The Beanstro, a new American style casual dining restaurant by The Coffee Bean recently opened its second restaurant in Singapore and in the world! I was recently invited to do a food tasting for the Beanstro restaurant at Takahimaya. Since I am from California and am a frequent Coffee Bean customer I was very eager to check out this new mid-priced restaurant and see if it really was as “American” as it claims to be.  

Type of Cuisine: American

Diners: Three American ladies & a 5 month old baby for a casual lunch.

Atmosphere: The restaurant is really cozy. It does not have the same atmosphere as a normal Coffee Bean coffee shop, which is quite loud and fast paced. I liked the fact that the Beanstro has a view of Takashimaya and was not in some secluded corner of the mall.

Unless you are sitting alone, I recommend asking for a table indoors – they have really nice booths that are “U” shaped which makes it easy to fit 4-5 guests to a table or extra shopping bags. We were able to easily fit the baby’s Maxi-Cosi infant carseat in the booth, where she sat for most of the lunch.

Child-Friendly: Although our children did not come for the food tasting, we did think that this was a child-friendly atmosphere. We did see a few young kids in high chairs at the restaurant. I think this is a good option for kids if you are planning on shopping and then dining on Orchard Road.

Beanstro Food: Since this was a food tasting the manager encouraged us to order a variety of things and not just our usual lunch time salad or sandwich-hence why we ordered so much food for just the three of us! As you can see from all of the pictures below the “presentation” of the food was amazing. All the dishes looked very appetizing and were presented in a very artistic manner. We all gave them an A+ in that category. As for the actual “taste” of the food, our opinions varied from dish to dish. A few hits and few misses – here are our comments on each dish:

Today’s Iced Tea ($5.30) & Iced Chai Tea Latte ($6.30) – Same quality and creativity of Coffee Bean’s normal yummy drinks, except priced slightly higher for the Beanstro.

Southern Style Chicken Salad ($15) – We all really liked the variety of vegetables in the salad – it was an interesting mix of asparagus, edamame, corn, capsicums and mixed mesclun. This salad also had a roasted chicken breast coated which was coated with “Louisiana styled” Cajun spice, which we thought could have been a bit more tender. Overall we thought the salad was creative and had potential.

Tuna Nicoise Salad ($19) – We actually didn’t order this salad, it was accidentally brought it to our table (maybe we just looked like we needed to eat more vegetables).  The Tuna Nicoise salad is one of the “chef recommended” items on the menu. The salad had a lot of fresh greens and baby potatoes that we all enjoyed. Only one of us actually tried the yellow-fin tuna on top (I don’t eat seafood and my other friend is pregnant) – she felt the tuna not the best quality, but was “good” for the price and for a casual dining restaurant.

Classic Lorraine Quiche ($7.50) – This was served on a hot plate. It was a great mini quiche with a side salad. Best of all this only cost $7.50, which we all thought was extremely reasonable! Both my friends really liked the quiche and would order it again, I personally thought the quiche I make at home was better.

French Onion Soup ($8.50) – Loved it! We all agreed – we would definitely order this again. We liked the fact that it wasn’t covered in cheese – it was easy to eat and share. It also had a really nice light flavor.

Beef Burger ($17.50) – The French fries were really good!! The burger…well it wasn’t necessarily “American”. There was a little too much going on for us with this hand-made burger. I actually took the leftovers home for my hubby to try (he loves his burgers) – even he didn’t care for the taste of it.

Croque Madame ($16) – Absolutely loved it! This was our favorite dish from all of them. We ordered this off the “all day breakfast” menu, which includes a tea or coffee before 11am. It was different than the normal croque monsieur that I am used to – it was served on brioche bread, with poached egg and chicken ham. To top it all off it had three types of cheese mozzarella, parmesan and cheddar. I am getting hungry just looking at the picture. This is what I plan to order when I go back!

Beanstro’s Steak Sandwich ($19.50) – Since this is one of the Beanstro’s “chef recommended” dishes and since I am a big steak eater, we decided to give it a try. We all felt that the steak sandwich was just “ok” and was lacking in flavor. It might have been better if they mixed the horseradish mayo on the steak prior to serving it, instead of as a dipping sauce. Although the menu claims the meat is “Australian” grass fed sirloin, we felt that quality of the meat wasn’t what it claimed to be – maybe it was just overcooked or too thinly sliced – either way it isn’t something that I would recommend.

Chicago Cheesecake ($8.00) – The Chicago Cheesecake is good, but not “Chicago” style. It is more a “lemon” cheesecake, still good, but expect a lemony after taste. I personally recommend trying the Coffee Bean Toblerone cheesecake, it is one of my favorites, but only comes around during the month of December.

Warm Molten Chocolate Cake ($10) – Being big fans of chocolate, we all decided that we had to order the Warm Molten Chocolate Cake. The overall cake was good, but still could have had more chocolate lava in the center. One thing that was really lacking was “ice-cream’! This dish definitely needs to be served a la mode – the whip cream just doesn’t cut it. We asked for ice-cream on the side, but the manager said that they didn’t have it. All this needs is a scoop of ice-cream and then it would be a great dessert choice.

Warm Apple Crumble ($10) – We all thought the apple crumble tasted good, but again lacking “ice-cream”.

Service: Service was great! But I expected that since they knew I would be “tasting” the food. I am not sure about the other staff, but the manager did seem very knowledgeable about the menu and the food – trust me we did ask a lot of questions.

Would SuperMommy dine at the Beanstro again? Yes, for sure! I thought this was a great mid-priced, casual dining restaurant. I thought the booths were really nice and welcoming – perfect for a quick bite after an Orchard shopping trip or a ladies lunch. I really liked the atmosphere and the food overall was really good.

Useful Information for Beanstro at Takashimya:

• Address: 391 Orchard Road, #B1-37 Ngee Ann City, Singapore 238872
• Telephone: +65-6235-1610
• Hours: Monday to Sunday: 8am-11pm