Small Potatoes Make The Steak Look Bigger

I'm thinking that this place could probably be just the poorer cousin to San Marco if not for the fact that Cantina (#08/09-02, Changi Village Hotel, 1 Netheravon Road ) dwells in one of the most remote of locations and the service here is quite spotty. I'm honestly quite taken in by how the restaurant has made it's physical placement at the roof top of a surprisingly pleasant Changi Village hotel and despite that being just on the 8th storey, it's one of the tallest spots in the vicinity which grants a nice, if not so scenic view of the beach. The night ambience in the al fresco areas with the roof top pool makes it a quiet and very pleasant place. One could always reduce the value of an al fresco dining appeal since the weather is virtually humid all year round, however this is located just beside the sea and well, there are occasional sea breezes just to up the ambience by a few small notches. Truely, it might have been a splendid location and one could argue that it just probably is, since it is this very location that makes it very suitable for a quiet tealight dinner. Did I mention having also to look past the tacky wooden bars and retro styled crystal lamps on the walls?

If you haven't yet been sufficiently distracted by the description of the location, you might still recall that I have just mentioned that the service is rather spotty. I usually do not walk into restaurants expecting top notch and wisely discretionary attention unless top dollar is paid for such service. These to me are appreciatively nice touches most of the time. Also, I'm more interested in what I get to my stomach then any other superficial flair that an eatery might practice, but I'm sure that it is agreeable that there are minimal expectations that one would have. The restaurant was slightly over half filled on a Friday night with no service staff bothering to even bring a menu to the table until we requested for one from the crew of waitresses that looked that they didn't have the time to even glance to a table of 3 that is just seated and without a menu. To be fair, the service which leans towards an old world charm was quite friendly when it arrived.

The prices here are what I consider to be quite regular of the less expensive Italian places. That means that while it isn't really cheap, the cost of eating here doesn't come across anywhere close to exorbitant. Portions do look quite generous and the food is in a nutshell, pretty ok. That means that while it doesn't fall into the category of being mediocre, there are easily many other places that do better. Which also means to me that I'll probably have a difficult time justifying coming back again to this place.

I managed to break the common routine of just getting pasta in an Italian and since this is my first visit, and I hadn't any idea if there was anything that was great about theirs. The availability on the briefly described menu didn't look too interesting, so apart from an antipasto platter, I grabbed the Saltimbocca alla Romana.


This is a very regular olive oil drenched antipasto platter with the exception of the vegetables that came chilled and marinated. That was something that I didn't expect. I was thinking that they'd be grilled instead and also weirdly, the button mushrooms were so soft that they almost disintegrated in the mouth without having to chew on them. The ham and salami are really, just ham and salami and apart from the enjoyable hard and crumbly parmiggiano reggiano (one of the cheeses), I don't really have much comments here.


From what have gathered, the Saltimbocca is a meat dish lined with proscuitto and it's pretty much the thing that I got. Here its done with pieces of chewy pork meat wrapped in parma ham, seasoned in sage and sitting atop pan fried potatoes and some vegetables. Hearty would be the good word for this dish and I quite enjoyed the slightly charred potatoes. I couldn't quite make out what the sauce was however. The taste was a little buttery and saltish.