Breakfast at Epicurious, Singapore

A Singapore favorite strikes this breakfast lover as a little lackluster. Updated experience here

Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. Not the cereal on-the-go breakfast, but the something eggy, something cheesy, maybe a pancake here or there and endless cups of coffee kind of breakfast. Breakfast for lunch is good. Breakfast for dinner is better. But a proper leisurely weekend breakfast is simply divine.

With my it-doesn’t-get-any-better-than-breakfast mindset it was natural that I had to check out what Time Out Singapore called “the best breakfast in Singapore.” And so it was that this Sunday we found ourselves strolling to Robertson Quay to Epicurious to see what all the fuss was about.

We sat outside, as everyone does, at one of the several hodge-podge, mismatching table sets. As one would expect at 11am on a Sunday the place is a bit overrun – the crowd being made up of couples, friends meeting up, families with kids, with some folks even bringing their dogs! As a result, it took a good long bit before we were able to capture the waiter’s attention to order.

I ordered the Full Monty aka Hobb’s Choice ($20SGD – pics up top) which is a full on English-style breakfast with three fried eggs, sausage, bacon, grilled tomato, grilled mushrooms, baked beans, buttered toast, orange juice and coffee. Paul decided on the Breakfast Burrito ($12SGD) including two scrambled eggs with chorizo, tomato, cheddar cheese and tomato chilli relish, wrapped in a flour tortilla with a side of salsa. Water was served in repurposed liquor bottles – which Paul found alarming at first after seeing a mom pour her child from a bottle of Absolute Mandarin…that is until he realized it was water.

It was a good thing they offered the Sunday paper, because service is to put it politely…quite leisurely. We actually asked for our own bottle of water but in the end it never arrived and for the remainder of the meal we served ourselves from the stand by the door.

When coffee arrived I was unexpectedly delighted by the homey coffee cups decorated with roosters and then ultimately quite pleased with the quality of the coffee – a nice rich brew signified by the crema on top. This perhaps was the highlight of the meal…

Paul found his burrito good, but a tad bland. And he was also disappointed by the chopped onions and tomatoes passing themselves off as salsa. Paul wished that the chorizo had been spicier and would have preferred it to be chopped rather than included as big chunks, giving the aromatic sausage an opportunity to permeate the burrito.

Unfortunately my eggs ordered well done, clarified in description by “please, no runny yolks,” stumped the chef. The first batch sent out was so overcooked that it was in fact burnt in appearance in and flavour. And then when I requested a re-do, the second batch was over-easy and therefore runny. I gave up and did not ask for yet another, but it seems the restaurant wanted to make sure we were pleased and tried yet a third time. The result was perfectly cooked eggs, but they arrived only after I had finished and was ready for the check. Not only was this disappointing, but also some other aspects of the meal were less than ideal – the bacon was undercooked and the orange juice a bit watery. The sausage and potatoes were rather average, but interestingly enough, the grilled tomato and mushrooms were excellent and became the unwitting stars of the show.

This one is too burnt…