148 Neil Road, Tel: 6226 3148
Operating Hours: 9am – 10pm 

A dark wood interior, done up art nouveau-style and furnished with kopitiam chairs and marble tables — that is Wiener Kaffeehaus, stuck somewhere between a Viennese coffee house and a trendy café on Neil Road, Singapore. A welcome alternative to American coffee chains, this is one cafe where the food shares the limelight with the coffee. Each bite of the pork schnitzel will have you marvelling at the crispness of the batter. The fiaker goulash — meat stew spiced with paprika and chilli — is earthy, thick and rich. End your meal with coffee, roasted in-house. Each cup is startlingly aromatic, with a distinct and lingering flavour, and served the Austrian way — on a metal tray with milk and sugar and a glass of water as a chaser. It was such a revelation that it made me want to start roasting my own beans at home! WINE: An interesting selection of Austrian wines is available.

10 Siloso Beach Walk, Tel: 6376 2662
Operating Hours: 11am – 9pm (Sun – Thu) 11am – 10pm (Fri & Sat) 

On Siloso Beach you find what is probably the only pizzeria in the world with its own trapeze. Apart from this, the other attraction here, naturally, is their pizza, prepared a la minute in a wood-fired oven. I went for the Siciliana, a generously sized pizza, laden with Italian sausages, capsicums and black olives and served piping hot and crisp from the oven. Also satisfying was the Trapizza linguine in a tomato-based seafood sauce flavoured with garlic, basil and saffron. While the food is enjoyable for a casual meal, service staff, though eager, are generally young and under-trained. Hiccups aside, if you are in the area and looking for a place to refuel, Trapizza is worth a visit. WINE: A limited selection.