Small Potatoes Make The Steak Look Bigger

Have I mentioned that I've mixed feelings about Modesto's (1 Tanglin Road #01-09/10 Orchard Parade Hotel S247905, tel:62357808)? For one, the diverse crowd's pretty strong and has been that way for a long time. The service is something that I consider to be a notch up from the run of the mill restaurants in town. If one doesn't get too picky, the food here is actually pretty decent. They've brought wood fired pizza to the general public for the longest time before the rise of the other seemingly authentic Italian places that are popping up like mushrooms these days. Still there's this element of them trying a bit to hard to stay relevant in the cuisine they do. Like claiming to serve pasta only al dente which I think is really out of point. If it's really Italian, there is no other way of doing it except mistakes. Also, the strange thing about them in less busy times is the speed at which food is served. I had barely started on my first piece of bread before the starter of the parma ham and melon arrived. Granted that I hadn't reached out for the ham as soon as the plate sat on the table, I was midway through my first piece and the pastas arrived. If you're still missing the point here, it feels pre-prepared.

I've had this thought in my head for a while now regarding gnocchis. I've heard people on some basis to use the blatantly and overly whored "melt in your mouth" expression to describe it. I've had ones that I thought were good and ones that pretty much made me decide never to ever order again them again from that particular restaurant. None of them actually qualified as something that actually come close to melting in the mouth. Am I missing something here? By the way, I thoroughly detest that phrase simply because of the countless times been abused by those that don't know any better, or are trying in some odd sense to show off that they're actually eating something that has a goodness in that attribute.

Speaking of which, Modesto's actually has pretty decent gnocchis in gorgonzola sauce. They're served hot, soft and slightly chewy which is the way I think they ought to taste in terms of texture for these dumplings. The portions are also rather generous, to the point where there's probably more than a handful of people that I know which cannot finish a plate of those by themselves. These definitely do not melt in your mouth.

The squid ink tagliatelle wasn't really anything impressive. The overall taste struck me as pretty flat and ordinary despite the shrimp bisque sauce, which turned out to be basically the taste of everything else on the plate. Like the gnocchis which were pretty much mostly the light creamy gorgonzola (at least they were statisfying to some extent), the tagliatelle was mostly the taste of the bisque with very unremarkable shrimps and pan fried scallops that doesn't look nor taste pan fried to me. I had imagined it to be much better.