Think board games are too old school? Once you check out these spots that serve cafe-style meals with their huge inventory of traditional card and board games (think UNO and Scrabble), you (and your LO) might just ditch digital and go analogue.
Move your move and start spending quality leisure time eating and playing at these 5 food & gaming joints.
With over 200 games to choose from, The Mind Cafe creates a warm and inviting space for friends, families, and colleagues to gather.
Choose from classic favourites like Taboo and Clue to more obscure games, or those that your youngins will love. Its extensive food menu includes all kinds of comfort food such as lasagne, fried rice and a free flow of chips.
The normal fee is $5.00 an hour per person (excluding food and drinks), but do look out for promotions that run every month. Bonus: Kids below age 7 play for free!
For a more revolutionary idea of a cafe, try Coffeemin. Promoted as “your home away from home,” Coffeemin is designed to be a space where you are free to chat, work, play games or read as long as you respect others within the same space as well.
It offers a mix of several video games, boards games, a pool table, and of course, coffee. But the owners are kind enough to allow customers to bring their own food and drink onto the premises as well.
The cafe also operates like a co-working space with computer stations for study and work, and classes like knitting and calligraphy are also held on certain days too.
The cost of using these community-friendly space: $6.50 for the first hour per person on weekdays and $8.50 for the first hour on weekends, with each subsequent 10 minutes charged at $1. Daily spending is capped at $30 regardless of the time you spend in a day.
And you can even have the whole space to yourself for, say, your LO’s b’day party — you just need to enquire and book in advance.
Singapore’s first board game cafe (it was established in 2003) stocks a large selection of games (about 600!) that both kids and adults will love.
A full halal (permissible or prescribed by Muslim law) menu that includes familiar dishes such as Fish and Chips and Dory Pasta, and drinks (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) will keep you satisfied while you play the day (and night!) away.
Gaming starts at $4.50 per hour for each guest, with several packages such as Beer Gaming and Tapas Gaming available.
Specialists in tabletop gaming, Battle Bunker positions itself as both a hobby game store as well as a gaming arena. How it works: one half of the store works as a retail shop, while the other half operates as SG’s largest tabletop gamingcentre.
As a shop, it sells all manners of games, collectibles and figures, ranging from the kid-friendly Pokemon to the old classic Star Wars. As a gaming spot, gamers and players can rent games from their library to play within the space.
Aside from casual sessions of playing Nendoroid, it also hosts in-store, large scale national and regional tournaments and leagues. But don’t worry — if your little warrior and you are newbies, it also holds basic how-to-play tutorial sessions now and then to introduce new recruits to the gaming world.
Just note that at both of its locations in Bugis+and West Coast Plaza, only bottled drinks and water are being sold (no food at the table, please), so grab a bite outside before you enter.
Talk about a walk down SG’s memory lane — Old School Delights immerses customers in a full-on #throwback moment with retro green-tiled walls, chalkboards and old-school wooden dining furniture.
To pile on the step-back-time impression, there’s also local memorabilia in the form of typewriters, rotary dial phones, and vintage toys and games.
But don’t mistake this as just another board game cafe — it serves proper local comfort food such as its signature mee siam (rice vermicelli in sweet and tart gravy) and nasi lemak (fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk), as well as desserts like chendol (green sago or rice flour worms served with coconut milk) and pandan chiffon cake (light fluffy green-coloured sponge cake).
And after you tuck into the delish hawker fare, occupy yourself with retro card games such as Happy Family and Old Maid, and traditional games like Five Stonesand Snakes & Ladders.
This articles was first published in The Finders.
