📍New York, USA

While everyone’s clamouring for Shake Shack at Jewel Changi Airport, I found myself in another (albeit shorter and faster-moving) queue in SS’s motherland New York. I got these items to go, but at 5pm, there was still a pretty long queue and the whole restaurant was crowded with people waiting for their orders. You get a buzzer to collect your food, and the staff are all in a hurry to get things done with regular reminders of “Kitchen, time is money!” abound every few minutes.

After trying their signature items, I can see why they’re so popular. The Shack Stack comes with both the regular beef patty as well as the mushroom patty. The breaded mushroom patty has a layer of cheese in it, and it’s amazing when it’s all hot and gooey. The beef patty is also very tender and moist. The burger is amazing if you eat it while it’s hot, so make sure you dig in within 15 minutes or else it’ll cool down and the cheese hardens.

I requested for the cheese to be packed separately, so I also tried the fries on their own before slathering them in cheese and bacon. The hot fries were super crispy and not too salty. One thing’s for sure - the Americans sure know how to make their fries taste damn good. The cheese sauce also hardens after a few minutes, so you really gotta enjoy all this while it’s hot. Personally I feel the bacon made the cheese fries too salty, so if I went back to Shake Shack, I’d just order the regular fries.

Overall, Shake Shack makes some good burgers, but after trying In-N-Out in Los Angeles, I don’t think they quite match up. I would revisit Shake Shack if there was no queue, but I definitely won’t be queueing for more than half an hour at Jewel for this.

A cute coffee shop with tons of Asian influences located within New York’s theatre district. Apart from selling regular and specialty coffees as well as non-caffeinated beverages, they serve many pastries, macarons and cute cakes too.

My eyes were drawn to this little alpaca-shaped dessert, which came with vanilla sponge cake, hazelnut praline, and white chocolate. Sounds like a good combination, but apart from how adorable the dessert looked, I didn’t enjoy it at all. There’s a whole lot of cream in this cake, as the white chocolate and hazelnut praline literally make up almost the whole cake except for a thin base of vanilla sponge below. Every bite was too sweet, and could’ve been much better balanced with perhaps some dark chocolate mixed into the praline. I wouldn’t buy this again, but I might try some of their other desserts because they’re so super cute.