I was in the Alexandra Road neighborhood, and craving for a cold drink. I remembered seeing a new cafe in this neighborhood on my Instagram feed. I looked up the cafe on the Internet and found the address: Blk 22 Havelock Road, very close to Beo Crescent (where I go to eat my favorite Hainanese curry rice).
Located at the ground floor of a block of HDB flats, the Tastemaker Store is bright, spacious, and generous with space between tables (you are less likely to jab the chaps sitting at the next table with your elbow, and vice versa). The staff told me that they are only two weeks old, and this probably explains why the cafe was rather quiet on a weekday afternoon of the school holidays. The cafe has a small menu selling standard cafe food – ham and cheese sandwiches, egg mayo sandwiches, hotdog buns, etc. Nothing that stood out, except for the lemon curd toast that caught my eye. There were two or three cakes on display when I was there; whatever they had available looked like they were baked by Maple & Market, but I may be wrong.
I wanted a gelato that was listed on the menu but this was not yet available. So I ordered an iced latte, a lemon curd toast with clotted cream, and a hot Americano for my mother.
The iced latte was a tasty thirst-quencher; delicious, and not too sweet, or too milky. I did not recall seeing an expresso machine, so I am not sure what the cafe uses to make their coffees. I did not quite enjoy the lemon curd toast though. The lemon curd was not bad, but I felt that the bread, which had a chewy, muffin-like texture that tasted very dry, did not go well with the tangy curd. The clotted cream was a waste because its rich creamy flavour had been buried under the strong lemon curd flavour.
Until such time when the cafe becomes crowded, for now, the place is a nice and quiet place to chill out in the afternoons. Or after a scrumptious, sweaty meal of curry rice at Beo Crescent!
