As many friends and regular readers (if they exist) know, I go to Singapore 3-4 times a year for work and family, so much so that we often joke that Singapore is pretty much my province at this point. I have very particular preferences when it comes to Singaporean food, and I'm always on the hunt for places in the area that help me scratch that itch. Our default mall meal these days is the Nanyang (formerly Toast Box) chicken rice set, and their nonya kaya toast - hardly the best, but at least accessible. The better (more authentic) chicken rice experience in Manila is still Tiong Bahru Singapore Flavours, although the closest branch is all the way at ATC. We also tried another restaurant in the area, Flock, last year. The food was pretty good, the coffee felt too Western, and the prices were far too atas for what we were getting, so we haven't gone back since.
Ever since Kopi Kaki Kopitiam opened a few weeks ago, we were pretty intrigued, given its very bright exterior and the fact that the place always seemed busy, at least in terms of there never being available parking. As it's right outside our village, it was a little exciting that some sort of Singapore-style restaurant was so close to home, even if my initial scan of the menu left me rather confused. When you think of typical Singaporean kopitiam food, you'll probably think of kaya toast and chicken rice. They certainly have a few variants of kaya toast, but no chicken rice - just a friend version. But we decided to finally bite the bullet today and walk out to the restaurant to avoid dealing with the limited parking.
We arrived before 07:00pm, and I rather liked the very aesthetic first floor, but we got a table on the second floor, which was clean but sparsely decorated. There weren't too many people initially, but there's something about the acoustics of the place that amplifies all sounds. I wonder how much the servers could hear of my blow-by-blow discussion of each dish despite my efforts to maintain hushed tones.
There were servers on both floors, and they nicely asked us where we wanted to sit. When we said we'd sit upstairs, they assured us the attendants there would take care of us. We were quickly seated and given the menus and an order slip. The server eventually remembered to give us a pencil to fill out the order slip after Tobie asked if he could take a photo of the menu. I don't mind a little self-service action for that authentic Singaporean experience, but other reviews indicate that service has been rough during this dry run/soft opening period.
Let's go over our order.
For drinks, I got a hot Yuan Yang (Kopi + Teh), and Tobie got an iced Hor Kar Sai (Kopi + Milo). I tend to get Yuan Yangs because of the stronger caffeine hit and the richer flavor you get from the mix of kopi and teh. I could certainly taste the teh, but barely got that kopi punch, and the whole thing felt a little watered down. I also sipped Tobie's drink, and it was more of a watered-down iced Milo with little to no hint of kopi or any form of caffeine.
To complete the classic set, we also ordered their Kaya Butter Toast with soft-boiled eggs. The eggs were served still in their shells, which is fine, but they only gave me one bowl, which was weird. Even the folks at Nanyan know to give a second bowl for the egg shells. I emptied the eggs into the bowl and just set the shells aside on a napkin, and the doneness was a bit more than I'd like, but they were still technically soft-boiled. The server did not bring us soy sauce and pepper, which should be automatic when someone gets the eggs on the side. But maybe they were going for the traditional serve yourself kopitiam experience. The kaya toast was okay, although their homemade kaya felt like it had an overly strong coconut flavor, which was not to my preference. The toast wasn't warm, so the butter didn't even begin to melt. The bread was consistently sliced unevenly, so one toast was paper-thin and prone to breaking apart.
So if we were to just go here for tea time, this would not be the place.
I was curious about their Roti Prata, and thankfully, they had a snack-sized version apart from their main. The prata itself was nothing special, with minimal distinct flavor of its own, and was very puffy and crumpled, so they were clustered oddly on the plate. The accompanying curry sauce had more of a Filipino curry profile, given a strong coconut flavor and none of the heat you'd get from any prata stand in Singapore.
As much as this was already a lot of food, we ordered a lot of things on the menu just so we could try things. To that end, we got different mains, and the experience was rather mixed but largely disappointing.
The Nasi Lemak Ayam Berempah (chicken) was decent, but it can be argued that it's hard to mess up nasi lemak. The sambal sauce had some good heat, but it was the only source of flavor on the plate. The rice is listed as being a fragrant coconut rice, but it didn't have that vibe at all. The dilis/anchovies weren't salty at all, and didn't add anything to the rice apart from texture. The curry leaves (?) served with the dish had lost their flavor and didn't give me the same flavor experience. The chicken was serviceable but on the dry side, and again had no strong flavors.
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