Had a chill and relax meet up with 3 of lovely friends I got to know during a Channel U talkshow filming on 2nd November 2013, we are known as Yishun Clique although I don't stay in Yishun. We had been planning to have a little meet up over some better food, and we decided to give Upper Thomson Road a visit. Upon reaching there, we had a hard time choosing which shop to visit as there were just too many shops there providing great food! And among all, we decided to try out the well known Habitat Coffee Cafe!
It was a public holiday and it was our first time visiting the place, and we were lucky enough to get a table for 4 within 5 minutes of waiting time upon reaching the cafe. At first look, the cafe looks rather small and uniquely decorated, with a beautiful chalk board written with the names of all the dishes provided by the cafe, which is behind their cashier, coffee machine and cake display fridge. Our table is right at the upper deck, which is really a small area squeezing easily 30 pax there. I did not manage to take a picture of the upper deck as the space was really too small for my 550D to capture. Well, I would say its really cosy having our meal on the Upper Deck :)
The first decoration that caught my eyes when I stepped onto the upper deck was the Palette like poster, with a cup of coffee, different coffee machines and the words "DEAR COFFEE I LOVE YOU" printed on the Palette, hung beside my table.
Their menu is really unique! Instead of normal booklet that you see in most restaurants or cafe, their menu came to us as a wooden board! Its my first time seeing such a special menu provided for customers! Looking though their menu, me and my friends had a really hard time deciding what to order for our brunch/lunch. There are just too many tempting dishes that makes you feel like trying every single one of them! After about 20 minutes, we decided to proceed to their cashier to place our order! Woohoo! Just cant wait to receive our food, looking at our neighboring tables with full of beautifully prepared food! Upon ordering, a table number tag was given to us, on it printed a really cute quote: :"Home is a shelter from storms - all sorts of storms, by William J. Bennett
My 3 friends ordered themselves a cold drink each, Iced Tiramisu Flavored Coffee, Ice Habitat Fusion Tea - Peach and Iced Mocha Flavored Coffee. While me, I insisted on getting a cup of hot coffee that comes with coffee art =D I ordered a Hot Cappuccino Coffee! The cappuccino that I had was really smooth and fragrant! Although I love drinking coffee, but I do not usually go around trying out coffee. But the Cappuccino I had was really good for me! Beautiful coffee art as well! And the biscuit given with the Cappuccino was really good, and it got me looking for it in Supermarkets! :)
Iced Tiramisu Flavored Coffee
Ice Habitat Fusion Tea - Peach
Iced Mocha Flavored Coffee
Hot Cappuccino Coffee
(I have uploaded a picture of this cup of Cappuccino on Instagram to take part in a competition. Please show your support if you are an Instagrammer! ^^ or just drop by to view my picture taken using my Samsung S3 @ http://instagram.com/p/gRuZf5AMUC/ )
(I have uploaded a picture of this cup of Cappuccino on Instagram to take part in a competition. Please show your support if you are an Instagrammer! ^^ or just drop by to view my picture taken using my Samsung S3 @ http://instagram.com/p/gRuZf5AMUC/ )
Alright! After looking at the beautiful coffee and drinks we received before our food came to our table, here are some pictures of what we had for brunch/lunch! My friend ordered Mama's Banana Pancakes, Blackened Dory, and I ordered their Brunch, The Big Ben!
Mama's Banana Pancakes
(- Real banana pancakes with maple syrup, caramelized bananas, and choco fudge)
(- Real banana pancakes with maple syrup, caramelized bananas, and choco fudge)
Blackened Dory
(- Grounded black pepper Dory with Pasta)
I had the brunch below, The Big Ben! Upon receiving the beautifully prepared dish, and after taking pictures of the food, the first item I "attacked" on the plate was the scrambled eggs! To me, a nicely done scrambled eggs should be soft, fluffy and creamy, which tests the skills of the chef when he cooks it, constantly pushing the eggs when he cooks it, and not over cooking it into a hard lump of dry scrambled eggs. Of course! Their scrambled eggs did not disappoint me! ^^ And to my surprise, there was a piece of bacon hiding below the scrambled eggs, on top of the piece of little pancake that the eggs were sitting on! Great surprise I got from the dish, and the second surprise I got was the huge Cheese Sausage sitting beside the scrambled eggs, bacon and pancake!
According to the menu, its a 100 grams Swiss Cheese Sausage. When I cut a slice of the sausage, cheese came running out of the sausage! I only have a Singapore "word" to describe the sight, SHIOK!
The cheese inside the sausage is really generous and it is really tender, fragrant and not too saltish, well at least to me ^^ The Hollandaise sauce provided was great too! However, there was just one thing on the plate that kind of spoilt my great experience, which is the hash browns. As I am very particular about oily food items, the hash browns had oil oozing out when i cut it into half. But I thought to myself, maybe it is because that the hash browns are very thinly made, it will tend to absorb oil easily during the cooking procedure. The taste to it was still quite acceptable as it is quite fragrant, from the frying and the spices they used, and not too saltish as compared to the hash browns we find from other places!
As a whole, this brunch dish is definitely recommended to give it a try! A seemingly small portion brunch could make a huge guy, like me, to be full and satisfied! ^^ Of course, they too have Egg Benedict that a lot of people has been trying out at all other cafes!
The Big Ben
(- Scrambled eggs on bacon and pancake, home-made hash brown, fresh greens, oven grilled tomato and 100 grams Swiss cheese sausage with Hollandaise sauce)
(- Scrambled eggs on bacon and pancake, home-made hash brown, fresh greens, oven grilled tomato and 100 grams Swiss cheese sausage with Hollandaise sauce)
One of my friends didn't have appetite for a main dish, so he ordered their Lava Cake with a scoop of Vanilla ice cream! It took about 20 minutes to be served. Looks great to me, and the price for it isn't expensive!
Lava Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream
After eating and chilling at Habitat Coffee, we decided to move off to an ice cream shop to complete our meal and continue chilling. We wanted to go to an ice cream shop on the opposite side of the road, but we didn't expect that it was raining when we left Habitat Coffee. And so, we decided to go to NeLi's ice cream, just a few stores down the same row of shophouses with Habitat Coffee!
When I stepped into the shop, I was surprised by the simple yet beautiful design that the shop has! Very clean white with some turquoise is their main color combination, with some very simple drawings on the wall and a few classy pictures of their desserts on the cabinets at the counter.
They have a variety of ice cream flavors served by them! Most of them are created by them! There are about 20 different flavors available!
Similar to Habitat Coffee, NeLi's ice cream has a second deck to their store. There is a little cozy corner for a larger group of customers to play games there at the second deck, with a few shelfs of books for customers to read in the store!
On one side of the store, there were some pretty words written on the walls to beautify the store! Some were drawn on, and some were painted wooden word blocks, with a row of old school erasers with flags of different countries printed on them! Those erasers brought back memories of my Primary School years, where the boys will buy lots of such erasers to fight with each other, flipping them towards your opponent's eraser, winning your opponent's eraser when yours stack on top of your opponent's.
My friends ordered scoops of different flavored ice creams to satisfy their cravings for sweets after lunch! They ordered Cookies and Cream ice cream, Holicks ice cream and Lemon Sorbet.
Cookies & Cream, and Holicks Ice cream
Lemon Sorbet
And after a 30 minutes of waiting time, here comes a beautiful plate of Lava Cake with my Chrysanthemum Sorbet!
Lava Cake with Chrysanthemum Sorbet, with Wolfberry
The beautiful plate of Lava cake came with a generous drizzle of chocolate sauce! As It was my first time trying Lava Cake, it did give me a great deal of satisfaction, with the soft warm chocolate cake on the outside warm gooey chocolate sauce flowing out from the cake the moment I cut it open! The sweetness of the cake itself is just nice, but with the chocolate sauce drizzled on the cake, its a bit too sweet of me, but overall, its all good! ^^ Curious about the how the Chrysanthemum Sorbet taste like?
I fell in love with it the moment I put a little of it in my mouth! Its very smooth and it has a strong fragrance of Chrysanthemum running all over in my mouth! At first, I thought the sorbet will be quite light, but its a total opposite of what I expected it to be! The sweetness of the sorbet is really light, but when you bite on the Wolfberries in the sorbet, it gives an additional natural sweetness to the sorbet! Its really refreshing to have it as dessert after a meal, and I think people who cant take desserts that are too sweet can give this flavor a try!
(Of course, I had decided to send a picture of this Lava Cake into the Instagram competition.
Please show your support if you are an Instagrammer! ^^ or just drop by to view my picture @ http://instagram.com/p/gSmT6UAMc5/)
Its my first time doing a whole blog post on food, and I longed to write food blog on this blog! Finally, I have started and I shall continue trying out different good food around in Singapore and give a review on the food I tried! Hope you like this post on my relaxing day, having brunch at Habitat Coffee and desserts at NeLi's ice cream, all at Upper Thomson Road! Stay tuned for more food posts if you want to know where to try out for your next food hunt! Information of the places we visited are below. Do visit them and try out their great food if you are free! ^^ Feel free to send in comments on my post, like what you want me to include on my next food blog post and suggestions on where you want me to try out for my subsequent food hunt journey!
To view the pictures on my Facebook Page, please visit:
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Habitat Coffee Cafe
Address: 233 Upper Thomson Road Singapore 574355
Opening Hours: Tues - Fri 11am to 10.30pm, Sat - Sun 10.30am to 10.30pm, Closed on Mondays
Tel No: +65 6456 2567
Email: info@habitatcoffee.com.sg
Website: http://www.habitatcoffee.com.sg/
NeLi's Ice Cream
Address: 233 Upper Thomson Road Singapore 574364
Opening Hours: Sun - Thur 12pm to 11pm, Fri - Sat 12pm to 1am
Tel No: +65 6453 2410
Email: info@neli-icecream.sg
Website: http://www.neli-icecream.sg/
Bus Services
52, 132, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 410, 855, 980
Alight at 'Before Thomson Ridge' bus stop or 'Aft Thomson Road PO' bus stop (requires to cross the road)
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