Telok Ayer Independent Record Listening Room: Two Stops

Appetite, the upstairs space above chef Ivan Brehm's Nouri on Amoy Street, is the independent record listening room closest to Telok Ayer, and its shelves hold more than 3,000 records. It has been running since 2020. Ten to fifteen minutes' walk north, across the Central Business District edge, sits Offtrack on North Canal Road, a listening bar opened in early 2022 that placed 23rd on Asia's 50 Best Bars 2025. Between them they cover dinner, a slow drink and a late set.

Appetite spreads over the second and third floors of a conservation shophouse, with an open test kitchen and a semi-circular counter, an art gallery, a DJ corner and a living room built for listening. When it opened in 2020, Mixmag described the record collection as one of Singapore's largest private collections, with more than 3,000 records spanning Afro-Cuban jazz, 1970s rock and 1990s R&B.

Fact Magazine's 2026 roundup of the city's listening bars describes comfortable sofas, warm light and floor-to-ceiling record shelves, and lists dishes such as a foie gras and chicken parfait, a spiced Brittany pigeon and a corn custard with uni. The feeling is closer to a well-stocked friend's flat than a bar. It suits a pair who want to eat properly and stay put for the evening.

Amoy Street and Telok Ayer Street fill up with finance and tech workers from the towers on Cecil Street and Robinson Road as soon as offices empty, and the conservation shophouses turn into a row of restaurants and bars. Appetite sits above that noise, up a flight of stairs, which is the first sign that the evening upstairs runs at a different pace from the after-work rush below.

The etiquette is relaxed but attentive. People talk, but the record choices are part of the reason to be there, so shouting across the sofa is out of place. Ask about a record you like rather than requesting one. The in-house music lead, Aryan Clarke, built the weekly playlists when it opened, and the selection reflects a point of view rather than a request queue.

Step out onto Amoy Street and walk back toward Telok Ayer Street, past Thian Hock Keng, the Hokkien temple that has stood here since the 1840s and is one of Singapore's oldest. Its carved roof ridges are lit at night and the temple courtyard is a quiet pause after a busy dining room. Continue north through Far East Square, where restored shophouses line covered lanes.

From there it is a short stretch past Chinatown's edge and across to North Canal Road, just behind Boat Quay. The whole walk takes ten to fifteen minutes on foot. In the evening heat, keep to the five-foot ways under the shophouse arcades, which shade most of the route and stay dry in a passing shower. Watch for the river breeze once you reach the water, a welcome change after the shophouse lanes.

Offtrack was founded by Dean Chew of the Darker Than Wax collective and Daniel O'Connor of the party series Ice Cream Sundays. Mixmag reports that the room runs restored Klipsch La Scala speakers, the same model used at David Mancuso's Loft parties in New York, with a DJ booth built for vinyl. The space was once a disco, and the walls of records and a mirror ball keep that history visible.

Music spans jazz, soul and vintage Asian recordings, with guest DJs such as Bongomann, Ani Phoebe and Kimmah in the rotation. Chew has described the bar as cocktails and dining combined, with music always at the core. The kitchen serves pan-Asian plates, so a lighter dinner at Appetite followed by a few small dishes here works well.

Pick Appetite if the meal matters most and you want a room where you can sink into a sofa while someone else chooses the records. Pick Offtrack if you want the music louder, a bar counter and the crowd from Singapore's creative scene that Mixmag describes as its regulars. Doing both is easy on a weeknight, because the walk between them is short and neither room needs a dress code.

Skip the idea of squeezing both into an hour before a dinner reservation elsewhere. Neither room makes sense in a hurry, and a single album side runs about twenty minutes. Also skip arriving at Offtrack straight from the office without eating, because the drinks are built to be sipped over a set rather than knocked back, and the pan-Asian plates are part of the plan.

Describe the night to the Karpo APP in plain words: Telok Ayer after work, dinner with records, then a proper listening bar, two people, home before one. Karpo answers with a short plan built around rooms like Appetite and Offtrack, gives the reason for each stop and the walking order, and keeps everything in one place you can share. If you are hosting someone visiting Singapore, add that detail and the plan can include the temple and the riverside so the walk doubles as a short introduction to the old waterfront.

Karpo does not see tonight's guest DJ, the queue at Offtrack or whether the sofas at Appetite are taken, and it cannot make reservations. Use the plan to decide the order of the evening, then turn to the venues' own pages for tables and line-ups.

If Appetite is fully booked, walk south to Duxton Road, about ten minutes away, where RPM by D.Bespoke runs a 30-seat listening room with vintage JBL speakers and a menu of shochu and Japanese whisky. Its curator, Daiki Kanetaka, programmes funk, jazz and Japanese city pop.

If it rains hard, take a taxi for the short hop between Amoy Street and North Canal Road rather than walking the open stretch near the river. And if you would rather spend the following afternoon with records, Swee Lee at Clarke Quay has listening stations and a cafe-bar inside a converted warehouse, alongside rare vinyl and audio equipment for sale, which makes a useful daytime counterpart to these two evening rooms.