D' Good Cafe is a cafe situated at Holland Village that is pretty popular with students, judging by the customer make up when I visited on a Wednesday afternoon last week. I was pretty excited to visit, since I recently heard of it when my friend recommended its birthday offer (pay the price of a large Frappe and receive a 3-Litre Jumbo Frappe - only on the day of your birthday). The cafe occupies the 2nd and 3rd floor, sharing the building with another establishment. Finding it was not difficult though thanks to the visible sign placed at the entrance. To get up to the cafe, you can take the lift or climb the stairs. The lift is a pretty interesting one- not your conventional lift, but a platform which you stand on and rises once you press the button for the upper levels. It appears somewhat futuristic, with its all-gleaming-white colour and different design (there is no ceiling so you can really see where you are heading). A pretty fun ride, so do give it a try!
The cafe starts on the second floor where you order. There are seats available both on the partitioned section of the 2nd floor and 3rd floor. There are 2 swings located on the area of green facing the window, along with small round tables each, adding originality to the experience of hanging out with friends in the cafe. We got a table on the 3rd floor, which has slightly more tables than the 2nd floor, but no less crowded at the time we were there. A thing I couldn't understand was, the chairs could not be pushed in to the tables, so we had a hard time trying to get to our table on the far side of the room, having to squeeze in between the tiny crevices between occupied chairs of adjacent tables.
We ordered their Eggs Benedict ($13.50) and Fresh Sea Prawn Aglio Olio ($16). The Eggs Benedict were pretty well executed, the yolk flowing gloriously smoothly when punctuated over the muffins while the egg white was fully set. The velvety Hollandaise sauce also complemented the dish well, along with the yummy streaky bacon. However, I found the muffin to be a little too soggy, presumably from the butter given the oily hint to it, hence leading to it being unable to soak up the egg yolk fully. Overall however, this dish is worth a try.
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| Eggs Benedict |
The Fresh Sea Prawn Aglio Olio came highly recommended, but sadly, it failed to impress. The pasta wasn't cooked al dente. In fact, it seemed overcooked and flaccid. The sea prawns were fresh, as promised, but still did not help to lift the dish by much, since the fragrance of the aglio olio was simply absent, perhaps from an ill-measured proportion of garlic/olive oil. You may skip this dish, since for its price, there are numerous much better renditions out there.
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| Fresh Sea Prawns Aglio Olio, Green Tea Frappuccino and Eggs Benedict. |
Happily, the cafe did good on its Green Tea Cream Frappe ($6.50). I loved the taste of green tea in it and the oomph-appropriate sweetness of it.
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| D' Good Cafe Signature: Maple Sea Salt Cheesecake |
For dessert, it was of course, the cafe's touted signature Maple Sea Salt Cheesecake. It was a decent attempt on it, though I found the cheesecake to be less smooth than I would have liked it to be and the biscuit base was somewhat soggy. Nothing to scream about, though I did enjoy the saltiness of it.
The cafe was pretty noisy with the lunchtime crowd, but as the afternoon wore on, the crowd dwindled as did the noise level. If you are looking to study there, it does make a decent place (if you do not mind hard chairs) to mug but do try to avoid the meal times. The cafe also has a few cute places for pictures, think the swings (2nd floor) and chairs with toy bears occupying (3rd floor). Overall, a place you can visit to try once. (:
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