Having opened recently in February 2014, Happy Tree aims to bring super healthy food to the masses in Singapore. Happy Tree is a small and peaceful restaurant, with very friendly and hard working staff. If you're looking for a place that serves healthy vegan food, then Happy Tree will definitely excite you. But does the food have enough flavour and appeal to entice the majority of the Singapore population? There is only one way to find out - Let's taste the food...
Happy Tree
Location: #01-1085, 16 Upper Boon Keng Road
Contact: 68468160
Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 11.00am-8.00pm. Sun 11.00am-5.00pm. Saturday Closed.
The menu at Happy Tree is quite delightful, and beautifully done. The array of colourful drinks particularly caught my eye. Everything on the menu is vegan, with the one exception being the 'AvoGreen' drink, which has raw honey added inside - Vegans take note.
Happy Tree pride themselves on adding no MSG, artificial food colouring and flavouring into their food. They also refrain from any deep frying and don't add any white sugar. Most of the food is steamed.
Like I said, I struggle to resist colourful drinks, so I started off with the Cacao Banana. For this drink, frozen banana is blended together with cacao powder (a supposed high source of antioxidants and iron). This drink is essentially a smoothie, with shavings of cacao/cocoa sprinkled on top, which I found to be a particularly endearing extra touch. The drink itself is thick and ice cold, which I adored. I did find there was a lack of sweetness though, probably because no extra sugar is added.
Price: $5.00. 7/10
After ordering one, I simply couldn't stop. So I picked out the True Blue smoothie as well. This drink follows the same concept as the previous one, but this time it is frozen blueberries that are added to the drink. The base for all the smoothies at Happy Tree is organic brown rice milk. Once again, this drink did seem a little bland and lacking in sugar. But on the plus side, I am sure it is good for our health.
Price: $5.50. 7/10
Eventually I managed to pry my eyes away from the drinks section long enough to order some actual food. We kicked things off with the Inari Brown, which acts as a healthier version of the traditional Japanese inari. This side dish uses organic brown rice in the center, with shitake mushroom and carrot mixed into it. The taste was pretty good overall, but could have done with the classic Japanese accompaniments of light sauce and wasabi to give that extra kick that it needed.
Price: $4.80. 7/10
Lastly we have the Brown Rice Ramen Soup. This dish has a variety of ingredients swimming inside, such as broccoli, carrots, needle mushroom and tofu. The ingredients are mostly steamed, and were cooked just perfectly. The noodles are made out of unbleached brown rice, and had nice bouncy texture. The weakness of this dish for most will be lack of depth and flavour. The soup base is very mild, therefore I found it quite uninspiring to continue eating. No doubt this dish is healthy, but hardly a joy to eat.
Price: $6.50. 6/10
Conclusion - If you're someone that has grown up indulging in the typical Singapore hawker centre delights, then the food at Happy Tree will inevitably seem a little bland and forgettable. But on the flip side, you know visiting Happy Tree will nourish the body and be without many of the harmful ingredients that the hawkers are using in their cooking. So for me, the lack of taste is worth it!
Overall Rating
Food - 7/10
Ambiance- 7/10
Service - 8/10
Value - 7/10
Happy Tree
Location: #01-1085, 16 Upper Boon Keng Road
Contact: 68468160
Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 11.00am-8.00pm. Sun 11.00am-5.00pm. Saturday Closed.
The menu at Happy Tree is quite delightful, and beautifully done. The array of colourful drinks particularly caught my eye. Everything on the menu is vegan, with the one exception being the 'AvoGreen' drink, which has raw honey added inside - Vegans take note.
Happy Tree pride themselves on adding no MSG, artificial food colouring and flavouring into their food. They also refrain from any deep frying and don't add any white sugar. Most of the food is steamed.
Like I said, I struggle to resist colourful drinks, so I started off with the Cacao Banana. For this drink, frozen banana is blended together with cacao powder (a supposed high source of antioxidants and iron). This drink is essentially a smoothie, with shavings of cacao/cocoa sprinkled on top, which I found to be a particularly endearing extra touch. The drink itself is thick and ice cold, which I adored. I did find there was a lack of sweetness though, probably because no extra sugar is added.
Price: $5.00. 7/10
After ordering one, I simply couldn't stop. So I picked out the True Blue smoothie as well. This drink follows the same concept as the previous one, but this time it is frozen blueberries that are added to the drink. The base for all the smoothies at Happy Tree is organic brown rice milk. Once again, this drink did seem a little bland and lacking in sugar. But on the plus side, I am sure it is good for our health.
Price: $5.50. 7/10
Eventually I managed to pry my eyes away from the drinks section long enough to order some actual food. We kicked things off with the Inari Brown, which acts as a healthier version of the traditional Japanese inari. This side dish uses organic brown rice in the center, with shitake mushroom and carrot mixed into it. The taste was pretty good overall, but could have done with the classic Japanese accompaniments of light sauce and wasabi to give that extra kick that it needed.
Price: $4.80. 7/10
Lastly we have the Brown Rice Ramen Soup. This dish has a variety of ingredients swimming inside, such as broccoli, carrots, needle mushroom and tofu. The ingredients are mostly steamed, and were cooked just perfectly. The noodles are made out of unbleached brown rice, and had nice bouncy texture. The weakness of this dish for most will be lack of depth and flavour. The soup base is very mild, therefore I found it quite uninspiring to continue eating. No doubt this dish is healthy, but hardly a joy to eat.
Price: $6.50. 6/10
Conclusion - If you're someone that has grown up indulging in the typical Singapore hawker centre delights, then the food at Happy Tree will inevitably seem a little bland and forgettable. But on the flip side, you know visiting Happy Tree will nourish the body and be without many of the harmful ingredients that the hawkers are using in their cooking. So for me, the lack of taste is worth it!
Overall Rating
Food - 7/10
Ambiance- 7/10
Service - 8/10
Value - 7/10