Drunken Farmer in Joo Chiat – the pizza and wine bar’s first-ever foray into Singapore’s residential heartlands – brings sourdough pizzas and natural wines to the East.
Pizza parlours are a dime a dozen in almost every Singapore neighbourhood, but one of the most recent ones to open up in our nation’s eastern heartlands isn’t just a regular pizza parlour. Pizza and wine bar Drunken Farmer has opened up a new outpost on Joo Chiat, bringing its lauded sourdough pizzas and natural wines to that burgeoning F&B enclave in Singapore’s East.
If you’re not familiar with Drunken Farmer, it started in 2019 as a nomadic pop-up wine bar championing natural wines. After stints at fellow Spa Esprit Group concepts Tiong Bahru Bakery and Butcher’s Wife in Tiong Bahru, it landed its own brick and mortar space on Stanley Street in Singapore’s Central Business District last year. This new outlet at Joo Chiat represents its second permanent space, and the first permanent one in a residential district.
Like the pop-up at Tiong Bahru Bakery, Drunken Farmer Joo Chiat is a shared space. In what is a common hybrid concept in F&B these days, it is specialised coffee shop Common Man Roasters in the day, but converts to slinging pizzas and pouring wine come evening.
We recommend you start the evening off with the Drunken Farmer’s Salad. It’s a soul- and palate-cleansing medley heap of seasonal vegetables, which you’ll need for what is to come. Also its signature Sourdough Karaage, which are fried chicken pieces smothered in a lovely sourdough batter for a different kind of crunch.
Then it’s on to its sourdough pizzas. We love the good ‘ol Margherita, but was tempted by Chorizo that’s new to the Drunken Farmer menu. Here you have thinly sliced medallions of pork chorizo topping a tomato base – savoury, meaty, and full of umami. Turophiles will absolutely adore the Four Cheeses, but an absolute winner for us was the Anchovy & Pesto. It comes with no mere minuscule anchovies, but finger-sized meaty specimens full of fresh briny flavour.
Lest you forget, Drunken Farmer is first and foremost a wine purveyor. And a natural wine one at that. Here you’ll find a healthy curation of natural wines – of the organic, biodynamic, and sustainable sort – to wash a meal down. Our starting bottle of Champagne Fleury Blanc de Noirs NV Brut had the requisite fruitiness and freshness to complement our salad, but also the acidity to cut through the richness of our cheese-laden pizzas.
Make sure you order the Lise et Bertrand Jousset Drunken Farmer Jousset, specially and exclusively bottled for Drunken Farmer. This lovely Chenin Blanc-Colombard blend – with its rounded stone fruit notes – is fabulously quaffable, and works a treat with the fried chicken. If you love your orange wines, the Domaine Christian Binner Si Rose is a floral yet slightly savoury Pinot Gris and Gewurtztraminer blend that’s fun to sip on its own. For reds we enjoyed the Chateau Cambon Brouilly from Beaujolais, the sweet and fruity Gamay pairing very well with both the Margherita and Chorizo pizzas.
Our tummies gorged, we could only regretfully push aside the menu, forgoing the Sourdough Waffle we intended for dessert.
Drunken Farmer Joo Chiat is exactly the kind of dining establishment one needs in one’s neighbourhood – unpretentious, fun, and with something on the menu for everyone in the family. And considering how near it is from where I live, this promises to be a regular haunt.
In fact, I’ve already pencilled in a reservation for the family this weekend.
Drunken Farmer (Joo Chiat)
Address 185 Joo Chiat Rd, Singapore 427456 (Google Maps link)
Opening Hours 6.00pm to 10.30pm daily
Web www.drunkenfarmer.sg
Facebook DrunkenFarmerSG
Instagram @drunkenfarmer_sg
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