Starbucks - Holland Village

I know, I know, Starsucks and all that. But honestly, despite the worldwide flak for Starbucks, this Coffee Concierge still thinks they did the world a huge service by expanding the way they did across the USA and the rest of the world and particularly in the USA where coffee was pretty much like dishwater liquid a lot of the time, they did manage to help raise the bar quite a bit. However that was many years ago and since then Starbucks as a company needs to dig deep into its roots and re-discover its mission and be the coffeehouse on the corner where the barista knows and remembers your favourite brew.

So with all this baggage around, the Coffee Concierge decided to try the neighbourhood Starbucks at Holland Village. It turned out actually to be a better experience than I expected. The baristas and serving staff in general I suspect have recently undergone some retraining as they were certainly making a point of greeting, meeting eyes, and taking the order in a friendly polite way. And the staff did generally seem happy. The ambience is great there with lots of very nice sofas to lounge on and the staff kept the place pretty neat and tidy despite it being quite full.

The expresso? Strong and bitter with a long, lingering aftertaste. The crema was decently formed but not terribly thick and it stayed for a reasonable few minutes. I did find it quite hard to find words to describe the actual flavour. It was slightly but not very dark roast and had quite a bit of body to it but I'm hard put to actually say there were notes of fruit or anything else...just that it had a very strong coffee flavour. There wasn't a hint of sweetness at all which is a bit of a fault but overall not too bad.

Now this Coffee Concierge happens to like his coffee to have some bitterness but was not too sure if it would appeal to many Singaporeans since the national prediliction seems to be more for sweeter, milkier drinks on the whole. But it's certainly a coffee that would stand being mixed into milk based drinks.

Price: S$3.40
Flavour: 3.5 beans
Service: 4 beans