Guthrie House

Guthrie House is where I used to go after school when I was still in Secondary school/​JC. I’d sit at the now defunct Venezia (I believe taken over by Cedele), and Coffee Bean and spend the whole afternoon there «studying”/ people watching.
The Cold storage gourmet there is also pretty decent. It is never crowded, and you can find a great gourmet food selection. If you’re hungry, simply bread has an amazing selection of pastries/​sandwiches to fill your tummy.
Car park here is underground and can get a tad pricey. Most of the units upstairs are offices, so only the first floor is open to public. It is a pretty small establishment, but good enough for coffee, bread, and some grocery shopping :)

I always feel happy and comfortable whenever I visit Guthrie House for a few reasons.
I love the carpark. For those who drive, parking can be a huge deal and carparks constructed too narrowly/​have too little lots can be quite a put off. I’ve never had this problem with Guthrie House (cant say the same for Serene Centre) — the carpark (although not huge) always has lots available, is sufficiently spacious, and each individual parking lot is not too narrow. Besides, basement parking in itself is already a plus point– you no longer have to worry about having to drag all those purchases to your car in some sort of heavy downpour.
There are also not too many shops, which essentially means a comfortable shopping experience. This is a mall that you only come to when you have a very specific purpose: either to do grocery shopping, get a coffee/​sandwich, get icecream, or some diy stuff for your home. Everyone is fairly purposeful when visiting the mall, and stuff moves very efficiently. This also means avoiding human congestion which happens ever so frequently in other shopping malls.

This is the closest mini-​mall I have to home, and I love it to bits. The Cold Storage has a Swissbake vendor which always has the freshest breads (and the after-​10pm clearance always yields some good deals!), and Venezia is home to lots of memories… sinking into a tub of their Yoggi (words just can’t describe biting into a frozen raspberry) and, in my opinion, the best Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Singapore, because the owner lives close by, so he makes sure they know what they’re doing.
The Sandwich Shop by the corridor is something I haven’t tried — will give it a shot sometime as it looks really promising. Could use another store or two to brighten it up though :-)

The Cold Storage at Guthrie House is the main reason why I keep coming back even though I live nowhere nearby.
Introduced to the place by a friend who lives nearby, I find that the Cold Storage here is so much better stocked with the stuff I like to eat and carries a wider variety of produce, from vegetables to meats. However, with the recent construction work, traffic that leads there is very bad, so I am a bit hesitant to go so much.
Also, there’s a coffeebean outlet there that makes a great pitstop after a morning of grocery shopping to help you rest and relax a little before heading home. Quite convenient to be honest.

I am not too sure if Guthrie House is still the go to place on weekdays for students of schools along the Bukit Timah stretch but it definitely provides a much quieter environment for work as opposed to King Albert Park.
That aside, Guthrie House is another great place to have brunch or a simple cup of coffee away from the crowd. If you need to grab some groceries or hardware, there is a Cold Storage and a Hardware/​Home-​fix shop all located on the same level. The Cold Storage here is a little more expensive so it’s best not to do your week’s grocery shopping here.
Another great thing would be the availability of parking spaces! Less crowd, less frustration!