Thursday, July 19, 2012

Carpenter and Cook

So... I had a pretty shitty day today. Drove my mom's car out to work and scratched it while parking, and mum and dad are both pretty grumpy about it so that makes me super grumpy too. Seriously need to work on my parking skills, because the method they teach you in driving school totally does not work. Which is why my last 'sundays as usual' with wenwen & jingjing (lol I make my friends sound like pandas) we decided to venture out of our normal Orchard road haunts and headed instead to the newly opened Carpenter and Cook, which was much more convenient for me because it's just a few minutes away from home. Before I went tho, I did my research like any new driver should-- I google-mapped it and to my dismay saw only parallel parking in front of the place. Luckily I searched around the area and saw a perfectly lovely public carpark, which I hoped would be empty enough to park as lousily as I desired, and it was! AWESOME. 10 points for perfect location picking, Carpenter and Cook.

When we got to the cafe it was mad packed, a sure sign for a cafe set far away from any public transport (ie. not walking distance from an MRT station) that it's good enough to lure people in despite the minor inconvenience. It reminds me very much of the cafes I frequented in Sydney-- good coffee, quaint pastries and lotsa quirk packed into the decor. The communal tables are also not very common in Singapore, but its a trend that seems to be catching on, though I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. I quite like being able to have a small cozy corner to myself and my friends. They sell almost everything you see in store, from the chairs and stools you sit on (ranging from about $200 a piece) to the tables and typewriters all over the place. While not the most comfy because of the tight squeeze, the eats and drinks were good enough to keep us there. I had the pear frangipani tart (or something like that) and the crust, oh deer lawd that crust is absolute perfection. Same for jingjing's lemon custard tart, and I took a salted caramel chocolate tart to work the next day that was all but demolished in minutes. I would have bought some of the yummy looking jams but I had just spent a bomb on shoes at the Club21 sale so was feeling poor. Basically, shoes>jam/preserves. Next time I'm getting one of those delicious looking meringue tarts, even though I have an aversion to passionfruit (I always feel like I'm eating body soap), and the magnificent pavlova/meringue that was gone by the time I had digested my tart and was ready for seconds. Although I'll be sure to practice my parking and attempt the parallel lots soon!!