C.A.N Cafe

Looking for a breakfast epiphany? C.A.N. Cafe can sort you out – for lunch and dinner, too – with its ‘retro’ good vibrations making the squares of Singapore hip, the pancakes stacked high as kites, the coffee strong and black and damn fine, and the Peranakan and fusion cuisine hop to a groovy new tune in the throbbing neon heart of Serangoon. Upper Serangoon Road is where this joint’s to be found, in the Yeley Building next door to the Upper Serangoon Shopping centre, a happening spot that all hep cats should know on a first name basis.

A Christmas special of grilled German pork knuckle with apple or oriental sauce served on a breadboard and eaten under the watchful gaze of Darth Vader? A Peranakan pineapple and prawn soup under a distressed tin sign reminding you to ‘keep calm and drink coffee’? It’s always better to whip out the Amex and feed your mind surrounded by random cultural ephemera cherrypicked from the pop traditions of the 20th century isn’t it? If this is what gets your tie loosened and your two top buttons undone, then C.A.N. Cafe in Singapore’s Serangoon is the place to be.

We’ve all, in our own vague way, internalised a junk shop stocked with ‘retro’ images culled from hip things like the music of the so-called rock’n’roll generation, Elvis, Liberace, Ray-Bans and Orbison, Brian Wilson before he went mad, the cool veritably bulging from the cover of The Rolling Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers, the strange dietary preferences and penchants for bell bottoms of the ‘hippies’ at the naked mudfight that was Woodstock, Audrey Hepburn on a poster ordering Tiffany’s for breakfast, complete with little black dress, long black gloves and dainty vintage cigarette holder. This is C.A.N. Cafe in Singapore’s Serangoon in a 100% pecan nutshell. It really gets you in the mood for old school food that’s fun and friendly at the same time, just like daily life is legally bound to be back in Hometown, US of A. This is the Disney dream that C.A.N. Cafe can offer, on a plate or in a bowl, brimming with the promise of an attitude positively grooving to the tune of cool, the flotsam and jetsam of Hollywood, the very best of the kind of eats that the new Beat Generation of Upper Serangoon Road like to click their fingers to. Don the turtleneck, reserve your slice of apple pie and book a table now.