Beat the heat with some soft-serve ice cream in unusual flavours like hojicha, chendol and purple potatoes. Here’s where to get your fix.
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!
#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.
#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).