Singapore has a strong coffee culture. Old school coffeeshops or kopitiam still exist throughout the city. Getting together for a kopi continues to be central to the social fabric of Singapore. People come in their work clothes, Sunday best, shorts and flip flops for coffee, tea, and kaya toast.

The kopitiam is a quick place to grab breakfast or have an afternoon break. My Singaporean friends also take me to many heartland locations that I wouldn’t otherwise know about. I like those low plastic stools. I like that in such a modern city of concrete, steel, and glass, these spots are still there.

As I’m not much of a coffee drinker, and more of a tea drinker, I never quite learned how to order kopi (“ko-peeh”). It can be overwhelming and confusing to newcomers. So I looked into it for us expats and ang moh and I’m going to share how to order it.

So, what is kopi?

Spoken language in Singapore or Singlish is a mix of Malay, Tamil, and a few Chinese dialects. The word kopi is Malay and if you’re ordering kopi, it’s coffee with condensed milk and sugar. Also known as Nanyang coffee. Nanyang means “South Sea” in reference to the historical immigration in this area, leading to the resettlement of people from south China. Local coffee culture is intimately tied to settlers in Colonial Singapore and harks back to the 1940s when coffee beans were roasted and grounded in the backyards of coffeeshops

The art of ordering kopi in Singapore is knowing the various terms and their combos to get the coffee you want. You can vary the strength of the coffee, amount of sweetness, kind of milk or no milk, how hot or cold… If you want iced coffee, add the word peng to an order, like kopi peng. Peng comes from the word “ice” (冰).

If you prefer evaporated milk instead of condensed milk, you’ll want to order a kopi c.

And a black coffee is a Kopi Kosong.

Want it to go? Dabao is what you want to say. Take-out coffees and drinks come in little plastic bags, which is pretty common in Southeast Asia. This makes it easy to hang your drinks from the handlebars of motorbikes.

Kopi Vocab

O	C	Gao	pok/po	gah dai	siew dai	kosong	peng	pua siow
black with sugar	evaporated milk	strong coffee	weak coffee	sweeter	less sweet	no sugar	Iced	warm (less hot)

(scroll to left-right on mobile view)

Eating Local

If you spend any time in Singapore, you’ll quickly notice how many coffeeshops there are, whether inside hawker centres or malls. I was quickly introduced to the traditional breakfast of kopi with kaya (coconut butter) toast and half-boiled eggs. For my order of well-done eggs, they just leave them in the cup of boiling water for a few minutes longer. Later on, I did acquire the taste of half-boiled eggs served in soya sauce. And it’s not just for breakfast.

Many coffeeshops still use ceramic cups with a traditional motif. These were the logos of coffee suppliers. Served in a cup on a saucer, the coffee is strong and hot. To cool it down to drink, patrons would pour it into the saucer to drink from.

One of the coffee-shop chains you’ll undoubtedly see all over Singapore is Toast Box. I also love going to neighbourhood coffee places. They serve up no non-sense delicious food with a serving of nostalgia.

Kopitiam became more popular after the end of the Japanese Occupation, a dark period of history in many parts of Asia. Aside from the shops that were mostly in Chinatown, coffee was also sold from carts. Before the hawker centres we now have all through Singapore, hawkers used to sell home-cooked meals. These enterprising pioneers carried their kitchens around, balanced on a bamboo pole on their shoulders. After Singapore’s independence in 1965, the government moved the hawkers into more permanent set ups, though illegal hawking continued into the 1970s.

One of the oldest kopitiam is Kheng Hoe Heng Coffeeshop. It was opened by a Hainanese immigrant in 1919 at 67 Killiney Road. This was taken over by Killiney Kopitiam in 1992.

Tian Kee & Co

My friend took me to Tian Kee & Co. An old provision shop for over fifty years, Tian Kee & Co is located at 12 Dakota Crescent by Old Airport Road. This is one of Singapore’s oldest housing estates, with a small number of original buildings still standing. Today’s Dakota Crescent bordered Kallang Airport, which closed in 1955. The estate’s name comes from the Douglas DC-3 plane that frequented this airport. This plane was referred to as the “Dakota.”

The original name of the shop and its well-known blue signboard, along with various nostalgic items, were kept for the low-key coffee shop that it became. A 20-cent dolphin kiddy ride is outside the shop doors. Apparently, it still works. The coffee shop serves homemade pies and gelato and more atas offerings like French Vanilla Tea with Rose, Italian Almond Tea, and Pink Lady (steamed milk with rose syrup).

It also sells those hawthorn snacks, the Haw Flakes. Thin discs that I’d eat to gulp down nasty-tasting Chinese medicine brews as a child.

Not quite the kopitiam of the old; still, it is still a piece of history.

2025 Update : Tian Kee & Co is now at 46 Siglap, East Coast. Their famous Rainbow Cake is still available.

Tian Kee & Co sources their coffee from Dutch Colony. I discovered when I went to PasarBella, an indoor food market at the Grandstand. Located on Turf Club Road, this complex houses a variety of restaurants and shops.

Before heading up to PasarBella, take a look on the first floor. You can get delicious buns from Nam Kee Pau, like Char Siew Bao or BBQ pork buns and their other traditional buns from their Johur Bahru stall. If the line up isn’t too long – and it often is – I get the red paste buns. They also serve noodles and porridge, mostly with pork.

I’ve also eaten at Curry Gardenn. I like their lime juice and frothy tea to go with their vegetarian dishes.

Anyway, one of my visits to PasarBella, I was walking by Dutch Colony. The barista was friendly and agreed to be photographed as he prepared coffee. I ended up having an interesting conversation as he explained a bit about their coffee.

That’s the thing about Singapore. It’s a small city full of offerings and it is easy to bump into something interesting. For those of us who were there when things were still there, we hold that history now.

2025 Update : PasarBella is closed. Dutch Colony still has many locations in Singapore. The Grandstand itself closed in December 2023 and the area is being redeveloped as the campus for SUSS, Singapore University of Social Sciences.