Modesto's, another take

I have mentioned previously that I have 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 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 by mistake. Also, the strange thing 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.

gnocchi al gorgonzola e radicchio rosso

I've had this thought in my head for a while now regarding gnocchi. I've heard people on some basis to use the overly whored "melt in your mouth" expression to describe it. I've had ones that I thought were good and ones that were pretty bad. 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 really good.

Speaking of which, Modesto's actually has pretty decent gnocchi 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. These definitely do not melt in your mouth.

tagliatelle nere con cappesante e gamberi in salsa di crostacei

The squid ink tagliatelle wasn't really anything impressive. The taste struck me as pretty flat and ordinary in spite of a "shrimp bisque" sauce. Like the gnocchi which just tasted mostly of the light creamy Gorgonzola zauce (at least they were satisfying to some extent), the tagliatelle tasted mostly of the bisque, came with very unremarkable shrimps and pan fried scallops that doesn't look nor taste pan fried to me. I had imagined this to be much better.