Author: Alex Chua
Home-grown cafe Strangers’ Reunion, located at Kampong Bahru Road just 5 minutes’ walk from Outram Park MRT, is set to redefine and elevate café dining experience with a new all-day brunch menu.
Best-known for serving some of the best coffee and all-day brunches in town, this time the new brunch menu features inventive cooking method with a conscience. Using fresh, seasonal and upcycled ingredients and sauces homemade from scratch, the resulting dishes reveals a level of sophistication more often associated with fine dining establishments. Now that’s more than a cuppa in a café scene.
Take the Salmon Skin Chips ($11.90) for instance. This moreish appetiser utilises salmon offcuts and trimmings from the café’s homemade coffee smoked salmon and deep-fried it to become a dish by itself. Studded with goma, avocado coulis and coffee-smoked salmon puree, it presents a juxtaposition of nutty, salty, sweet and sour flavours without being too overwhelming or oily.
The Snapper Ceviche ($13.90) contain a combination of snapper chunks cured in lime juice, avocado, cilantro and red onions. Light and refreshing, it is the perfect starter dish for a brunch date.
For the vegans and cauliflower fans, the Roasted Cauliflower Salad ($14.50) is the choice pick. It comes in 2 ways – charred to yield caramelised florets with deep hazelnut notes, and pickled in rice wine vinegar infused with black pepper and bay leaves. We had the caramelised ones and it is crunchy and irresistible. It’s just so good I am almost a vegan-convert by this dish.
Coming to the mains, the hearty Pork and Broccoli ($21.90) satisfies me thoroughly. Taking a leaf from the upcycling philosophy, the tender roasted meat uses the under-utilized pork collar ends and broccoli stems as accompanying greens. Complemented with 3 sauces – broccoli puree, coffee shoyu and burnt onion jus to give an extra depth of flavour. Simple, straightforward and in your face delicious.
Here’s the savoury protein – Pan Roasted Chicken Breast ($21.90). Chicken breast cloaked in a house-made jerk sauce and accompanying succotash of greens. I like how the sauce compliments and further accentuates the succulent meat.
Here’s a dish common in the café scene, Strangers’ Coffee Smoked Salmon on Toast ($18.90). Well, not quite so. The house-cured salmon is cold-smoked with spent coffee grounds and hickory wood to give the aromatic coffee-smoked salmon, while an espresso-infused crème fraiche is slathered on toasted sourdough bread. Sounds too caffeinated? It is not, the coffee is used just to give that light coffee aroma.
Undoubtedly one of THE go-to cafes for its quality coffee, now the café – in its cool tones of greys, whites and wood – can include inventiveness and upcycling to its name with the introduction of the all-day brunch menu.
Strangers’ Reunion
33/35 Kampong Bahru Road, Singapore 169355
Operating Hours: 9am – 6pm daily
