The 3 year-old Chillax Cafe at Serangoon Gardens has revamped its weekend brunch menu (11am-3pm), adding several quirky items, combining local flavors into international cuisine. The boss Darren Wee, DJ at 987fm who also owns Babette, talks about food on his previous shows, and has eaten at countless places, so rest assured that Chillax knows what it’s doing.

Very interesting starters, good to share. At night, after our swim, hours after the tasting, Mr Fitness reminisced, “I miss the shabu beef poutine ($13). It has an aromatic truffle oil.”

I don’t like soggy fries, and preferred the salted egg yolk mushroom ($9). Breaded button mushroom topped with salted egg yolk sauce–still retained heat after some time–but it may be better if the salted egg yolk is mixed into the batter, and fried with the mushroom, instead of being 2 separate entities as it is now.

Other innovative dishes include root beer chicken wings ($14), marmite pork-caramelized banana burger ($17. above), and eggs ben with yuzu hollandaise ($16, below).

Carbonara ($18)

To go with the food, we sampled two creative cocktails. Never too early to start drinking, right? Adult Milo Godzilla ($15), inspired by our Indian prata shops, has a touch of vodka, a touch too light for us. The bloody Mary (below) comes with wings! Gives you better absorption, to keep you high and dry all day long! :p We couldn’t appreciate the drink. The root beer wings soaked in tomato juice and Tabasco turned bitter, and frankly, repulsive–not a good combination. We heard the drinks were good, but for our tasting, we were disappointed. Maybe it was an off day.

While the execution of the food may not be a perfect 10 and some dishes require fine tuning, the creativity, effort and heart behind the creations are full marks. Given Chillax’s diligence, I bet by now they have already improved on the food.

Chillax Cafe Singapore

28 Maju Ave, Serangoon Garden Estate, Singapore 556698
T: +65 6244 5529
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Decor: 5.75/10
Service: NA (tasting)
Food: 5.75/10
Value: 6/10
Rating: 2.917/5

Written by A. Nathanael Ho.

Thanks Darren and Kamei for the invited tasting.