The Plain Cafe Craig Road Singapore

The Plain Cafe Singapore

The Plain is a Melbourne-style Cafe located at Craig road and it has been building up a strong following who go there regularly for their poached eggs and coffee.

It has an all day breakfast menu that serves simple food like toasts ($5), eggs ($5 – $11.5), ciabattas ($8.5) and sandwiches ($9). Occasionally, they also have home baked sweets like tarts and mini cakes.

The Plain Craig Road

The interior of The Plain Coffee House is causal and unassuming, with grey-scale wall and simple furniture. It is a nice place to sit down and read a book, whilst having sandwich with a cup of Genovese coffee. The place is not very big and it can probably accommodate around 30-40 people.

Pastrami Ciabatta

The Plain’s Pastrami Ciabatta ($8.5) was more than good – it was excellent. I am not sure if it was because we were too hungry, but everyone agreed that it was a winner. Definitely will try out the other two Ciabatta (Salami & Antipasto) the next time round.

Darling Eggs

There was barely anything to the Darling’s Eggs ($6.50 for 1/$11.5 for 2): just sourdough toast, roma tomatoes, cheese and poached eggs. But it was an extremely satisfying breakfast.

The key, I think, is the Roma tomato. I’ve told you about the benefits of eating tomatoes before. Needless to say, the idea of having the sweet and juicy tomatoes with the poached eggs was the clincher.

On the other hand, my friends preferred the simple taste of the Plain Eggs ($5 for 1/$8 for 2) – poached eggs on buttered sourdough toast without tomatoes and cheese.

The Plain Egg Toast

Out of curiosity, we ordered the Dean’s Breakfast ($6.0 for 1/$10.5 for 2) which came with Vegemite spread. The dark brown Australian food paste on the sourdough toast was surprisingly pleasant. If you like Vegemite, there’s also the Humpty Dumpty & Vegemite soldiers (dippy eggs on buttered toast sticks) on The Plain Cafe’s menu.

The Plain

Considering that The Plain Coffee Shop was not very crowded when we were there for brunch, service was slow and the staff made a mistake with two of our orders.

It was quite puzzling to see that there was no proper billing system at The Plain Cafe. The staff do not record down the items when taking the order, so you have to repeat your order when paying at the counter.

I asked the owner the rationale for this and he explained that most cafes in Melbourne operate this way. Most importantly, he wants The Plain to be a place where you feel the familiarity of having dinner at a friend’s house. Whilst I think it is very admirable to charge based on a system of trust, it can get quite messy if there are many too orders. Furthermore, it increases the waiting time during payment.

The Plain Cafe

Having said that, I like the fact that The Plain Cafe is not commercialised. It is refreshing to see cool cafes like these in the local scene.

The Plain Cafe
50 Craig Road #01-01 Singapore
(Near the intersection with Duxton road)
Tel: +65 6225 4387
Daily 7.30am – 7.30pm