Classified Café is a charmingly quiet restaurant in the lobby of The Sultan hotel that serves Italian and European fare which is all halal. They have a fairly large menu with brunch options, salads, meat and seafood mains, pasta, risotto, pizza and desserts. Lunch on weekdays there (11am – 3pm) is great value as you can choose a main course with a drink for only $9.90 and if you come in a group of 6, you can get 6 lunch sets for the price of 5! Sounds pretty good right? That’s where the excitement ends unfortunately as the mains that you get to choose from are limited and as for drinks you can either have an ice lemon tea or you can top up $4.90 for a root beer float.
The selection of main courses that were available for the lunch set when I was there earlier this week included Fishermen’s Basket (tempura battered Dory fish bites served with fries and coleslaw), Laksa-Nara (chicken carbonara spaghetti with a pinch of local laksa flavour topped with an egg yolk) and Black Pepper Chicken Chop (roasted boneless chicken thigh served with white rice and mixed greens). I opted for the Laksa-Nara with an ice lemon tea, one of my friends tried the Fishermen’s Basket and another friend went for one of the pastas on the main menu, the Seafood Cartoccio ($25.90) which is basically spaghetti in a tomato sauce with seafood that has been wrapped in paper and baked.
The Fishermen’s Basket came out first followed later by the pastas.
To put it bluntly, the food was terrible. The chicken in my Laksa-Nara, although there was a generous amount, was completely dry and very hard as if it were days old. The sauce was ok, it did taste like laksa but it wasn’t great. According to my friend the fish that he had was very hard and dry too but the chips were hot and crispy. The Seafood Cartoccio didn’t seem to please my other friend much either.
Judging on the mains that we had, we probably shouldn’t have ordered dessert but as part of the lunch set you can pay an extra $3 to have a dessert in which you can choose out of a few different types of cheesecake. The Thai tea flavour cheesecake that they had sounded good so we went for it. Big mistake… the cheesecake was also very hard! It wasn’t creamy and was more like a small block of fudge. You could taste the Thai tea in it and it wasn’t overly sweet but the texture completely ruined it.
Service at the restaurant is great, very attentive, informative and friendly. It’s just a shame that the food isn’t good there. Now I know why it’s so quiet!
Classified Café
Address: 101 Jalan Sultan #01-02, The Sultan Hotel, Singapore 199002 (Nearest MRT: Lavendar/Bugis)
Tel: 6291 9020
Opening Hours: Daily 11am – 10pm (Last Order 9.30pm)
Hope you’ve enjoyed my Classified Cafe review, please feel free to leave a comment below with your own review of the restaurant or if you have any questions!
