Osvaldo Ristorante Italiano, Maxwell Road

This is the current place (32 Maxwell Road, #01-03 Maxwell Chambers, tel : +65 6224 0978) which Osvaldo Forlino of the restaurant Forlino, has set up. Word around was that this was the opportunity for his family to create the restaurant they've been wanting, to creating dishes that have been rooted in their tradition. Word also was that the food that people could expect would homely and nothing of the fancy schmancy stuff that is generally expected from upmarket restaurants. 

The place reminds me of PS Cafe. Not exactly the kind of homely place that I had envisioned. Service was on the whole, apart from a couple of wait staff, mediocre. Nothing came out of the warm homely thingy that seems to be the catch phrase here.

Starters was a plate, not so much of an actual platter, of their mixed home cured meats and I think, San Daniele ham. This salumi was good eating along with the generous portions of chewy in house bread that they made.

We had spaghettini alla carbonara. I've been educated that the meat could have been guanciale, a cured but unsmoked cheek of the pig. It wasn't half as salty as bacon and had more of that porky flavour. While it was the eggy and cheesy carbonara, the pasta wasn't as dry as I was expecting. There was a pool of liquid at the bottom of the plate.

There was roasted rabbit with rosemary potatoes. I suppose when they said homely food, it also meant simply done as well. It tasted pretty much as it looked like. Chicken.

Dessert was a non dairy apple cake which was surprisingly good. Surprising for me because the dessert menu/trolly didn't quite look interesting and I was actually debating whether to even get dessert or not. The chunks of semi crunchy apples worked well with that floury cake with bits of sugar. I'm not too sure if the sugar part was intended but it was all lighter than it looked and went down pretty fast.