Hello there!
For this month, we’re posting under the theme of Loco Locals, so today’s post is on Ah Sam Cold Drink Stall, a café in Singapore that serves locally inspired craft cocktails!
The name itself is already reminiscent of the nostalgia I once had in primary and secondary school. Somehow, adding an “Ah” in front of the name just made the bar so slanged out and… tastefully Singaporean.
And look at those metal shutter gates. Makes me reminisce those days in primary school, waiting around in the morning for the stalls to open and roll up those shutters so I could grab myself a cup of Milo before heading to the parade square.
Somehow, I can’t tell if they wanted to go for the typical Kopitiam drinks stall aesthetic, or the traditional Chinese medicine clinic aesthetic (look at those pull-out shelves, man. I have my fair share of traumatic experience eating bitter powdered medicine from those godforsaken shelves).
But anyways, four colleagues from the office decided to go for yoga together, and somehow thought it would be a good idea to visit Ah Sam Cold Drink Stall before that. (It was a bad idea. While I was downward dogging and cactus posing my way to nirvana (and by nirvana, I mean hell), I could have sworn I tasted a little bit of that Milo cocktail in my mouth, mixed with some carrot cake).
But yes, back to Ah Sam Cold Drink Stall.
We made a reservation on that day itself and were lucky because we saw some people getting turned away due to a lack of seats. Once we’d checked in, we sat down and ordered some grub and drinks.
We had Satay Babe (S$15), which is a burger by Bergs Gourmet Burgers. It’s a slow-cooked pork belly burger in pineapple soy with a grilled pineapple ring, lettuce, onion and satay sauce. When we ate it, the consensus was that the meat of the burger was slightly too tough for our liking, because boy was it dry. The slab of meat in the centre was thick and we couldn’t taste the satay sauce at all.
Now this. This is their XO Carrot Cake (S$12), and this dish is the dish we were most impressed by. The carrot cake came in bigger chunks, and when paired with the egg below it, was pretty good. The chilli added a much-needed flavour kick that was simply sedap. It’s probably good to have with beer, if you need some Asian food to go alongside your alcohol.
We also ordered a Dim Sum Bundle (S$16), with an assortment of 10 different dim sums. It was pretty alright. Tastes like your standard dim sum fair. Nothing much to shout about.
Then came the cocktails.
Their signature cocktails each go for S$22, and we ordered the Tak Qiu (Milo Old Fashioned) and a Nonya Cendol cocktail. The Milo Old Fashioned is the one in the regular glass, while the Nonya Cendol came in a pretty goblet. Surprising, huh? We were pretty surprised too, cause we expected the Milo Old Fashioned to be milky.
Upon trying Tak Qiu, everybody around the table had scrunched faces. How would I describe it… it tastes like a night of regrets and reminded me of sitting at the Clarke Quay bridge, swigging alcohol in an attempt to get high before going into the club. It wasn’t a very pleasant drink. We went at this drink with the attitude of “pinch your nose and get it down”. Waste not, want not, especially when one cocktail is S$22.
The Nonya Cendol cocktail was better out of the two and tasted worlds better than the Milo Cocktail. According to Lynn, this tasted like Baileys with a slight coconut fragrance. It just felt like I was drinking Cendol, with an alcoholic kick.
We went around the table to ask for their ratings. Dee, Kiki and I all gave this bar a 3 out of 5, because we weren’t impressed with the Milo cocktail and the Pork burger. Lynn originally gave it a 3 as well, but once she got to the bottom of the Nonya Cendol cocktail (there was gula melaka at the end, and it was too sweet, so it caught her completely off-guard), she dropped her rating down to 2.
We’re democratic here, so we’re going to go for the majority. 3 out of 5 stars!
Till next time, lovelies!
Ah Sam Cold Drink Stall
Address: 12 Haji Lane, Singapore 189205
Opening Hours: 12pm to 10.30pm (Mon to Sun)
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