Ottoman Turkish Delights - Baklava and Turkish Ice Cream in Singapore

Ottoman Turkish Delights at Bussorah Street is a delightful Turkish bakery and confectionery. It was one of the places we stopped by when we did a walkabout of the Singapore Kampong Glam area during the December holidays. There were many folks like us walking about in the area near the Sultan Mosque. Local tourists, discovering new places which we had hitherto not noticed before.

You cannot miss the loud yellow facade of Ottoman Turkish Delights. It is one of the many quaint shops and restaurants along the narrow Bussorah Street. On its Facebook page, it refers to itself as “Singapore’s first authentic Turkish Bakery & Confectioneries”. It does not look like a typical Singapore shop. We would be quite excited if we chance upon such a place during a trip overseas. In fact we felt and behaved like tourists when we were there – looking at the displays, taking pictures and of course sampling some of the Turkish delights.

According to Wikipedia, Turkish delight or lokum is a family of confections based on a gel of starch and sugar. Different types of baklava and other sweet desserts were available for sale. As were Turkish ice cream and Turkish coffee, the latter being prepared on a hot sand bath that we have never seen before.

Here are some pictures of some of the Turkish delights and ice-creams on display.

Ottoman Turkish Delights Desserts Singapore

There were a few types of baklava. We need another visit to try more of these. For this visit we selected a “basic” baklava to eat with some ice-cream.

What we ate at Ottoman Turkish Delights

We each selected a different flavour of Turkish ice-cream. There were flavours such as goat’s milk, cherry, almond etc. They had a sticky, stretchy texture and were not as rich as what we usually get at the mainstream ice-cream parlours in Singapore. You can have the ice-cream simply or with toppings.

We shared the baklava and discovered that the best combination was a plain ice-cream with a piece or two of baklava. The crisp firm texture of the latter complemented the sticky texture of the ice-cream, making it a uniquely Turkish ice-cream.

Here is the view outwards from the Ottoman Turkish Delights shop. The Sultan Restaurant is across the pedestrian-only Bussorah Street. This is quite an unusual view from a point in Singapore. It made us feel like tourists.