Good Old Times at Old School Delights

We all seek the comfort of the “Good Old Days” and there is no better way to do it other than through the food you have grown up eating all your life.

Fortunately for all of us, this will not be just a figment of our imagination with Old School Delights — a spot along Upper Thompson that dishes out both local flavours and local atmosphere. Stepping into Old School Delights, you’ll be instantly hit by nostalgia with its resemblances to the times of recess at the school tuckshop, being brightly-lit and filled with a friendly vibe.

Olivia, the headmistress behind Old School Delights, shares that the food menu at Old School Delight is made up by their family recipes: the mum’s curry recipe, uncle’s sauce recipe, sister’s cake recipes… which makes up even more of a cozy feel.

To add onto the fun experience, you can buy childhood snacks off the counter, pick up some old school toys like Snap!, Old Main, five stones, etc. You also write your orders on a whiteboard like you wrote answers to the teacher’s questions in primary school.

Here's Sarah writing in her perfect A* student handwriting

Then you hand it to the lovely people serving you and you wait excitedly for the food (because we were both so hungry).

For drinks, we had Lime Juice and Homemade Barley that you often hear the drink stall aunties bellowing across the local coffeeshops.

To start off the meal, we had appetizers (who says local cuisine can’t be posh nosh too?) of Pulut and Kueh Pie Tee (pictured with tasting size). The Pulut is a kueh made of glutinous rice stuff with spicy dried prawns (Hei Bi) and then wrapped in pandan leaves to be steamed. The result? Soft, chewy rice with a kick from the spicy filling and the fragrance of pandan. The Kueh Pie Tee is a classic perenakan dish that is a crispy shell stuffed with radish, eggs and chilli. The bites were highly enjoyable!

The mains came quickly after that. We continued with ordering dishes that were uniquely local which we have yet to eat in a while. This proved to be a good choice for the Laksa and Mee Siam did not disappoint. Old School Delights might be a great place to bring a foreign friend to because the dishes are done with the right complexity of spices. I can literally do a checklist: slight spiciness, rich coconut taste (without being gelak), al dente noodles, cockles, fishcakes, taupok, prawns (peeled), egg, a dallop of sambal and chopped garnish to top if off. Olivia told us that the base for both dishes are made from scratch and you can sure taste the dedication in the dishes!

Perhaps just as familiar as the Peranakan dishes are the coffeeshop-style of Western food. We also had the Fried Chicken Cutlet that was served with a special pepper mayonnaise sauce and well-seasoned curry fries. The chicken was tasty being fried in crispy batter and was delectable with the specially prepared sauce.

After the mains, we moved on to desserts, like a true three-course meal. We had hot teas to go with the cakes. Sarah and I were very happy to find it served in the thick cups and saucers of our childhoods!

The delectable cake selection lining the counter made it quite a challenge to decide on which ones to pick. We settled for the Sticky Chewy Chocolate Cake and the Steamed Banana Cake for a rich versus light cake showdown. The chocolate cake was so moist and rich in chocolate, it is worthy of being in the ranks of Rewards Children Get For Good Exam Grades back then. The banana cake was not buttery like the baked counterpart. Instead, it is springy and soft with a light taste of bananas.

Dining at Old School Delights hits you with a wave of nostalgia. You see the familiar, you remember the familiar, you expect the familiar and you get them just as you have expected. We are talking about food here but it can be meant for more. Re-collecting forgotten happy memories from the past is especially heartwarming and precious, serving as a reminder for you to treasure the precociousness of childhood innocence and simple joys.

What a lesson from a simple and unassuming meal.

Old School Delights is located at 215M Upper Thomson Road, Singapore 574408. For enquiries, contact +65 6458 4518. For more visit, www.oldschooldelights.com or their Facebook page.