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TL;DR Super matcha-y cake, super matcha-y drinks, but bad cafe acoustics. It's an aesthetic place, but just takeaway your food and enjoy it somewhere else. 

I used to work at SMU for a short period of time, and every morning's walk to work also involved a pleasant stroll through CHIJMES. I've passed by Hvala a few times, and it's been on my radar. One weekend with a sister who had a matcha craving, I found myself there finally.

If you're not familiar with Hvala, Hvala started out as a kiosk in 313@Somerset's basement selling instagrammy bubble waffles with ice cream. It perhaps wasn't working out well, and they revamped their shop to sell high-quality matcha drinks and desserts, much like Matchaya. Somewhere in the middle of this year, they opened their second outlet with a sit-down cafe space.

The cafe sells cake desserts with flavours such as black sesame, matcha, honey earl grey, and chocolate truffle. Since their specialty was in matcha, it seemed natural to get the Matcha Azuki Cake ($7.50).


This layered sponge cake delivers with a deep matcha flavour. It's almost too bitter for me actually. But I learn to appreciate it in the time it takes to finish a slice. The kind of person who loves this is the kind of person who buys the 濃い version of matcha kit kat and it's still not enough.

If you're an adzuki fan, you'll lament the thin layer of adzuki paste. The adzuki would have done well to cut through the intense matcha flavour. But this remains 95% a matcha cake, which should please the matcha lovers anyway.

What I can better appreciate is the balance of cake to cream. Or the balance of cake to the lack of cream. It keeps the cake from being cloying. It's the kind of cake you don't need to share. The kind of cake you can use an entire afternoon to enjoy.

This is definitely a cake that would capture a matcha lover's soul.

Expectedly, the cafe also serves drinks, and we got a Matcha Latte ($5.80). 


This is another one for the matcha lovers. The matcha flavour is robust and deep. The bitter flavour of matcha comes through without being too acrid.

The cafe also sells the soft serve ice creams that made their Somerset kiosk such a success. However, they only have one flavour at the moment, Matcha, and there is lots of Matcha to go around here.

(photo from danielfooddiary

A note about the cafe ambience though. The cafe aesthetic strikes one as really zen and peaceful. However, beyond aesthetics, this is not a place I would want to sit in for an afternoon to enjoy a quiet cup of tea. The benches are too far away to have a conversation without shouting. The tables are too low to eat comfortably. The chatter reverberates endlessly without any furniture to absorb the sound and the noise gets amplified in a vicious cycle. This cafe was built for an Instagram feed, not for humans, not for interaction, not for relaxation.

Next time, I would just have my cakes to-go and find a quieter place to enjoy them.

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