Day 3 @ SG - Seconds (Part 1)

March 23 was the day of 'seconds', although it is Day 1 for work (at least for me).

Why? You ask.

Kaya, kaya

I had two sets of kaya toast in one day: the first one at Lau Pa Sat Food Center near the EY Singapore office (breakfast), and the second one inside the Raffles Shopping Center (dinner). 

Shocks, that's just too much toast sets in a day, right? Two little cups of kopi (#shakeshead, too much coffee to justify a cheat day), FOUR eggs (no!) and four mini-slices of toasted bread with kaya jam (tastes like coconut jam with a likable twist) topped with butter. 

There's no doubt that these kaya toasts spell Singapore in every bite :) And yes, the kopi is really good, too! A dark brown thing with sweetened milk served in a little cup. So "kopi" (my own translation: cute coffee) and soooo good for mornings (and evenings). 

Soft-boiled eggs might surprise those who are used to having their eggs hard-boiled. However, these are requisites to experience the traditional kaya toast. Not one egg, but two. Soft-boiled to a certain point of raw-ness.

After three tries...Yes, you read that right --- I had my third kaya toast today at Toastbox --- partly because I really like the kaya jam and partly because I want to compare it with the Manila version...

Photographs at the Toastbox City Hall is not allowed (I find that weird, though. Who doesn't want free marketing for their food?
I owe credits for this picture to insidecuisine.com

After three tries, I think I finally got the hang of it. The kopi and eggs are usually served first while you wait for the kitchen people to prepare your toast. The one at Toastbox City Hall branch really took a while that I had to follow up (thumbs-down). 

I've finally gotten around the sequence and use of the little things served in the toast set tray --- how to break those soft-boiled eggs, put a dark soy sauce and mix them up together, and place the eggshells on the extra plate provided. The toasted bread is then dipped into the soft-boiled-egg-and-sauce mixture and complemented with the kopi. On hindsight, I could have opted for tea (teh) instead of coffee (kopi)...but well the first taste of kopi got me hooked already.

How's my Toastbox SG experience different from the one I had in Manila? 

Hmm, the Greenbelt and SM Aura branches in Manila are more posh and clean, in my opinion. My perfect vision of a 'clean well-lighted place' when I need one. It's not that the City Hall and the Bugis branches that I've been to are not clean. They just look more worn out, probably because they've been open for a long time already. 

Manila version: I remember that my eggs weren't brown and as soft-boiled as the ones here in SG. Unlike the pre-mixed version in SG, the condensed milk is served with the kopi which gives one the option to go un-sweetened. The kopi didn't seem as memorable and that may be because I placed too much milk. The bread tasted like French toast which was satisfying enough for me (French toast is my favorite) though not as memorable, now that I've tasted three versions of the kaya toast. At the end of my meal and at a time when I didn't fully comprehend the tradition of it all, I questioned the price tag of a breakfast set that I can easily prepare on my own. Now, I understand and appreciate what's so special about this kaya toast :)

My Toastbox experience at SM Aura, BGC - Manila, Philippines version

What's the other second helping that I had?
Check it out here :)