Joan Bowen Café

Pricing: $$/5

Food: ♥♥♥/5

Ambience: ♥♥♥♥/5

Service: ♥♥♥♥/5

Website: http://www.joanbowen.com/
Blog: http://joanbowen.blogspot.sg

Location: 9 Jalan Wangi, Singapore 349354 (Near Macpherson Road)

Tel: 6281 3629

Email: Cafe@joanbowen.com

Operating Hours: Monday - Saturday: 11:00 to 21:30; Sundays: Closed

*Note: This Café has been nominated by Musings of [a] RABBIT as one of Singapore's Most Romantic Restaurants (Refer: http://musings-of-a-rabbit.blogspot.sg/2013/12/singapores-20-most-romantic-restaurants.html)

Introduction

According to the website, Joan Bowen Café is inspired and named after a girl with special needs - Joan Bo Wen who has a great ambition of becoming a chef. The Joan Bowen Café was first established by Joan's caring parents - Khong Yoon Kay and Jeanne Seah in 2009.

Caring for a child is not easy, not to mention a child with special needs. Like any other parents, I think Yoon Kay and Jeanne must have kept their daughter's welfare and livelihood in mind when they established this café. However, instead of caring for their daughter's welfare selfishly, the couple spread this love towards their daughter to other young adults with special needs too by adapting a new and innovative approach for training and imparting essential lifelong skills.

"Give a man a fish - he will be fed for A DAY. Teach a man to fish - he will be fed for A LIFETIME."

Now, the café works with and trains up to 10 youths per day with the support of a team of experienced chefs and service personnel using a set of structured learning tools. The main objective is to increase the trainees' confidence, impart transferable skills as well as to provide paid employment benefits at the same time. This café is indeed the ideal platform to provide an inclusive, fun and loving environment for adolescents with special needs to learn and work in. The café strives to reveal each candidate's potential through the spirit of friendship and partnership.

As we all know, people with special needs tend to be discriminated by the society and hence are prone to having a low self-esteem. Hence, it is vital to let them understand that they are also a part of God's beautiful creation. I guess that there must be a group of supportive kinsmen behind every Nick Vujicic (a successful Christian Evangelist and Motivational Speaker who was born physically disabled) and there is a treasure hidden within each child with such special needs. Hence, we should embrace them like any of us and not look at them in disdain. They are humans, and hence we ought to treat them like humans too.

Le' Ambience

The café is located in a quiet neighbourhood surrounded by private residences. I would not have known this place if my church friend have not brought me there for a visit and told me its meaningful existence.

Signboard in front of the Joan Bowen Café

How the place looks at night...

As we visited this place for dinner at around 8.00pm, the sky was pitch dark and hence my photos did not turn out to be flattering at all.. :(

There is a spiral staircase which leads to the 2nd Storey - we believe that there are rooms up there for the staff to rest / nap during their break

I like the stained glass windows of the Joan Bowen Café ~ it is just so Paris!

Close-Up on the Glass Windows

The Operating Hours of the Joan Bowen Café are prominently displayed on the blinds and glass doors of the premises.

The blinds stating the Café's Operating Hours

Good Employees' Benefits with stipulated Afternoon Break provided :)

The decor of the Joan Bowen Café is very cozy and warm and full of love too! We see many vibrantly coloured paintings hung on the walls as well as a shelf of lively-lookong photos of the youths who have worked and trained in the place.

Interior of the Joan Bowen Café ~ check out the stained glass design!

A cozy place for gatherings, suitable for both the young and old...

TV displaying the details and information regarding the Joan Bowen Café

Besides providing Food and Beverage to customers, the café also provides photo printing services via their joint collaboration with Kodak Express. I think this service caters more to the residents in the neighbourhood.

Next to the Kodak Express booths is a shelf decorated with many photo frames - the owners of the café enjoy taking photographs and shared fragments of their good memories in the photographs displayed on the racks too :) So I guess it is a brilliant solution devised by this café as the staff and owners can have easy access to photo printing and also earn an extra source of revenue by providing such services to the en masse in the meantime :)

Alternative Source of Income - joint collaboration with Kodak Express

The Joan Bowen Café is suitable for families and friends to hang-out as you can see the little kid wandering about the place whilst the adults enjoyed their meal.

Artistic Wall Painting as well as a shelf filled with photos and plush toys

The Inner Corner of the Cafe - you can can actually see the youths cooking through the glass panel on the left of the photo if you are seated there

As we took this photo after the dinner crowd dispersed (the place closes at 9.30pm anyway) and hence the lights were being switched off resulting in another unflattering photo with dim lighting :( I sat at one of the seats along the wall when I first came to this place and was intrigued by how the chefs prepare the dishes over the fiery flames throug the glass panel. As a normal human being, I am super terrified of fire, hence I really think that these youths deserve our respect for having such courage and passion for cooking - after all, the kitchen can be a hazardous place to work in.

Joan Bowen Café , Macpherson

Le' Menu

We were handed a set of menu each. They appear to be tattered and torn - which means that many people have visited the place before we did.. LOL

Cover Page ~ actually I'm enjoying the kiddy illustrations

Menu - Mains

The dishes served on the Menu do not change that frequent as it takes more time to train the chef to cook different dishes and yet not compromising on the standards at the same time. Maintaing the standards of the taste of food served is a persisting problem in mainstream restaurants and eateries, what more in the Joan Bowen Café whereby the labour force comprises of people with special needs.

The prices quoted on the Menu will not be subjected to prevailing GST (Goods and Services Tax) as well as Service Charges. Hence, the prices are super reasonable for a bistro environment like this!

Desserts and Drinks Menu

As we visited this place during the festive season, the waiter who attended to us tried his best to inform us of their new dishes for Christmas. Noticing that we did not quite understand what he was trying to convey, another aunty took over and explained to us that they are serving some Christmas Specials that evening.

House Wine for Sale during Christmas :)

My Rabbit is getting drunk!!!

What We Ordered

We ordered one Soup of The Day - Cream of Mushroom, together with Rosemary and Lemon Chicken for mains followed by Apple Crumble for desserts.

Le' Food

Soup of The Day: Cream of Mushroom (SGD5.00)

I can assure you that this is the richest and creamiest mushroom soup ever tasted in a café! The chef had no qualms in the adding of the ingredients at all for a price like this. Normally what you would expect for SGD5 is either a bowl of diluted soup or a thickened bowl of soup that is lumpy and floury is texture.

Soup of The Day ~ Cream of Mushroom

Crackers served with the soup

See the thick consistency of the soup? They are made with REAL MUSHROOMS!

Just to digress a little - we have tried Cream of Broccoli during our last visit and the soup tasted just as good too :)

Taking a selfie in the romantic ambience whilst waiting for the next dish to be served

Rosemary and Lemon Chicken (SGD10.00)

Pan Seared Chicken Thigh, Marinated with Fresh Rosemary, Lemon Zest and Garlic. Accompanied with Rosemary Sauce.

I will leave the photos to do most of the talking for this dish. The salad served was not the cheapo lettuce / coleslaw that is usually served in the restaurants. The Joan Bowen Café really puts in a lot of effort in maintaing the quality of their ingredients and hence is able to produce such quality food at such an affordable pricing.

Rosemary and Lemon Chicken (SGD10.00)

Close-Up

The mashed potato is not entirely mashed into a smooth paste like what you normally will taste in KFC. You can still somewhat taste the texture of the potato in their version which makes it amusing.

Assorted Herbs served in the salad :)

No More :(

We practically polished the plate clean as the food was really delicious!

Apple Crumble (SGD5.50)

Caramelised Apples with a hint of Cinnamon, topped with Baked Almond Crumble and served with a Scoop of Vanilla Ice-Cream

I must admit that we were struggling to eat this dessert as it gets pretty messy when the crumbs start to fall out from the saucer.

Apple Crumble (SGD5.50)

Close-Up

Caramelised Apple Filling hidden under the crumbs...

The surface of the Apple Crumble was dry whilst the inside was moist and hot with the caramelised apple filings. It tasted similar to MacDonald's Apple Pie just that the cinnamon makes it more fragrant and appetising.

Besides being a little too challenging to savour this dessert, the scoop of vanilla ice-cream was too frozen solid to melt even after we were almost done with eating the apple crumble itself.

The Vanilla Ice-Cream which refused to melt... Meh~

As I was not too satisfied with the Apple Crumble, we decided to order another dessert which is our all-time favourite - Brownie Almonde.

Brownie Almonde (SGD5.00)

Warm, Sweet, Soft and Comforting. Get acquainted with it!

Brownie Almonde

What we love about this dessert is that it has a very rich chocolatey taste enriched with almond flakes. Also, the scoop of Vanilla Ice-Cream complements the warm Brownie and it melts easily with the warm brownie as we consume it.

Da Rabbit Loves Desserts!

Sweetie Muffin got too engrossed with his Brownie eating affair...

YUMMILICIOUS! - You see the huge almond flakes?!

Le' Service

We were all pleased with the prompt service provided. The staff would ask for our permission before clearing the empty dishes. Also, they would never lurk around us to hint for us to get lost after finishing our meal like our terrible experience with Hoshino Coffee earlier. As mentioned before, the waiter who has attended to us was trying his best to be helpful by explaining about their Christmas Specials but he had some problems expressing himself clearly. This problem was solved swiftly by another aunty observing nearby and she jumped into his rescue by taking over the clarification job - this demonstrates great teamwork and mentorship. It is very rare to see this kind of teamwork in other places where politics abound. Hence kudos for creating such an inclusive work environment for the staff!

Overall

Sweetie Muffin and I enjoyed our stay there very much. It is indeed a quiet and romantic place for dating during weekday evenings (it might get slightly rowdy when there is a crowd if there are kids during Saturdays). Indeed, it is money well-spent for good quality food, service and also for a good cause! We will continue to support Joan Bowen Café and will urge everybody who has read this post to try out too!