Ambience was nice at W 39 Bistro, I'll give them that! [Review] W 39 Bistro review (Clementi, Singapore)
The nice part about living in a new place is finding little things tucked away that make you feel like you know a secret. W 39 Bistro is one of those things. It is smack in the middle of a residential area (landed properties, aka houses, which are not that common in Singapore). It is in the West along the East-West line, the nearest train station is the Clementi MRT station.
I went to W 39 Bistro on two occasions: once for brunch, and once for dinner. The brunch wasn’t a real brunch, because we only ordered coffees and the bread basket. The dinner was a light one, where we only ordered appetizers and tapas and no mains. I had some issues with feeling really cheated on one dish, but overall the experience was ok.
Ceiling fans, always a plus in Singapore
The Brunch
The coffee was pretty good. Not insanely special or anything, but good. I had a flat white.
A flat white coffee, $4.5 SGD
Same with the bread basket. Pretty decent selection of different types of bread, but nothing to shout about.
Assorted bread basket, comes with regular butter and jam, $7 SGD
The Dinner
For dinner, I got the baked Caesar salad ($10.5 SGD) and the portobello mushroom appetizers. The salad was quite nice, and I’ve never had a warm salad before but I guess it is a thing now.
Portobello mushroom appetizer, $12 SGD
The portobello mushroom was nice, but the portion was WAY too small for $12 SGD. We got half a portobello mushroom (it was 2 quarters of a whole mushroom), with some generic cheese melted on top.
I was a bit peeved by this. I split this dish with a friend, and essentially paid $6 for a quarter of a portobello mushroom with some other things on top of it. SIX DOLLARS?! On top of that, by the time we got the dish, the cheese had cooled to the point of being tough and chewy, which didn’t taste so great because it was just generic cheese.
This is half a serving, or $6 SGD
A quarter of a portobello mushroom for $6 SGD? You gotta be kidding me!
I would have liked to try a main, but they were a bit pricey for me. The mains ranged from $14 SGD to $30, with 5 out of 9 over $20 and 3 at about $20. Their appetizers were around $10-12, and tapas around $8-12.
On the plus side
Another friend got the fries ($5 SGD) (or chips for you British speakers), and those were cooked really well. Thick cut, which I normally don’t like because they are too mushy in the middle if not cooked thoroughly. They weren’t too greasy. Sorry, no photo of this one. The roasted root veggies ($4 SGD) were just as good.
The most interesting thing that happened was when I realized that the Mastercard part of the bill holder was magnetized to hold onto the coins. I thought that was pretty neat! Do all bill holders do this? Now I wonder!
Pretty neat function of the regular looking bill holder, it keeps your coins in place by a magnet under the Mastercard logo!
Last Thoughts
I am not sure if I’ll have time to go back until maybe next year. I wasn’t feeling any of the options for mains, but if I do go back I might try out a brunch course. About the portobello mushroom dish, I still feel a bit cheated. But for the convenience of being close to where I’m living, I might venture there once more.
If you want to go there on the weekend with a large group, they do take reservations!
