very quiet and cosy. :)