Bitters & Love

Every city has its insider tips. Places where lumbersexuals mix drinks behind the bar, while being adored by little hipster girls. Although, the location of Bitters & Love is no secret, you easily can be rattled while searching for the entrance. The bar is located right behind the Shoe Box Canteen. A small (by the way also highly recommended) restaurant. Since the windows are slightly darkened and the sign rather suggests a cheap shoe store, you quite often see people with big question marks on their foreheads, nervously walking up and down the road.
So do not worry. Put on your perky smile and walk in to Shoe Box Canteen, waving and heading right towards the bar. At Bitters & Love, delicious cocktail variations will be waiting for you. Quite often "startenders" (hyped bartenders) will be visiting from abroad.

After yet another tough week, I thought I deserved a treat so me and a few work friends headed down to Bitters and Love. I'd been wanting to try this place as the name piqued my interest and the location was a convenient walk from work.

So. Glad. We enjoyed all our drinks. They don't have proper names but you can choose your taste or alcohol and off they go. Prices are nett. Ranging mostly from 19 to 23.

A short list of bar snacks but everything we had was good and reasonably priced. Hard to make a dinner of it but we did anyway (shows what you can do if you put your mind to it). My friend really enjoyed the beef cubes ($24 for a platter). And we both loved the oysters (Canadian 1/2 dozen for $20). In fact we had 2 orders of both. We also tried the B&L sandwiches ($9) and love chips (limited stock..nice crunch).

I had a really nice time chatting with Eugene the bartender and Ernest one of the partners who was very kind. He gave me the drink he ordered for himself and let me try 2 items from the private dinner that was going on at the outer Shoebox Canteen area. YUMS! Spherical olives and dehydrated and rehydrated fruits.

Also had a good chat with Beverly the manager and when we were leaving she generously put a discount on our bill. I had commented my favourite drink of the night was the mango one and they made sure I left with a pair of mangoes that had just been personally handcarried back by Ernest (they were used for drinks that night) from Philippines! Unpretentious? I'll say they went way beyond that and made me feel like an old friend. This is like Cheers but modern (the way I like it), buzzy and yummier!

The drinks seem to be charged based on the base alcohol.

We tried:
1) spicy mai tai
2) bramley
3) mango honey thingy
4) some monkey 47
5) coconut drink served in a leaf-wrapped condensed milk can (they ran out of coconuts) with honey and kaya topped with a piece of bread and kaya
and a few others.

I really liked the first 3.

Based on the private dinner menu, chef seems quite competent in molecular techniques, enough to make things interesting but not too much to emphasise novelty factor over taste.

Bartenders were hard at work all the time crushing and muddling up fresh fruits on the spot but still patiently answering my questions.

There was a mangosteen gin drink that seemed very popular but I was too full then and also heading off. Can't wait to go try more. There was also a good range of whiskeys..had my eye on the laphraoig quarter cask as I love the PX cask and almost bought the 10 year at duty free recently..hmm so many choices!

I specifically chose a Monday night to visit this niche establishment as I figured it would be packed on a Friday night. Well, I was right.

We literally walked past the 'Shoebox Canteen' while trying to find a "Bitters & Love" shopfront without realizing that this is it! Puzzling that we were told that the dinner section is not open and only the drinks section was. Isn't it dinner time around 730pm? Good thing that we already had our dinner at BK eating house, otherwise we would be disappointed.

Since it was a Monday night, there were plenty of cosy couch seats. The caucasian waitress was patient and introduced to us a few of their signatures. Truth be told, I only visited this place as I was dying to try their Kaya Toast Cocktail after having heard so many great things about it. Still, I listened patiently as she had a very good attitude about her.

Verdict:
- #Kaya Toast Cocktail: Presentation scored a 10 for me. The drink came in a lid-less medium-sized transparent mug with a bespoke label of the drink and to top it off (literally) - a triangle-sized kaya toast with a dainty dollop of kaya. The drink itself is refreshing with a surprisingly sweet aftertaste of kaya. Never knew kaya could go so well in a drink! Would love to have one of these on a hot day!

#Drink consists dark Mount Gay Rum, Earl Grey Tea, fresh lemon juice, honey and kaya. For non-alcoholic drinkers don't fret, if you let the ice melt for a long while, it won't be too strong for you.

- Love chips: Basically, it's truffled fried baked potatoes neatly cut into bite-sized pieces - crispy on the outside, soft on the inside - and doused with sea salt.

The vibe of the place makes one feel very relax though the music was a tad too loud for me. When I say loud, I mean really loud-like-I-can't-hear-you loud though I love the acoustic pop song CD they were playing that day.

Would definitely come back again...but not on a Friday night!

We trooped down from 28HK and this has such a different vibe. Definitely way more laid back and casual when compared to 28HK.

Mixologists are bar stories alumni, so expect a lot of similarities. No cocktail menu, just tell them your preference. I tried the signature mangosteen cocktail and a yuzu cocktail, both with gin, and they are good and refreshing. My friend tried the Kaya cocktail, which I thought tasted really weird, but he liked it. We had another cocktail which he did a spin on an old fashioned, and that was really good.

The bar shares the space with Shoebox Canteen, which opens for lunch with a changing menu. So look for Shoebox Canteen and walk right in. There is no sign for bitters & love.

Prices are also cheaper than most other cocktail bars. Our drinks are all $19-20.

Our search for the place was definitely worth it! We ordered for customized drinks and the bartenders were able to get exactly what out tastebuds wanted! Cozy area and a great place to stay intimate with friends and loved ones!

Prices are reasonable as well! $19 for a glass of cocktail and $17 for a bottle of beer. Crowd is nice and the staff as well as the bartenders are super friendly and accomodating. They even mixed our own version of cocktail drink for us and finished it with a bang!

The bar is not really what you could call a real speakeasy. Its located in the back room of a restaurant called Shoebox Canteen. There are no signs outside, but you can already see from the door that there is something going on in the back. The look of the place is lightly hipster, but I suspect that the real pioneers have already moved on to something new and cooler. I don't mind at all, I am here for the cocktails, not to get on the good side of the in-crowd (I'm too old for that).

The concept is simple: you have a menu with a set of flavours (sweet, sour, spicy etc) and a list of spirits. You tell the bar tender the spirit and flavour of your choice and perhaps describe what kind of ingredients you like (I love stuff like ginger, cucumber and mint in my drinks), and the bartender will make you a drink based on that. Awesome if you are a person who likes surprises (not so awesome if you are not).

I chose a nice Gin and asked for something spicy (not Asian spicy, but in the medium range) and my date selected a dark Rum and asked for something fresh and full. After a short wait we were served a pair of beautiful drinks that did not disappoint neither in looks or taste. Both wishes had been taken into account and we got to taste something new.

We also ordered some bar snacks to make up for dinner: some Truffle fries, chicken fritters and sliders. All were pretty decent. Not the best gourmet experience of my life, but took away the hunger. The only real disappointment for us was that we could not order from the Shoebox Canteen menu and eat at the bar. Perhaps they have this policy to make sure the cocktail bar stays as a cocktail bar, I would just really have liked to have a larger menu.

All in all, Bitters & Love was an excellent experience. Not the cheapest cocktail bar in town with drinks ranging from 19-26 SGD, but at par with other places (its the weakening Swedish krona thats killing me). I definitely recommend popping by if you are in Singapore. If you cant make it before 8pm, I recommend reserving a table up front.

Don't look for the sign Bitters&Love, just head to the place called Shoebox Canteen! This is one of those places where the bartender just listens to your requests and whips up something for you. It's a little tricky, and you never quite know what to expect, but where's the fun in knowing right?

I came with a group of 5 and we sat in one of the booths quite comfortably. The bartender came over and asked us individually on our preferences before heading back to the bar to mix up our drinks - each drink averages around $20.

My drinks:
- Drink 1: Sweet but not too syruppy - a tall glass with some citrus and tequila, I forget what the rest was, but it definitely fulfilled the requirements!
- Drink 2: Whatever you feel like today, something exciting - that rather open request came back with the cutest drink - a ceramic mug with 2 small slices of toast and marmalade and a fancy gem biscuit on top, and inside was a cool mixture of breakfast tea, marmalade, egg white and gin - tasted fab and makes one feel like they're eating breakfast =)
My other friends had more hits than misses with their drinks, and we had a whole variety of them, including an Old Fashioned whisky, and a mint julep which was encrusted with ice on the outside and rather strong!

Food wise it's a pretty small bar menu, though food was generally quite tasty. The curried mussels were nice, as were the prawns and its sauce. Would have been nice to have more bread/fries to dip in the sauces! The chicken wings looked really small, but the plus side is they were all deboned so that was easy to munch, wouldn't fill up a hungry guy though!

Overall great experience, would come back again after a more filling dinner elsewhere though! There is very limited parking just outside the restaurant along North Canal Road, and a slightly bigger public parking lot on the opposite side of the road.

The most enlightening bar experiences I've had. I've heard about this place, and thought it would be gimmicky, as it is with most overly hyped bars in SE asia. I can say that they are the real deal.

Really like the kaya toast (it was toasty!). Also enjoyed a custom drink that almost burned down the place while they were making it. Fun!

The ambiance is nice. Almost looks like a laboratory, but less sterile. Great music, stuff that's even cool in the U.S. (we are the taste-makers). The lighting is conducive to a great first date you are trying to impress.

Can't speak for the food because I did not partake. It is a little confusing finding the place, as there aren't any signs for the place. Just look for the place with the weird sliding doors next to the board game cafe.

Also great was the people that worked there: my wife and I were stuck in a heavy storm without an umbrella (shame on us), and could not hail a taxi. The hostess went out of her way, and stayed on the phone for 30 minutes (!) trying to call taxi service. Something that doesn't happen too often, but very cool when it happens.

One of my favs for the intimate atmosphere, eclectic mix of music, and of course their specialty - making unique cocktails. I usually ask for a passion fruit "surprise me" and the bartenders turn out these amazing drinks that somehow leave a lasting impression every time no matter how drunk I am in that moment. I find myself craving Bitters & Love more often than I can afford to and that's the only part that makes me sad : )

Uncomfortable and over-priced, but cool service.

Came in with my fiance for a drink and to check out the buzz around Bitters & Love. I like the servers' costumes, making a cool statement. They also had a polite and casual attitude which was refreshing.

Several downsides to this place:

1) The music was just plain loud. Our conversation turned into a yelling event.

2) The men's restroom for men is small and uncomfortable. The box is about as large as a car boot. Guys, try not to hit your legs against the toilet as you open the door.

3) Prices were a bit shocking, with average cocktail at $23 net.

I hate to complain, but I couldn't wait to get out of this place.