Prairie By Craftsmen : New Cafe at Cluny Court

Prairie By Craftsmen is a new cafe in Cluny Court. Like bees drawn to honey, people (including us) are always interested in new places to eat in Singapore. Result: a packed indoor restaurant space during lunch on a weekday.

The new Prairie By Craftsmen cafe is an exterior facing eatery in Cluny Court. It cannot be accessed from the inside of the building. Entry is from the bamboo lined walkway (picture above) at the side of the building facing Botanic Garden MRT station. Craftsmen Specialty Coffee is a chain of “Singapore independent coffee shop serving variety of specialty coffee and mouth-watering brunches”. They have outlets in Holland Village, Novena and a few other places.

There are two dining areas at Prairie By Craftsmen – an outdoor “greenhouse” area and an indoor air-conditioned space. The outdoor area has a glass roof. We can imagine that it can be a nice place in the evening when the sun is low, but at lunch time, it was simply too hot for us.

So, like many others who were there before us, we sought shelter in the air-conditioned space (picture below) even though it is not as beautiful as the patio. It was also a noisy space as the conversations reverberated in the enclosed space with hard surfaces.

Prairie By Craftsmen Menu

Here are screen shots of some pages of the Prairie By Craftsmen online menu. It contains the usual listing of food served in hip cafes such as breakfast dishes, salads, pasta and some meat dishes. We decided on a roasted half poulet ($26) and white wine prawn aglio olio ($25). GST but not service charge would be added to those prices.

Our Lunch

The roasted half poulet was exactly as is described in the menu – half a roasted chicken. It was a good roast chicken but we did not think that it was memorable. Some roasted vegetables added interest to the dish.

Compared to the chicken, the pasta dish was more interesting to us. We liked the texture of the angel hair pasta and the quality of the prawns. It also had the right level of spiciness – from the chilli and the pepper.

The One That Got Away

We were planning to have coffee and dessert after the mains. But the noise level was incompatible with what we thought would be a nice conversation over a cup of coffee and Danish pastry. Which was a pity as the pastries looked enticing in the display case (picture below) and the coffee from Craftsmen should be good as well. We ended up at Affogato Bar instead.