We love Ah Teng!

Ah Teng Ah Teng, what would we do without you… There are few bakeries in town one remembers from young, that are still alive. There’s the Marco Polo Hotel bakery for example, which has since been turned into condos like everywhere else in Singapore, and of course Chin Mee Chin which is still along East Coast Road.

But Ah Teng’s Bakery, with both its staple (and stable) menu along with an old school charm ambience will remain one of my all-time favourites.

There is your sliced butter cake wrapped in plastic ala old bakery style, the Western bun with ham and lettuce in the middle, the usual pastries, and of course scones and breads of many kinds.

The scones come in a generous portion, and it’s baked till it’s just slightly crumbly but maintains some sort of shape. And yes, it does hold the butter and jam well enough.

The breads here are decently priced too, with anything from 60 cents to 5 dollars for a loaf of multi-grained bread.

The bakery also serves cakes and slices that have made patisseries like Canele famous, and Ah Teng’s does a decent job for fans of chocolate truffle and strawberry shortcake, say.

The most interesting thing on its shelves though, has to be its pillow shaped chicken pie. Unusually shaped (great enough to be a talking point at the table), it is also filled, unlike most chicken pies, with more meat than you can actually fathom. There are no potatoes in this pie, and the generosity with meat almost scares one off.
 
This place is the perfect afternoon tea place if not for the fact that it is self-service, and you end up doing a balancing act bringing all your orders back to your table, which can be rather unnerving for a leisurely afternoon.