visiting a gorgeous HDB cafe, and trying BOP Gelato for the first time

Well the lesson learnt today is: never go out on a public holiday. My original plan had to be cancelled as all 4 cafes that I originally planned to visit were CLOSED—and I only realised this after commuting for 1.5h to the east (cries in westie). Luckily, my friend and I managed to improvise and chance upon a cute cafe which happened to be open! Enter, Rise: Coffee | Bakehouse | Gelato!

We got the strawberry cheesecake teacake and the goma kinako cake. Although the cakes were a bit on the drier side, the cream made up for it. The black sesame cream on the goma cake was especially good. For some reason, I use Hvala’s black sesame cake as the benchmark for all other black sesame cakes; while I still prefer the one from Hvala (my personal bias), the goma cake felt like a less concentrated, less moist version of the Hvala black sesame cake. I would recommend it to those who are trying black sesame for the first time, or prefer lighter black sesame flavours.

Sadly, the 1h dining in time limit meant that we had to bounce as soon as we finished our food. We went to Idaten Udon in NEX for lunch (which I forgot to take any pictures of), but trust me when I say their udon is sooooo good, not to mention affordable! Will be visiting an outlet in the west in the future.

No cafe-hopping trip is complete without dessert. We made our way to Birds of Paradise Gelato (Craig Rd) after seeing this outlet appear numerous times on social media for its beautiful interior.

We tried their lychee raspberry and vanilla fig flavours. The lychee raspberry was refreshing, but got a bit sweet after awhile. The vanilla fig had a deeper, almost musky taste to it. Definitely a more classy, timeless flavour.

Rise: Coffee | Bakehouse | Gelato
Instagram @folksatrise
Address: 148 Potong Pasir Ave 1, #01-53, Singapore 350148

Birds of Paradise Gelato (Craig Rd)
Website
Address: 53 Craig Rd, #01-01, Singapore 089691