New places to get soft-serve ice cream in flavours like chendol and hojicha

OVERRUN

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18 Baghdad Street. Open Tue-Thu, noon-8.30pm; Fri, 2-8.30pm; Sat & Sun, noon-9.30pm. @overrun.sg

Singapore flavours take the stage at this soft-serve shack off Arab Street. 

The mainstay is the chendol soft-serve ($6): gula melaka-flavoured soft-serve ice cream, finished with chendol bits, gula melaka syrup, and a dash of dessicated coconut. 

And if you're mad about durians, throw in another $1 for a scoop of durian puree. 

The second combi changes every week, with ideas like red velvet soft-serve with liuquid cream cheese and marshmallows, bandung soft-serve with grass jelly and lychees, and coconut soft-serve with red ruby and jackfruit.

They're known to sell out early, so down put off your visit too close to the end of their operating hours!

SMALL POTATOES ICE CREAMERY

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#B1-131 Square 2, 10 Sinaran Drive, tel: 6352-2661. Open daily, 11am-10pm. fb.com/SmallPotatoesSG (Look out for their new outlet at 313 @ Somerset which is opening in October 2016.)

The first Singapore outpost of a Japanese-inspired chain from Hong Kong, Small Potatoes offers three options from the soft-serve machine: Japanese sea salt, Japanese purple potatoes (not to be confused with yam), and a two-tone version that combines both flavours.

For the purple potatoes soft-serve, the purple tubers are imported especially from Japan, and churned with Hokkaido milk. 

Soft-serves start from $5 for a cup (it's $5.50 for the mixed flavours), but you should really consider the parfaits too.

Small Potato Party ($9.50), one of their bestsellers, looks set to be a real flavour party with mini Japanese sweet potatoes, purple potato paste, warabi green tea mochi, shiratama, purple potato sticks, crispy rice and azuki beans. 

 

MATCHAYA

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#01-72 Icon Village, 12 Gopeng Street, tel: 9767-9811. Open daily, noon-8pm. fb.com/matchayasg

After months of plying their bottles of matcha and hojicha latte, Matchaya has finally set up shop at Icon Village ─ lucky you, CBD folks.

If the zen setup of the kiosk is any indication, the soft-serve ($5.90) here stays true to classically Japanese flavours. 

The standard ones are matcha and hojicha, which are swopped every week. You can even go affogato-style with a shot of matcha or hojicha for an extra $2.10. If you want to lay on the toppings, prices go start from $1, with choices like kinako powder and dark chocolate sauce.

They also showcase a "mystery flavour" ─ past examples include black sesame, genmaicha, royal milk tea and kinako ─ at least twice a month on weekends. 

The good news is that they're awaiting a new machine, due to arrive in a couple of weeks, which will allow them to house two different soft-serves concurrently. Just stay tuned to their Facebook page to keep tabs on the flavour-of-the-week. 

Matchaya has also been bulking up the confectioneries menu with macarons ($3 each), swiss rolls (from $4.90 a slice), and matcha and hojicha spreads ($19.90 for a 250g bottle).