Three by Garamika is a nifty 25-seater Indonesian cafe specialising in oxtail dishes. Owned and run by three young Indonesian-born, naturalised Singaporean sisters, Gabrielle, Rachel and Mikaela Maswi. The cafe’s name itself is a combination of their own names.
Located in Toa Payoh, one of Singapore’s most well-established HDB estates, their eatery took the ground floor of a shophouse unit where their parents run a student accommodation business upstairs. Middle sister, Rachel, is the chef, a role which their mum supplements when the need arises.
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There were 4 of us in our dinner party, and two of us opted for the rawon oxtail soup, served with rice, crackers, wedges of hard-boiled egg, fried tofu, and fresh cucumber slices. The rawon soup was flavoured with “buah keluak”, which imparted a deep, earthy flavour to the soup.
The chunks of oxtail in the flavoursome soup were fall-off-the-bone tender. Crunchy beansprouts were added just before serving, just-cooked to rid them of the “raw” taste, but with the crunch still retained.
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One of our dining companions opted for the grilled oxtail, which was glossy with a sweet-savoury marinade.
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Another in our party chose batter-fried oxtail, which he pronounced as “very tasty”.
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We also had two orders of gado-gado - a Javanese salad of blanched vegetables, hard-boiled egg and pan-fried tofu, slathered with a thick peanut sauce:
There were only two banana-based dessert options here, and we ordered both:
5) Pisang goreng - batter-fried banana pieces, drizzled with sweetened, condensed milk. Simple, but very nice.
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Kolak pisang - a classic Indonesian dessert of fruit (banana, in this case) cooked in coconut milk, and flavoured with palm sugar.
Very simple menu, with no surprises in the options given, but which were all very much tastier and so very well-cooked than we’d expected from this little suburban cafe.
Address
Three by Garamika
94 Lorong 4 Toa Payoh, #01-22, Singapore 310094
Tel: +65 8027 1333
Operating hours:
