CBT: Papa Palheta

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Once in a long while in the search for good coffee place, one comes across a real gem. A place where it all comes together. A place where you just find yourself totally relaxed the moment you step in. A safe-haven to escape from the hustle of life.

Welcome to Papa Palheta.

I have to admit, located on Hooper Road about a 10 minute walk from the nearest Newton MRT station, Papa Palheta is a little out of the way. But ahh yes, I think that’s part of the charm. Nestled away in a quiet corner of a small private estate just off CTE, Papa Palheta consists of a roasting room, a coffee-making area, an outdoor courtyard and a ‘tasting bar’.

Papa Palheta manages to toe the line between class and quaint supremely. While the coffee making area and the courtyard are mainly coloured white with some classy black lines, the tasting bar is air-conditioned and beautifully furnished without giving you an overcrowded and rubbishy feel like entering the house of a pyschiatric hoarder. Too many cafes trying to be quaint end up feeling like a garang-guni man’s house. If I might say so, I actually felt it was more comfortable than my own home. John Mayer playing in the background; cool air-conditioning, quiet peace. Perfect for rest; I got my Good Friday blog post written there actually.

Forgive me for saying the ridiculous. A place dedicated to carrying beans back personally from all over the world, roasting them on your own in your own little roaster (AND not serving anything except coffee) should really serve good coffee. I don’t think I really need to comment on the quality of the coffee served here. It needs to be good enough for customers to come for that reason alone; without other excuses.

And good coffee in a variety of ways too! Besides the regular espresso which really does intensify the flavours, they also serve coffee made in French Presses and a new drip station as well.

Papa Palheta operates on a very interesting concept. The business-owners have avoided the traditional cafe concept and created a different business model based on selling beans instead of coffee-by-the-cup. While the first thing they do when you step in is to offer you a cuppa, they don’t actually charge you for it. Hopefully, you are impressed enough to get some beans which are very competitively priced (similar to Starbucks beans, except probably a whole lot fresher).You could try as many different kinds of coffee as well according to their big range of beans; except you would probably not be able to sleep that night.

Some of you may worry like me: how am I going to go to this wonderful place every week if I had to be obligated to buy coffee powder week in and week out? Especially when a bag of beans lasts on average about 3 weeks? Not to fret; there’s a tip box for you to give what you want to give if you’re not buying beans. (I suggest you could tip close to what you’d pay for a similar coffee elsewhere, unless you haven’t got much of a conscience.) Thankfully, with wonderful coffee, great ambience and chatty staff, you really wouldn’t have much of your Singaporean buffet mentality springing up.

Coffee Tasting Experience

It turns out that they were having a Coffee Tasting session a couple of days after my first visit, and the staff had invited me to pop by. I was free that morning (and also very interested in learning more) and so I did pop by on Saturday morning. There were about 15 of us in that small room, blind-smelling and blind-tasting the 4 different kinds of coffee. I realised that even though we hardly can tell the differences in the coffee when we just drink one cappuccino on its own, smelling and processing carefully the different kinds side by side is a totally different experience.

You can really smell the differences in the flavours; the earthy, grassy ones, the sweet-smelling ones, the bitter ones and the spicier ones. I’m still really a noob at this, so I really couldn’t make out the ‘much like grapefruit, hints of cinammon and vanilla bean, chocolatey caramel’ kinds of descriptions. For one, I can’t remember what grapefruit actually tastes like and I’ve never eaten vanilla beans before. Heh. :p

But as always, it’s very interesting and fun to have all of us noobs together pretending to know what we’re talking about when it comes to the coffee. HAHA.

I love this place. Serious. It’s got no Wi-fi, I think I only saw a couple of powerpoints. But then again, in a place so relaxing, I really wouldn’t want to be thinking of work or the lack of a good cheesecake. I’d want to be with a good friend. All thumbs-up for me. I’m sure you’d love it too.

Papa Palheta

140 Bukit Timah Road (Off Hooper Road)

9 799 0420

http://www.papapalheta.com