Sarnies stand by a simple motto: Make “coffee that brings the city to life”. Since they opened at Telok Ayer in 2017, this Aussie-style cafe has lived up to their promise, serving up hearty sandwiches and proper cups of coffee to an adoring brunch crowd.
With Lonely Planet rating their coffees to be one of the best in Singapore, and local bloggers swooning over their quality ingredients, Sarnies’ popularity as a brunch destination is well-deserved. Not much has been said, however, about their dinner menu. A pity, considering how their pasta and steaks may be just as good as the toasts and bagels.
I had their Miso Salmon Carbonara ($19++) on my first dinner at Sarnies and I left impressed by how cohesive this entire dish was. With fusion dishes, chefs can miss the forest for the trees, focusing too much on ingenuity but too little on coherency. But this carbonara wasn’t one of such dishes.
The miso paste thoroughly settled into the cream base, melding into a sauce that induced both a sense of confusion and deja vu within me. I had expected to taste the earthy and fermented savouriness of miso within their carbonara, but I did not expect it to surprise me with its mellow creaminess.
Like how a dash of lemon juice adds nuance to a cream pasta, the miso paste also enlivened their carbonara, easing its initial creaminess while jazzing it up with tinges of savouriness. The result was a well-balanced (still jelak though) plate of pasta, packing the right amount of creaminess for a satisfying carbonara; yet, it also reminded me of home-cooked miso soup, comforting me with its homely taste.
All that was left for the chef to do was to complete the dish with a smattering of furikake, thick cubes of salmon, and a generous sprinkle of ikura, imbuing this already flavour-rich pasta with a tremendous burst of luscious flavour.
If you prefer your meals to pack a more forceful punch, I recommend their Mushroom Risotto ($21.50++), which overwhelmed me with its intensity. Based on its description, I had assumed that the truffle oil would carry the dish with its potent accents, but it was actually the precursor, setting the stage for the mushrooms – these dynamites of flavour – to explode in my mouth with its potent earthiness. A tad too intense for me, but it still may suit you.
I have a simple rule of thumb with Telok Ayer food. History: the older a restaurant, the better it is. For any restaurant to survive in this congested cafe battlefield, they need the cooking to back it up. And for a cafe that’s about to turn 4, Sarnies’ should impress.
Address: 136 Telok Ayer Street, Singapore 068601
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 7:30am to 10:30pm, Sat-Sun 8:30am to 4pm
Rating: 3.7/5
Expected damages: Between $20 to $25
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