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A rather interesting name that caught my eye, hence the visit back to the popular lane of Yong Siak Street, the new uptown place for cafes in Singapore. Previous visits to Forty Hands and SocialHaus have left me rather skeptical about the cafes popping up here, with the seeming focus on form rather than substance. PoTeaTo, however, managed to surprise me with its flavourful twist, and a slight resemblance to pub food I've had overseas.

Well, no prizes for guessing that the cafe name came from the highlight of tea and (sweet) potato based dishes served. A quick glance at the menu, there wasn't much to choose from, works pretty good for people like me who usually takes forever to decide with the wide variety.

Fourth stop: Smitten Coffee & Tea Bar

As our coffee journey continues for the day, we were half coffee-comatosed by the time we reached Smitten. A small cafe hidden in the rather obscure area of Robertson Quay, it's quite an inaccessible place to go if you're taking public transport. Unless, of course, you're looking for a leisurely walk and chill the rest of the day at the cafe.

We were smitten by the whimsical touch of the cafe, simple and unpretentious. It was definitely a great ambience for a Sunday afternoon, lazing around at the benches outside, catching the river breeze occasionally.







Fifth stop: Forty Hands

Well, this was perhaps the most raved about place when the Tiong Bahru estate just started its bloom of all the cafes. We've also done a review separately on their other dishes.



It was quite out of the way, hidden in the residential area of one-north. I've heard lots about the coffee here and this was one of the stops that I was looking forward to the most. Indeed, it didn't disappoint at all. It's definitely a place that's worth the visit despite the inaccessibility.

Heard of pub crawl? Yup, this is the same concept, except they do it with coffee, crawling round the island to cure that coffee addiction. Hopping around cafes is probably one of my favourite pastime, searching for the best with the best ambience, for hidden gems and of course, the best cafe menu for brunch/desserts/pastries.

This is the first time it's been organised, by social enterprise Bettr Barista Coffee Academy. It was part of the activities organised under a theme of Bettr Week, promoting socially responsible businesses for a Bettr world, through Bettr coffee! I thought it was an extremely good opportunity to find out more about the cafe culture in Singapore, after seeing how there are so many sprouting out now and been yearning to visit them for the longest time ever. This gave me the perfect excuse, and learning more about Bettr Barista's social cause touched me a great deal.

I've always believed that social enterprises shouldn't be leveraging too heavily on their social mission, because ultimately, you don't want to simply breed sympathy. Bettr Barista did it well, by focusing on their core business of making Bettr coffee, before telling the stories of their journey to a better world. They support disadvantaged and underprivileged women by providing them with skills to a better life. Besides being a coffee academy training them to be baristas, they also look into the socio-emotional and physical management, a multi-faceted holistic view of impacting lives. This was an added bonus to the good coffee, service and ambience we enjoyed at their rather inaccessible yet cosy premises.

We visited 6 coffee stops in a day and here's a summary of our verdict, in order of preference:
1. Jimmy Monkey
2. Bettr Barista
3. Broers Cafe
4. Smitten Coffee & Tea Bar
5. Forty Hands
6. Liberty

First stop: Bettr Barista
I shall save the best for the last, so in accordance to our order of visiting, our first stop for the day was Bettr Barista. A place where the staff were very warm and friendly, willing to share so much of what they know, and even tips on home techniques for making good coffee. I was impressed by their coffee, and more so by their hospitality.







Not very helpful if you're walking along the main streets of Pertain Road and not going into the forks. It's right next to the salon along the main street, so walk in further and you'll spot this sign that leads you in.



This had a stronger flavour of chocolate in it and was a little sweet for my liking. It would be been better if the coffee taste was stronger. Nonetheless, I thought the coffee used was quite good, it wasn't acidic and left a fragrant after taste.



It is within walking distance from Farrer Park MRT, but do take note of the ultra dusty air while on the way there. There's just too much construction around, which I thought kinda affected our mood while trying to find our way there. People around were very friendly though, helping us navigate around and for a moment, I felt like I was travelling all over again!





/edit: According to feedback from the people at Liberty, the sharp taste wasn't an indicator of the acidity and in fact, their espresso blend had little acidity in it. Not too sure if the term was used correctly, but simply put, it was quite sour and you could taste the sharpness that was harsher than the usual americano I've tried before, with no milk at all to round off the taste. You might want to try the milder ones if you don't fancy very sharp coffee.

The presentation of desserts has always been important to me as desserts are usually my form of indulgence. I was shocked that the chef told us as a matter-of-fact that the ice cream had slipped and simply placed it on our table after that, serving the next table the exact same dessert with the ice cream intact. The ice cream was also very melted, and as we peered over the next table, it looked almost the same.

I shall not be biased, so beyond the presentation, I was actually quite interested to find out what a torte tastes like. Digging into the rich chocolate portion, it was extremely smooth and tasted just like a slightly harder version of pudding. It wasn't served warm as what we'd expected but I supposed the chilled version goes better with the smooth velvet texture of the torte. It was rich, yet not overpowering nor overly sweet, and didn't have the bitter taste of dark chocolates. It won me, the non chocolate lover, over and I thought this was one of the rare chocolate desserts that I actually enjoyed. It really depends though, as my friends thought it was a little too rich for their liking. I thought it went really well with the ice cream, though it would have been better if the ice cream wasn't on the verge of becoming milk shake right upon serving. It was very soft throughout, probably been placed outside for quite a while before it reached our table, or the fridge wasn't working very well.