Ya Kun Kaya Toast: Signature breakfast in Singapore

What is a typical breakfast in Singapore? The most popular breakfast meal in Singapore is toasted bread with kaya and thin slices of butter, kopi, and soft-boiled eggs seasoned with pepper and dark soy sauce.

I love breakfast and I’ve always wanted to try this Singapore-style breakfast. Our friends who moved to Singapore recommended us to try Ya Kun Kaya Toast, a mega chain of restaurants that offers this as far back as the 1920’s. They have so many locations across Singapore, and luckily we had a location within the shopping mall that is attached to the hotel we were staying at.

Interior

I wouldn’t exactly call this location a restaurant. It is more like a food court stall? To start, there are a lot of food options inside the mall/hotel we were staying at in Funan. Compared to food courts in Vancouver, everything inside Funan looked delicious, and Ya Kun Kaya Toast was no different.

Even though the size of their seating area and kitchen is really small, there was already a small line forming when we arrived early in the morning. The overall look of Ya Kun Kaya Toast is actually quite cute. I can see that they tried to model the tables and chairs to look like old Chinese food stalls. They are not the most comfortable as the chairs are hard and the stools have no back support. The tables are also really small so you can’t really put that many dishes on there either.

Food review

Here is what we ordered and shared between 2 adults. They have a variety of different combos/set value meals.

A: Kaya toast with butter set ($6)

We chose the classic combo – kaya toast with butter set. Other variations they have are french toast with kaya, or peanut set, cheese set, sugar, etc. They also have some sandwiches as well. All we did was add on an extra drink for like $2.

The set itself is not large. It comes with 2 soft-boiled eggs and 1 hot coffee or tea. Combo A comes with 4 small sandwiches with this light green kaya jam and a slab of butter (literally a slab).

I was a little surprised at how small the toast is but eating 2 of them was enough for me. I took my first bite of the toast and could taste the richness of the butter and the sweetness of the kaya jam – it was a really nice combination. The bread was also quite crunchy because it is toasted.

On my second bite, we mixed some soy sauce into the soft boiled egg and we dipped our toast into the soft boiled egg. It gave it a nice thick coating of soft egg yolk and the saltiness from the soy sauce. Together with the sweet and salty toast – umami!

The coffee was also quite strong. They actually call it kopi in Singapore – it’s usually brewed to be high in caffeine and served with sugar and milk. The result is a very small cup (like an espresso shot), but it gives you a boost of energy. The lemon tea was more citrusy but still sweet (not sour at all).

Final thoughts

Loewe’s rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 

As you can probably see, this is a very simple meal but I feel like it is beautiful in its simplicity. It tastes very authentic (the soft boiled eggs, kaya jam, and the drinks) even though there is literally a Ya Kun Kaya Toast location on every other block and shopping mall. I feel like they did a decent job of portraying their long history and also modernizing it to today’s world.

I really liked the combination of butter with the jam and the soft boiled eggs. I usually would not just eat a stick of butter on my bread like that because it feels very strange to me (and very fat), but I think the jam and the egg balanced it out.

Also did you guys see the price? 😳 $6 for a value set! That means between the 2 of us, we spent under $10 altogether for breakfast. How good of a deal is that?

I also really liked that you can purchase small bottles of their kaya jam – makes for a good souvenir for friends and family back home!

If you are traveling to Singapore and are interested in trying a classic Singaporean breakfast, I recommend stopping by one of the Ya Kun Kaya Toast locations near you. Service is really fast (but they’re not that nice lol) but they did run out of toast really quickly at the location I was at (by 9am).

Sincerely, Loewe