Atipico Room 15: Popular bakery by Italian chef opens first dine-in space at New Bahru

If you’re looking for a new brunch spot where you can savour bakes and mains all in one place, look no further than Atipico Room 15. 

Recently launched at New Bahru — Singapore’s first creative cluster — on July 17, Atipico Room 15 is the flagship outpost of Atipico, a renowned bakery with a takeaway store at Newest Mall in West Coast. 

Atipico Room 15 is its first dine-in space, allowing its diners to tuck into its baked wares, fresh on the spot.

And besides the usual cakes and viennoiseries, the menu now includes a range of delicious brunch items — great if you’re popping by New Bahru for a full-fledged meal. 

The staff at Atipico Room 15 also says that they will be unveiling a dinner menu soon. It’s set to launch sometime in late September, so stay tuned to its social media pages for any updates!

How Atipico began

For those who’re unfamiliar with the brand, Atipico is led by Italy-born chef Matteo Pertoldi, who was formerly a structural engineer and architect-turned-chef. 

Chef Matteo discovered his passion for cooking when he started dishing up home-cooked meals for his friends and family. He fell in love with the craft and dreamt of creating unique flavour combinations in his food. 

In 2014, he took a leap of faith and started Atipico as a private dining experience. 

Atipico’s name is symbolic — the Italian word for “atypical”, it embodies chef Matteo’s burning desire to design novel dishes with heart, soul and flavour. 

He specialises in modern European cuisine and regularly hosts cocktail events, buffet spreads and standing dinners. 

After growing demand for his fare, chef Matteo decided to launch a new concept: Atipico Atelier in West Coast. 

In the front, it’s a small takeaway store that offers pantry staples, such as viennoiseries and cakes, where customers can pre-order its bakes online and collect them at the shop afterwards.

It also serves as a central kitchen, where the team prepares the goods from scratch daily.

Atipico Room 15 at New Bahru is chef Matteo’s latest project. Its name pays homage to the space that it occupies — a former Nan Chiau High School classroom. 

The room was labelled with the unit number “15”, which was how the current name came to be.

To him, Atipico Room 15 is more than just a cafe or restaurant. Rather, he sees it as a stage for his creativity and modern European culinary techniques, as evidenced by his extensive menu. 

Whether you’re at Atipico New Bahru for bakes, brunch — or soon enough, dinner — there is no shortage of dishes for you to choose from.

The menu at Atipico Room 15

On the new brunch menu, the smoked confit salmon (S$36) comes highly recommended by the staff. 

We can see why. Drawing influence from Nordic cuisine, it’s a decadent dish that features a thick slab of juicy, hot-smoked salmon trout as the star. 

The fish is drenched in an aromatic horseradish cream drizzled with dill oil, adding a mild, wasabi-like zing of spice.

For added crunch and zest, there are also chunks of sweet Jerusalem artichoke and tangy fermented purple cabbage.  

Bread lovers, don’t sleep on the artisan bread (S$8). 

The dish comes with your choice of freshly baked bread, along the likes of Atipico’s signature pain au levain, honey oat sourdough, focaccia and more. 

We opted for the honey oat sourdough — it’s a crowd-favourite here — and long milk buns.

If you like your bread soft and fluffy, you’ll enjoy the long milk buns as much as we did. They’re inspired by Japanese-style buns and have an oh-so-pillowy texture with a mild, milky flavour.

We found that the soft milk buns also went impeccably well with the creamy yuzu and sea salt artisan butter, as it had a piquant, citrusy tang that really brought out the fragrance of the bread. 

Of all the cakes at Atipico Room 15, the French Kiss (S$13) has our whole heart. 

From the moment it arrived at our table, our eyes were immediately drawn to the dessert. It’s a gorgeous, dainty thing that’s dressed in hues of pastel green and magenta, which makes it a picture-worthy treat. 

It’s evenly layered with pistachio almond cream, pistachio ganache and raspberry confit, all of which sit atop a crispy tart. With each bite, you’ll savour a multitude of flavours that range from sweet to nutty, then slightly sour.

Besides Atipico’s signature French Kiss, you can also try the Gateau St. Honore (S$13), an outlet-exclusive cake at Atipico Room 15. 

It’s a luscious choux pastry gateau comprising house-made caramelised feuilletine, chocolate cremeux and chocolate chantilly. 

The treat is also embedded with salted chocolate shards and a crown of crunchy caramelised hazelnuts, which add a layer of decadence and bite to the dessert.

Atipico Singapore is best known for its pastries, so we couldn’t leave without trying its classic pain au chocolat (S$7). 

Available only from Tuesday to Sunday, it’s a flaky, buttery mound of pastry with velvety chocolate peeking from underneath the many layers. 

However, as drool-worthy as it seemed, we did find that the pastry could benefit from a tad more chocolate. 

There was more pastry to filling, and we didn’t quite get that indulgent, chocolatey oomph that we were craving in this treat.