Drips

An interesting selection of baked items, indelibly marred by truly dismal service.
This little bakery offers a selection of tasty looking baked treats — pies and cakes, quiches and specialty breads.
Unfortunately, staff just can’t give two hoots about you. My wife and I stood around, trying to make sense of the curiously unlabeled mini breads (3 for $ 2.80, sweet deal but there’s no sign to tell you), whilst staff pretended not to notice us.
Upon asking, a staff member grudgingly named the dizzying array of mini breads at a speed that defied normal human comprehension, and then stood, arms akimbo, impatiently waiting for us to decide.
You’d be better off buying bread from the delightfully old school and significantly more helpful Balmoral Bakery on the opposite side.

As a resident in the area, one quickly notices when a business closes and a new one opens with a huge white wall scrawled with «Drips» and has industrial looking ovens inside. I checked out Drips on my way home today (not knowing anything about its predecessors in Tiong Bahru, so completely blind experience).
When we walked in the first thing that caught our eye was the fruit tarts, especially the macadamia tart since we had just had a tasty one on vacation and noted that few patisseries in Singapore work with those nuts. There were also some very crisp looking croissants, baguettes and brioche. So my first thought was ok, someone here must have trained somewhere because your average start up baker doesn’t start off big with an expensive inventory of berry and nut pies that look THAT good.
My partner and I took home a chocolate tart and a blackberry almond tart. I thought the tart crust was great — firm and crumbly. The chocolate filling on the former didn’t blow me away but then again I have a penchant for punchy desserts like the Cedele chocolate truffle. My partner thought his blackberry tart was moist, sweet and had «great gelatin» soaking up the berry run off well. The only downer was that the tart was skimpily dressed in berries but I guess you can’t blame bakers for trying to manage inflation. Not a bad start but I’d probably need to try the croissants and those great looking baguettes for a better judgement. Considering that there are now 4 very competitive bakeries in the neighborhood, it’ll be interesting to see how tea time dollars are distributed.