Fika Cafe is a halal restaurant serving Swedish fares in the Beach Road/ Arab Street area.
I love the restaurant’s Scandinavian decor, resembling a cosy log cabin.
The food is good, but a tad pricey. I had their Swedish meatballs for my main. As the restaurant is halal, the meatballs were made of chicken instead of pork which made it less authentic. Nonetheless, the accompanying gravy and jam was flavorful.
My dining companions had the beef patties and Swedish hash. I tried a bit of both, and they were quite palatable.
We ordered a smoked salmon salad to share among us and a drink each. The drinks were non-alcoholic and costs between $5.90 to $6.90 each. At this price, we were rather shocked they came in cans and bottled form. We might as well buy them from the supermarket.
Overall, I like the restaurant’s ambient and the food is pretty decent. What turns me off is that the restaurant appears a little overpriced compared to similar tier restaurants.
Address: 257 Beach Road Singapore
Tel: +65 6396 9096
Opening Hours: Mon–Fri: 11am – 11pm Sat–Sun: 12pm – 11pm
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Hi Alvin (guess it must be your name) =)
I always love to read reviews and comments about our cafe =)
I liked yours, but I spotted a few mistakes in your review that I feel that I have to let you know about. Nothing much but yet mistakes.
When it comes to Swedish meatballs, the ones you buy in the supermarket in Sweden (which most swedes eat because of laziness and availability, hahah) are processed and made of pork and beef. The home-made versions (the way they should be made) are made strictly from beef, there's no mix. The reason for the mix is only to make them cheaper, since beef is more expensive than pork. So if you want the real, true and authentic Swedish meatballs, then you should eat ours since our meatballs are made of 100% beef, not pork and not chicken (not sure where you got the chicken part from... IKEA sells the processed chicken version in the halal section of their restaurant though).
As for the prices, yes, we can seem to be a little bit pricey...but nothing comes for free, everything costs money...and our location is not the cheapest in town either. Secondly, we serve authentic Swedish food (recipes from my mom, friends and also recipes I have approved of that my wife has come up with), some products and ingredients are specially imported from Sweden as well...which all adds on to the price.
Sometimes I get questions from customers regarding our food, so to explain things to them I always tell them that my criteria for the cafe is that everything that we serve are something you have to be able to find in Sweden as well, either in restaurants or homes (and it has to be Swedish, no fusions or mixes from other countries). This means that all traditional dishes has to be authentic in taste, look and feel...no mixing in recipes. So for a lot of Asians our food can seem to be blend, but that's just the way it is =) Swedes are not used to spicy food. Swedes want the beef to taste beef, the potatoes to taste potatoes and so on, everything is very raw in taste, and the most common spices in Swedish cooking are just salt and pepper. This means that we're not changing anything to try to please anyone, so if the food is blend, just ask for some chili flakes or Tabasco or whatever you feel like to please you =)
We sometimes get really funny comments from Asians saying that our food is not Swedish and there's no such thing as halal Swedish food. This is something that we find very strange since all Scandinavians that comes to us always tells us that...."This is just like home, it all tastes like moms home-cooked food" or "now I'm getting home-sick" or "finally some real swedish food."
Now, all this is only for your information, to help you understand our food culture some more =)
As for the drinks that you mentioned.... some of these drinks are not something you can get here in Singapore (except for the honest tea and the alcoholic version of the pear cider, you can get this one in some of the bars here). The other ones are like mentioned above, specially imported from Sweden.... which ads on to the price. So you saying that you can just as well go to the supermarket and get this is not 100% true.
You also need to change the opening hours... not sure where you got those from.
Our opening hours are:
Sundays - Wednesdays 11am-10pm
Thursdays - Saturdays 11am - 11pm
Thanks for your review and that you had a good time, despite the price, hahaha
Take care and have a great day!
Joakim Smidhagen, Manager, Fika Cafe
ps. we're expanding our menu some more upcoming weeks, so please drop by again =)
Hi Joakim! Am surprised that you gave such a candid reply on this blog post. Much appreciated.
Thank you for some of the fact correction. I will get it amended accordingly. :)