Jalan Besar | Chye Seng Huat Hardware Coffee Bar

8th July 2014.

This café needs no introduction.

Chye Seng Huat Hardware Coffee Bar is one café that is bound to evoke an emotional response over its food and coffee. My interest in the boom of nostalgic cafes landed me in Chye Seng Huat Hardware Coffee Bar one day. Along with a coffee addict friend of mine as well as a mutual friend we met who shares the same curiosity towards the popularity of Chye Seng Huat Hardware Coffee Bar.

Designed by Elita Ong, a former architect from K2LDArchitects and a the brain child of the peeps of Papa Palheta, Chye Seng Huat Hardware Coffee Bar (CSHHCB) is indeed a nice place and to give it credit, it is also quite unique in the way it has arranged its spaces combines a bar and a café and making the bar a central feature in the space, quite similar to the cafes I encountered in Kyoto like Inoda Coffee.

 I had the Huat Breakfast (V2.0) which consists of 2 eggs of your choice, ham steak, 2 pork sausages, grilled tomato and potato salad with butter croissant on the side. It tasted pretty average to me and I thought the scrambled eggs lacks the buttery fragrance I enjoyed for scrambled eggs. For 17.00++ SGD, I thought the price is still barely acceptable considering that the portion was quite substantial, and for someone who hasn't had a proper breakfast for days, it is a treat!

My friends had the OMG! Truffle Popcorn (7.00++ SGD). I didn’t like the aftertaste of the popcorn.

Coffee was unmemorable.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed CSHHCB for its cosy ambience but it could get rather crowded at times. Indeed, at the end of the day, my memories of the place was the discussion and talk I had with my friends, not the food or coffee from CSHHCB. Perhaps, this is the draw of CSHHCB (intentional or not), the reason why people come here to catch up, have interviews, have meetings or just spend the afternoon watching the buzz going on in the center of the cafe's coffee bar. If you are into the design crowd, you might just bump into one of the creative minds from Somewhere Else or Splash in the vicinity as well!

Chye Seng Huat Hardware Coffee Bar

150 Tyrwhitt Road

Singapore 207563