Coexist Coffee Hillview

Coexist Coffee Hillview is a cafe that was on our radar ever since our colleagues raved about their visit to its sister cafe, Coexist at LLI Paya Lebar. That outlet is a large two storey cafe located on the ground level of Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) in Paya Lebar. We found out that Coexist Hillview is not quite the same.

Finding Coexist Coffee Hillview – Our Adventure

The Hillview area is now a largely residential area. A long time ago, this was mainly an industrial zone where large factories such as the Ford car factory was located. Did you know that in 1965, Cycle & Carriage opened its first assembly plant at Hillview and the first Mercedes Benz was produced in Singapore? Hillview’s industrial past still lives on in the form of old but still functioning warehouse and industrial buildings. These co-exist among the housing estates. One of them is the Hillview Building which is located in a pocket of light industrial activities at Hillview Terrace. The signboard with the building was hard to spot so novices to the area should just trust the GPS without trying to find visual confirmation.

Blur Like Sotong

The address of Coexist Coffee Hillview is 48 Hillview Terrace, #08-00. Happy that we managed to find the building, we went into to the nearest lift. But there were only buttons up to level 7. We left and looked for another lift lobby that might serve level 8. There was none and so we proceed to level 7 and found this chalkboard. Level 8 is accessible via this staircase.

At the top of the stairs is a narrow passageway that led us to the Hillview cafe. We finally found it. Level 8 is the rooftop level!

Coexist Hillview Outlet

The Hillview cafe is much smaller than we expected. It is nothing like the spacious, almost luxurious atmosphere of the Coexist Paya Lebar outlet. This one seems to occupy a small boxy space on the roof top of the Hillview Building. There is access to go out to the rooftop outside where there were a few chairs and tables. It being a hot day, an alfresco experience was not very enticing for us.

But to be fair, the folks at Coexist Coffee Hillview have done a good job in making this out-of-the-way place rather attractive. It has clean modern lines and the location may in fact increase its hip-factor. The most ingenious interior design thing they did was to split the cafe into black and white sections (see first picture above). That itself was a stroke of genius.

Coexist Coffee Hillview Menu

The Coexist menus of all their branches are available on their website. For your easy reference, here are some portions of the Hillview menu.

What we Ate

We had cappuccino ($5) and a Banana 170 ($10) to go with the coffee. The banana cake was topped with soy sauce caramel cinnamon cream and aramalised walnut. It was a very good dish. The coffee was good as well, but not better than its hip cafe competition, which is getting quite tough these days in Singapore. Service was polite and helpful. It is certainly a nice cafe but in this case, the saying that “the thrill was in the hunt” may possibly apply.

Coexist Hillview
48 Hillview Terrace, #08-00, Singapore 669269

Opening Hours: 9:00 am – 6:00 pm 

Nearby MRT Station: Hillview

Website

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The Ordinary Patrons | Real Dining Experience of Ordinary People
an independent Singapore food blog