Hattendo Cafe Singapore 八天堂

While we were asleep, a new skyscraper has sprouted up in Tanjong Pagar. It is known as Tanjong Pagar Centre, now the tallest building in Singapore. Only 64 storeys tall. It contains a hotel, some office and residential areas as well as six levels of retail in this building. Hattendo Cafe Singapore 八天堂 is one of the tenants in this new retail space.

Hattendo Cafe is from Hiroshima Japan and their specialty is cream buns. According to their website, the business started in 1933 when life was hard (a result of the Great Depression), the founder opened the store because he wanted “to cheer people up, even a little, with sweet and delicious Japanese sweets.” The Hattendo Cafe Singapore serves some other dishes such as salads, sandwiches and chicken drumsticks. Not a lot, but enough to have a light meal before having some of their cream buns and coffee for dessert.

Singapore Hattendo Cafe menu

A glass enclosed working space showcases the making of the cream buns. Everything was made by hand. Machines will damage the fragile fillings and the dough. Here are pictures of the Singapore Hattendo Cafe menu.

We were only there for coffee and dessert. We tried a variety of the cream buns and a melon bun ($2.5 and $3 respectively).

I thought our readers might like a detailed look inside a Hattendo Cafe cream bun. So here is a picture. It was quite messy so that is all I am going to show you. They were right about how delicate the bun was. Everything was soft and light. It was hard to cut it surgically. They were like cream puffs, but the dough was lighter and finer. The cream was soft and smooth, almost ice-cream like in texture.

I can’t recall the precise taste of each of the buns but they were all very good. The coffee, both black and latte were good as well. Which explains a consistent line in the cafe, mostly to buy the buns to eat in or take away when we were there at lunchtime.

Finally, do note that these fragile buns also have very short shelf lives. They have to be refrigerated and expire the next day.