365days2playIs now also open at Raffles City Shopping Mall. No need to brave the long queues in Tiong Bahru or a long walk from the Tiong Bahru MRT station. Now you can sample Tiong Bahru Bakery products in the air-conditioned comfort of the basement of Raffles City.
Actually, this visit to the Raffles City outlet was my 1st visit ever to Tiong Bahru Bakery. I was quite surprised to find the sit-down area practically empty when I was there around 7-9pm on a Sunday. A number of people were doing takeaways though. I’d heard mixed reviews about the place but most people seem to at least agree that their croissants are damn good. Read on and you’ll be able to find out if I agree. Meanwhile, check out the photos of the place. It’s sprawling! It’s in the basement, opposite Din Tai Fung, at the site that used to be Aerins.
BTW, did you know that Tiong Bahru Bakery is owned by Spa Esprit? They are the people behind House @ Dempsey and they also own/co-own many dining establishments like 40Hands, Open Door Policy and Skinny Pizza.
I have yet to try MAGIC.
Their coffees are seriously not cheap. $5.50 for a small cup of cafe latte, although they do not charge GST or Service charge. The latte was on the strong side. I had to add 1 whole stick of sugar before it became drinkable. With the sugar, it was really pleasant tasting and I definitely wouldn’t have minded having more of it to drink.
Gryphon Tea Lemon Ginger Mint $4.30
Gryphon Tea may not have a tea cafe of it’s own like TWG, but it’s certainly permeated dozens of restaurants. I love it that the tea is inside a mesh bag. It feels more ”worth it” than if you were to be just served hot water and a tea bag.
Love the nice little plates!
Chocolate Croissant $3.20
You were waiting to hear my verdict about the croissants? Well, I have to say these are really good croissants, but not the best. The croissant itself was buttery tasting which made me want to keep eating more of it. However, the texture was a little on the tough side, probably because it had been sitting in the display case for a while? It was also not hot at all. They have an onsite kitchen but I guess the low patronage meant that the products have been made well in advance. A little bit more chocolate in the croissant to bribe you would also have been welcome.
Nevertheless, I could foresee myself eating this chocolate croissant again, but this time round I would ask them to heat it up. And it happens to be one of the cheapest items on the menu, so if you want some place to sit for a while, this would be the item to order.
Apple Crumble $6
My dining companion thought that this was a little better than average. Once again, it was served at room temperature. I don’t know about you, but I tend to like my baked goods served hot. I can understand that things may not all have popped out of the oven 5 minutes earlier, but at least CHEAT by heating it up for your patrons won’t you? Anyway, I didn’t like this apple crumble. I thought the base was very stodgy while the crumble itself wasn’t buttery enough. In the end my dining companion had to finish my portion for me. With the $$$ I would rather have had another croissant.
Check out some other Cafes I’ve visited:-
Cafe Crema at Gardens by the Bay
Tiong Bahru Bakery by Gontran Cherrier
Raffles City Shopping Centre Outlet — #B1-11/12, Singapore 179103
Tel : +65 6220 3430
Trading Hours : 11am — 10pm daily
Tiong Bahru Outlet — 56 Eng Hoon Street #01-70, Singapore 160056
Tel: +65 6220 3430
Trading Hours : 8am — 8pm daily except Mondays
Hey so… Is it better than mainstream places like bread talk? Or not worth paying the price?;p
It’s totally different from Breadtalk. They don’t do buns. Think DeliFrance rather than Breadtalk. I think the Chocolate Croissant is worth a try. The coffee is good if you like it strong. For a bit more $$$ I think you’d get a bigger cup at Cedele. Well, what I can say is there’s no need to rush there to try Tiong Bahru Bakery. However, if you happen to be shopping at Raffles City, and you want a spacious place to relax, with a wide variety of cakes to choose from, you can try TBB. The other close contenders as far as I can remember are Cedele, Canele and perhaps Coffee Club. Canele’s much more expensive but their cakes are lovely, and I don’t think they do great coffees. Cedele’s portions are bigger but seating is a bit of a problem. Coffee Club’s pastries aren’t really the same kind.
Thanks a lot!! I certainly see bakeries like that sprotibg around like the French one in the basement of Scotts square..it’s hard to find a really good croissant thes days so it’s definitely in my must try list 😉
perhaps you could ask them to reheat the pastries up?
Sometimes I do, but this time I didn’t.
Hi
Thanks for your post. Lovely pics. Didn’t know they’d opened up another outlet. I recently went to their Tiong Bahru branch which I loved. I’ve blogged about my trip there: http://www.changmoh.com/a-morning-in-tiong-bahru/
Also wanted to say thank you for your kiwi post the other day. I had horrible cold but have overdosed on kiwi fruit after you reminded me it had x5 more Vit C than an orange. And I’m better in record time!
http://www.changmoh.com
Thanks for stopping by my blog! Will check out your blog. Great to know that the Kiwi information came in useful! I’d always know that the Kiwi was a good fruit but I had no idea that it was so much more.
Hard to find a good croissant these dAys and I notice bakeries like these getting poPular like the likes of maison something at the basement of Scotts square.. This will be one of the must tries for me!
Maybe this can be our next meet up place. At least it will be convenient!
It’s just not in the Singaporean culture to eat breads & pastries for dinner. After-dinner desserts maybe, but bakes & pastries are best eaten when they are freshly baked earlier in the day. Perhaps they could offer a 50% discount for all items after 9pm like most bakeries, to entice customers and increase sales. Look at all the stuff left in the display shelves. What are they gonna do with the leftovers for the day? Recycle for the next day?! Oh no. Plus there are just way too many eateries in RC itself. Canele would win TBB for desserts anytime.
Hmmm good question what they do with the leftovers. Some cakes are okay to be eaten the next day, but not the croissants definitely. Canele has much nicer looking and decadent desserts, but they are also more expensive even if more value for money.
I hope that TBB is doing something useful to the leftover breads, like contributing to the food distribution program “Food from the Heart”, which distributes unsold bread and pastries to the less fortunate instead of throwing them away or worse still, recycle for next day sales which is a no-no. Bakeries like Four Leaves, Delifrance & Prima Deli are already doing so, which is why I support them.
How is TBB’s chocolate croissant compared to Da Paolo’s? which I believe is your favorite.
Yes lock it in for our next meet up!
Thanks for the interesting post, 365days2play! I especially agree about the part where you mentioned liking your baked goods served hot, always a nice touch for a bakery to heat things up before serving to show that they care! Unfortunately, TB Bakery didn’t think about that!
We’re from Spawt, a company currently developing a mobile application that seeks to discover and recommend interesting places nearby you while being a social platform for users to post and share about their experiences.
We recently went to visit Tiong Bahru Bakery at Raffles City too on a Wednesday evening at around 5pm and were surprised to find that it was rather empty instead of the bustling crowd we were expecting! We tried some of the pastries that you didn’t include in your post : Tuna Focaccia, Lemon Tart, Triple Chocolate Cake & Kouign Amann. The only thing we tried in common was the Latte.
We found the Tuna Focaccia to be rather on the fishy’ side and not as enjoyable as we thought it to be. The latte, to us, tasted really good and didn’t need any condiments. The lemon cake was extremely sour and its crust was really tough! The chocolate cake was really smooth with a thin crisp waffle at the bottom which we felt should be thicker to have the effect intended. The cake lacked the wow factor and blends in with other chocolate cakes offered at other places. Probably the highlight of our visit was the Kouign Amann which is a round crusty pastry with butter and sugar folded into it. It was sweet and savoury and when you bite into it, you get a good crunch out of it which is really satisfying.
If you would like to read more about our visit, it’s at http://blog.spawt.me/high-tea-spawts-tiong-bahru-bakery-raffles-ci and you can like us on Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/spawtme to stay updated about the app.
We’ll be going into closed beta soon, if you’d like to be one of the first to interact with the app, please do not hesitate to drop us a private message to show your interest via our facebook page! 🙂