Casual weekend dates brought us to Seletar Aerospace to check out the latest cafe scene here. We took bus 103 from Yishun and it took us about half an hour to get to this unpopulated site of Singapore where you truly take a breather from the town and city areas, taking a retreat in Singapore’s so-called “countryside”.
Next to Seletar Aerospace is this area of white colonial restaurants that house cafes like Wheeler’s Estate and Wildseed. We didn’t venture much around this cafe zone as the sun was beating hard against us and not to mention, the cafes were flooded with the young cafe-hoppers with the partners or family. Among them, you will spot a few hardcore cafe-hoppers who were just there to get beautiful shots of the food to get it posted on Instagram.
There were a couple of more restaurants like Di Wei Teochew restaurant and The Summerhouse. It’s an interesting mixture of eateries there. But nonetheless, it’s an upscale cafe haven nestled in a perfectly serene location which is great for photos.
We set our targets at Wildseed but it was full and there were still people streaming in and waiting for a table. It is not very useful either when all of their waiters were busy, running about and serving orders.
So we walked over to Wheeler’s Estate and likewise, there were no more seats left for us on a weekend afternoon. My advice? The cafe crowd has swung by to Seletar and for the time being, avoid heading there during peak periods or brunch times.
We felt like giving up but were persuaded by the fact that we’ve made a long trip just to get here. Maybe it’s worth the wait so we decided to try Wildseed again. Thankfully, we got a seat after waiting for about 20 minutes. But the tables were not cleared as the servers were occupied. Even though it was mainly self-service (as we need to collect the food by ourselves), they were still shorthanded of staff. We were not quite sure how it works because some were served by the waiters while others have to collect the food from the counter.
You have to get a seat inside the cafe where Poppy floral studio is also housed. What a clever idea to share your space with a floral shop! That’s free flower decor for the cafe itself.
As you would have expected, the place looked very pretty and it would make any girls (and boys) go ‘awww…so pretty’. Off they went to snap their ‘instagrammable’ pictures…. like me.
I’m not judging.
Wildseed cafe is popular for its sandwiches and cakes. Nomad Gallant coffee is also working with them cater to those serious caffeine addicts.
There were two counters where you can order your food from but apparently, you have to order your drinks and cakes from the counter stationed inside.
We wanted to order sandwiches but it was ALL sold out. We were only left with 3 choices – salad, beef sausage and some other items which I couldn’t remember. Then we headed in to order some drinks and cakes. I had cafe latte while my other half had this unique sparkling drink called Queen’s sorrow.
With the crowd, we took a long time to queue up to order our food and what made it worst is when the lady at the counter who is taking our orders was taking a lot of time to key in the order. Worse still, they had no change for $5 and they ended up giving us five dollars-worth of 20 cent coins.
Our mains didn’t come but instead, our cakes arrived first. We ordered mango passionfruit cheesecake and their blue pea cupcake with coconut jam. It tasted alright to me, not exactly that fantastic but average.
And my cup of coffee was disappointing. It’s like the coffee was brewed in a rush and the foam was not thick enough.
We taught that the worse was over as we were anticipating for our mains to come.
Their other dishes were a total flop. It turns out that my so-called salad is just a few leafy lettuces, tomatoes and broken pieces of toasted bread. That costs me $15. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s not about whether it is cafe price or not because this salad didn’t even taste that good either.
After sulking over my salad, my partner’s beef sausage finally came and guess what? It’s just a piece of sausage sitting on the plate. It’s totally not cafe food. It’s fine dining restaurant food that tastes like an average sausage. Why would anyone say that their food is delicious? That’s another $15 off the pocket. Expensive? Yes.
That’s not it. They got our orders wrong and taught we ordered fries. But we did not. Since it was their mistake made, they decided to just give us the fries. Yup, this plate of stringy fries was on the house but it’s not going to change our first impressions of this cafe. Guys, there are other better cafes out there so why bother?
Maybe I should have just ordered this super skinny potato peel fries because it tasted better than my ‘garden’ salad.
