In case it hasn’t ring a bell, Tan Tiong Hoe was who taught the founder of local roaster Papa Palheta, Leon Foo, how to roast his coffee. Now Jacob Tan rides on his father’s expertise – running Tiong Hoe & Co for half a century and as an apprentice at Dutch company Mirandolle Voute & Co – and portioned off about 600 sq ft of their flagship roaster in Queenstown to open the 10-seater café with business partner/ fellow barista, Juliana, who learns the craft from senior Tan.
There is no menu, so ask for any brew from the rotational range of single origin coffee beans roasted, ground and brewed in-house, and expect clean-noted long black brews in a refined reddish-brown colour coming out from the vintage Elektra espresso machine or the V60 – it was the case even for the cups of characteristically robust Nanyang coffee we requested). Our favourites are a spicy, earthy and smoky monsooned malabar AA from India and a citrusy yet creamy Kinshasa from Kivu in Congo. If you happen to find senior Tan at the station, cross your fingers and ask if he’d be able to serve his signature lemon honey coffee – a special formula he’d to take three days to prepare the beans of.
Also a retail shop, they sell these single origin roasts ($13.50 to $19.50 for 250g), old-school Nanyang roasts in different robustness ($12 to $21 for one kg), as well as home-brewing equipment of all sorts: moka pot, V60, wood neck, syphon, chemex and the french press. For those who’re there to accompany your coffee connoisseur-friends in need of a milder starting point, lattes and sugar are available upon request. Teas too.