Nara Kitchen & Co

Damansara Uptown has a good mix of places to eat – you have your cafés, your hawker stalls and your dessert joints. Run by the same team as The Good Batch and Hyde, Nara Kitchen & Co is a nice addition to the area for your #eatclean days.

Dishes in the menu boasts a lot of fresh ingredients; the team makes their own jams, marmalade and almond butter, and even the breads are baked in-house (except for the croissants, which are outsourced for now until they perfect their own recipe). Once everything is up and running, you’ll be able to buy their bread to take home. There are also plans to supply these breads to The Good Batch.

One of the crowd favourites for now is the Big Belly: a mix of quinoa, roasted beets, orange wedges, mint, sliced kyuri, hummus, miso vinaigrette and edible flowers. Another favourite is the Organic Scramble which uses free-range eggs, caviar, tobiko, tempura mushrooms and is served with a croissant. Their homemade soup changes regularly, but to give you an idea of what to expect, past soups include red bell pepper soup with feta cheese, creamy mushroom soup topped with tempura mushroom, and curry pumpkin soup.

For cheat days, dessert here comes from local artisanal ice cream makers Forty Licks, home bakers Frost & Flourish and Saya Bake, and occasionally Nara’s own creations. As with The Good Batch, the coffee here is supplied by Papa Palheta and while they don’t serve alcohol, you can look forward to bubbly brunch sessions in the future.

Besides reflecting the menu's clean concept, Nara's minimalist interior (think bare white walls and blond wooden furniture) also acts as a blank canvas to host workshops, art shows and other interesting events. For now, the café closes early but if you want to know how dinner would be like at Nara, keep an eye out for their monthly supper club.