This is really a very back-dated entry. I have visted this particular cafe last month or so and finally found time and space to pen this down in my blog. Old Hen is some where that I actually planned to visit. I have heard so much about their cold brew coffee and seen so many nice pictures of the legendary bottle in Instagram. Thus, that Sunday morning after my church service, I have decided to give my normal Starbucks at Raffles City a miss and travel down to Rangoon road for this new experience. The cafe was suppose to start operation at 10am and when I was there two young dudes greeted me and asked me if I was here for the cafe. I replied, ‘Yes!’ They told me that they have forgotten the key to the cafe and the father is sending the key down. It would probably take about an hour before the key arrived. Oh…I was rather amused and surprised by the annoucement. I decided to take a cool morning walk down Rangoon road to see if there’s anything else that would excite me.
I returned to Old Hen and was impressed by the neatness of the cafe and the simplicity of it all. Its a very white based cafe and yes….with some dried flowers. I love the big, long table the most. I asked about the cold brew coffee and was very interested to know what is it all about. Basically it was a unique way of brewing coffee with cold water instead of hot water. Not many cafes have this except for Chye Seng Huat Hardware and one or two more. The cold brew is supposedly effective in extracting out the bitter taste of the coffee and making the coffee smoother. When I took the first sip from the bottle, I did felt that the coffee was smoother and certainly tasted good without the bitterness.
I managed to get Terry, one of the partners of the cafe to chat with me for a very long time. His other partner is his twin brother and they both came back from Australia and decided to start Old Hen cafe together. I thought its pretty cool to start something together like this one….and they went to Bangkok for their barista training. I shared with them my cafe hopping experience, both in Singapore and Thailand. It was such a good time of sharing that I actually walked out of the cafe without paying for it. Yes…I actually did that! I was so embarrased when I found out about it and called them immediately to apologise. I paid them evetually…yes I did….!
Ok, coming back to the cafe…it does have alot of potential to develop further. They definitely need to beef up a little for food….and probably a bit more advertising and publicity. Rangoon Road is emerging quite strongly as a cafe haunt soon…..so they have a good location here.
The Gatekeeper
Anthropology 