Ms Skinnyfat

Jalan Besar is certainly a good spot for cafe hopping/brunch these days though i must say that the options at Tiong Bahru and Duxton fares better. Nevertheless, there is charm in this industrious enclave. The Refinery took the decor of its workshop neighbors and put it in their 3 storey space, providing patrons with a hippie-chic restaurant-bar-designer studio concept (gosh all that hyphens).  

Level 1 is the restaurant which has a Japanese yakitori thing going on but for the for the weekends, there's a brunch and you know how we live for weekend breakfasts right.. 

First things first, coffee. The Flat White ($4.50) was pretty smooth and balanced, a tad milky though, and way too little coffee. The small cup was gone before any food arrived.

A side of salted egg onion rings ($12). Because salted egg. We loved the batter, at least the parts that did not get overly soaked in the sweet salted egg sauce. Lovely full onion rings as well, instead of the mashed up stuff. The sauce could be much improved as it was a little too sweet, and too easy on the savory salted egg flavor. 

The Refinery Bowl ($10) sounded more yummy than it tastes. A bland-ish pulled pork on rice with pickled ginger, shiitake, tare, spring onions and a 72 deg onsen egg. Subtlety doesn't go with pulled pork really. It needs more flavor, more tang, more sauce. Plus it was a really small portion. 

The Spicy Mee ($12) is kinda like the noodle version of the pulled pork donburi. Just that this has frozen pork balls and homemade sambal. 

Well, another bland dish, because the chili is just spicy without having any flavor whatsoever. The dried shrimp flavor failed to come through in this one. I would rather go to a hawker center for a similar dish at a fraction of this price. How annoying is that?

I was quite excited about the Kopi Addict Waffle ($16) but The Refinery wore that excitement off with an impossibly long wait, which was a good 50 mins after i placed my order. SERIOUSLY? Nobody informed us about the wait and my friends finished their food before mine came. 

Service aside, the waffle was dry and hollow, like a marie biscuit (sorry MB fans). It certainly needs a bit more fluff and batter in this one. Sadly, the butterscotch ice cream and 24-hour coffee infused maple syrup didn't help much in making the biscuit moist. Such a shame because that maple was too damn good. Coffee addicts would really love this one. The bacon was obviously quite burnt instead of simply candied.

As you can tell, there's really nothing fancy about this spot in terms of their brunch offering. Thankfully there's Two Bakers around the corner to turn our Sunday brunch around (i've already been back 4 times). 

The Refinery

115 King George's Avenue #01-02, 208561

Tel: +65 6293 1204

Tue - Fri: 12 - 3pm

Tue, Wed, Thu: 6pm - 12am    

Fri, Sat: 6pm - 1am

Weekend Brunch: 11am - 4pm