Folks have come to expect a certain standard of museum restaurants—they’re no longer just utilitarian canteens. From fine-dining spot The Modern (three stars from The New York Times) at the MoMA in New York, to experimental restaurant Nomiya on the rooftop of contemporary art gallery Palais de Tokyo in Paris, museums have become destination dining venues. Even here in Singapore, museum eats are plenty appealing, with joints like respected Italian establishment Trattoria Lafiandra at the Singapore Art Museum. Socially-minded local restaurant chain Food for Thought has caught the museum bug too, offering their locally-inflected fare at exhibition spaces around town. Besides a pop-up burger shack at the Singapore Art Museum (open through the end of the month), they’ve launched this modern Singaporean cafe serving hawker-inspired plates at nearby National Museum. It’s a cute space, featuring retro marble laminate tables and kopitiam-style wall mosaics. The food’s simple, plentiful and good: Addictive brown buttered chye poh prawn salad—featuring all the flavors of chwee kueh—caveman-sized slabs of hoisin har cheong baby back ribs ($25) and plush baked Milo Godzilla pudding ($12), modelled after the rich coffee shop sip. Service isn’t perfect (they seem understaffed) and the monthly specials are disappointing. (The August mussel promo brought an especially puny portion of bivalves in insipid laksa broth.) So we wouldn’t go out of our way to eat here. But after working up an appetite wandering the museum halls, attending artsy talks or even partying at a Fort Canning concert (just behind the building), we’d be glad to return to this spot for quality comfort grub.
