Tiong Hoe Specialty Coffee - Heritage Coffee Roaster Since 1960s

At its original site along Stirling Road in Queenstown, Tiong Hoe Specialty Coffee traces its roots to a coffee apprenticeship that began in 1960, long before “third wave” entered Singapore’s coffee vocabulary. The café that stands today grew out of a family coffee distribution business, transformed in 2014 into a specialty roastery and café by the founder’s son and his business partner.

What sets Tiong Hoe apart is not a single signature drink but an entire philosophy of sourcing, roasting, and serving coffee without shortcuts. From the house blend to the rotating single-origin selection, every cup reflects a discipline built up over decades. Here is a closer look at what defines the Tiong Hoe experience.

Beyond the café counter, Tiong Hoe operates as a working roastery, supplying beans to other food and beverage brands in Singapore. The team has pursued Q-grader certification, a rigorous credential in coffee quality assessment, as part of an ongoing effort to refine their roasting standards. Beans are roasted in-house in small batches, a process that allows the team to adjust roast profiles according to each origin’s characteristics rather than applying a single approach across the board.

This hands-on attention extends to how coffee is brewed and served at the café, where staff are trained to explain the origin and flavour profile of each bean on offer.

Cold Brew

For those who prefer a cold format, Tiong Hoe offers a line of bottled cold brews prepared in small batches, including a black cold brew, a version finished with milk, a mocha variation, and an oat milk-based option for those avoiding dairy. At select outlets, the cold brew range is paired with small-batch fermented kombucha, produced in collaboration with a local fermentation specialist, extending the café’s small-batch approach beyond coffee alone.

Flat White

The flat white is built on Tiong Hoe’s house blend, an equal-parts combination of Colombian and Guatemalan beans roasted to a medium body with notes of chocolate, caramel, and nuts. Served in a compact cup, the drink favours a tighter ratio of milk to espresso than a latte, giving the blend’s chocolatey, nutty character more presence beneath a thin layer of velvety micro-foam. It is one of the café’s most consistently ordered drinks, prepared the same way across every outlet so that regulars get the same cup whether they are at Stirling Road or one of the newer locations.

Specialty Coffee

Beyond the house blend, Tiong Hoe maintains a rotating selection of single-origin beans sourced from more than twenty growing regions across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Rather than a fixed menu, the origin selection changes according to availability, with each bean roasted in small batches to bring out characteristics specific to its region, whether that means brighter acidity from an African lot or a heavier, more chocolatey profile from a South American one. Staff are trained to walk customers through the current selection, making the rotating list a way for regulars to explore origins they might not otherwise seek out.

Cakes

Tiong Hoe’s cake selection is sourced from an external bakery partner rather than baked in-house, with the rotating range including rich chocolate cake, attap chee and rose cheesecake as one recurring option. The cake is moist, carrying floral notes from the rose alongside chewy pieces of attap chee, or palm seed, folded through the centre. As with the coffee programme, the cake selection rotates, so the exact options on any given day depend on what the bakery partner has supplied.

Tiong Hoe Specialty Coffee has grown from a single converted office into a roastery with outlets across the island, without losing the attention to sourcing and roasting that defined its beginnings. For those curious about specialty coffee in Singapore, the Stirling Road outlet offers the clearest sense of where that story started.

170 Stirling Road, #01-1133, Singapore 140170
Opening Hours: Weekdays 8:00am – 4:45pm; Weekends/PH 8:30am – 4:15pm
Website: tionghoe.com
Facebook: facebook.com/tionghoesc
Instagram: @tionghoespecialtycoffee
TikTok: @tionghoespecialty
Available for dine-in and takeaway. No reservations. CDC Merchant vouchers accepted.