Popular Japanese brand MUJI has branches of their MUJI cafe or Café&Meal MUJI in cities all over Asia including two in Singapore. Come along as we visit the MUJI cafe at Raffles City to see what the food is like!
It's 11:45am on a Monday when my sister Blythe and my parents helper Del and I head to the Raffles City MUJI store and cafe on the second floor of the shopping mall opposite the Raffles Singapore. There are two branches of the Muji cafe or Café&Meal MUJI in Singapore: one is at Plaza Singapura and the other at Raffles City.
The MUJI cafes are attached to the MUJI shops and at the Raffles City branch, the cafe is situated to the left when facing the shop. We have come early on purpose because at 12pm a queue will form of people waiting for a table. The cafe seats around 70 people with 2 booths and some banquette seating. There's a QR code with the menu on each table but ordering and paying is done at the front where you bring your trays to the table.
Ordering is done in a bit of a flurry. There are lots of set deals and offers and honestly it's confusing at first. Basically you can buy a set menu that gives you one hot choice (a hot protein) and two cold (salads) for $22.80 and includes a drink, onsen egg or hijiki, 16 grain rice or white rice and a pair of bread and miso or cumin carrot soup.
Plus you can get dessert for 50% and you can add a second protein for $6.20 extra. They let us switch one of the cold selections for a hot selection so we got 2 hot and 1 cold choice for $22.80.
Purchasing a drink also gives you 50% off dessert. The mulberry juice is similar to a grape and pomegranate juice mix. It comes without ice which means that you get more juice but also the lack of ice means that the drink is quite strong and sweet. The passion fruit, lemongrass drink with thyme and rosemary is absolutely delicious. The stick of lemongrass is for stirring it up and for decoration.
Singapore's MUJI cafe's specialty is the sakura chicken (a free range chicken grown without antibiotics) which is deep fried like chicken karaage with dried chili and curry miso. It's nice, although the curry miso isn't heavily apparent in this. We pair this with the mochi potato croquette that is stretchy, warm and tasty with an appealing tangy sauce drizzled on top.
This comes with an onsen egg and a delicious pear, pecan and chicken breast slice salad with pomegranate and red onion which is very tasty and fresh. There's also a cup of creamy cumin and carrot soup on the side.
On the other set meal, the chicken nanban with cauliflower egg mayo salad on top is my and Blythe's favourite. The chicken is so juicy and succulent and the egg mayo on top is delicious. The pork patty comes as one single patty with soft stewed apples and an orange salsa on top which honestly sounded a bit unusual but was tasty. It's nice but the serving size for this is on the smaller side compared to the chicken. It comes with hijiki soybean salad (a Japanese wild seaweed salad very high in fibre and nutrients) and a 16 grain steamed rice and a miso soup. The nutty rice is tasty especially with the tomato beef stew and the miso soup is fine but we prefer the carrot soup.
We had heard that the beef and tomato soup is one of their most popular and it is delicious. It has a sweetness and the beef is very tender and served in chunks. It reminds me of Vietnamese Bo Kho soup.
None of the dishes really come out piping hot, they're not really even that warmed under the heat lamp and I think they seem like they're more relying on being recently cooked. But that also means that the chicken is juicy and fresh and not dried out at all.
Both bread rolls come with butter and are slightly warm but soft and fresh and ever so slightly sweet.
We all love mentaiko or pollock roe and the fries come out separately so you have to look for your number on the screen to collect it when it is ready. The mentaiko fries have a generous amount of mentaiko mayo drizzled on top and I would have loved these more if they were hotter.
Similarly the soy sansho fries would be great if they were freshly fried. These French fries are seasoned with Japanese shoyu and parmesan cheese seasoning, with a sprinkling of sansho spice (Japanese peppercorn berries from prickly ash tree). These are surprisingly sweet and a little tip-drag these through the mentaiko mayo which gives them a creamy savouriness.
Part of the reason for ordering drinks was to get the 50% off the desserts as they looked very good. I really wanted to try the black sesame burnt Basque cheesecake so I could try and recreate it. It's fantastic, lightly sweet and with a strong black sesame flavour. It's lighter than other Basque cheesecakes that tend to be more creamy and a bit more dense.
We also try the matcha sponge roll layered with raspberry cream and fresh strawberry coulis, dusted with matcha powder. The main flavour of this is the fresh strawberries that go so well with the matcha powder although out of the two, we really love the black sesame burnt cheesecake.
So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever tried Café&Meal MUJI? Do you like set meals or do you prefer a la carte?
This meal was independently paid for.
Café&Meal MUJI
Lamy Raffles City
252 North Bridge Road #02-20/22 Raffles City Shopping Centre, Singapore 179103
Phone: +65 6264 4189
Open 7 days 11:30am-8:30pm
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