In some Southeast Asian countries, there are small cafes and restaurants and eateries in small neighbourhoods which only serve locals living nearby. And the shops remain there forever, the owners are able to raise their children and make careers out of it. They know all their neighbours and they help one another. It’s a quiet life, simple, maybe even hard, but perhaps also full and satisfying.

In Singapore, a simple life used to be possible but no longer, or maybe very very hard to achieve. Everything is about money, capitalism, colourless chain restaurants lacking individuality. That is why when a cafe like Le Petit Paris pops up, we need to support it. It’s a beautiful cafe, with its quirky Parisian decor of Cerulean blue and bistro chairs, reminding one of Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night.

It’s a small operation with only one wait staff fronting the floor. The kitchen is helmed by Felicien Cueff, ex Hilton Hotel’s Executive Chef.

What I really admire about the cafe is how it caters from breakfast to dinner, including gelato made by Cueff’s friend, an Italian chef Marco Alfero. As a ex-business owner, I understand how difficult and ambitious it is to cater for such variety. It is hard to find a chef that can bake and cook; the chef bakes the pastries in-house.

How is the food? Honestly, not spectacular. It is homely food, pleasant but not mindblowing.

For the pastries, I had the croissant which is the best thing there at the cafe: fluffy, crispy, and slightly buttery. The elephant ears are like kouign amann, crispy and sweet, good with coffee. The madeleines are buttery and sweet but dense; they need to be airy like what Marcel Proust famously described.

For the savoury, I wanted to order the onion soup ($16) when I saw the menu online; hadn’t had it for some time. But when I was there, I saw that there was chestnut soup ($16) and since I hadn’t tried it before, this was my first. Its base is really mushroom soup, so at the first few sips, it was fungi-savoury then chestnut-sweet. It took some getting used-to, but the hazelnut bits really add an interesting dimension. The soup I thought was a bit too starchy.

I also tried the baked duck confit parmentier ($28). This is not the crispy duck confit we know. It’s actually like a Shepard’s pie, with mashed potatoes on top and the meat (in this case, duck meat) below. It was not too bad, homely. I like the bread crumbs on top and the shredded duck meat. It was not stingy.

For desserts, I tried the speculoos yogurt gelato ($5.50) and the praline with lemon. They were okay. Maybe I chose the wrong gelato flavour for my taste. The praline was crowded, had too many things going on.

Overall, I admire greatly the spirit of Le Petit Paris, of carving a small corner in the world, to do what one enjoys doing. The cheerful way the wait staff treats guests and how the chef greets everyone who comes into the cafe are a testament to the joy that they have. You know the adage “If you enjoy what you’re doing, you never work a day in your life.” That’s what they are doing. This is a call to action for people to patronise the cafe so that we have more independent cafes like these, with individuality, personality, and delight–it’s not all about money–all over Singapore.

Le Petit Paris Menu

Le Petit Paris
15 Swan Lake Ave, Singapore Opera Estate, Singapore 455711
T: +65 8368 8699
Weekdays 9am-9pm, F & Weekends 8am-10pm, Closed Tue

Food: 6.5/10
Decor: 8/10
Service: 8/10
Price: 7/10

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We pay for our own food on anonymous visits unless otherwise stated.