Green Pumpkin Japanese Bakery Café, Nex

This place (23 Serangoon Central, #B1-K1 nex, tel : +65 6634 7990) was the cafe of the bakery of the same namesake, both of which were operating in a Japanese concept food hub down at Nex. It looked like one of those places that we would normally have walked past and not spared a second glance. As things would have it, everywhere else had snaking queues and this was the only one that did not.

We ordered an onion and bacon quiche to share while waiting for the food. It was warm, buttery and egg-y at the same time and even though it looked like it might have come from a pastry factory van, it didn't taste too bad at all.

They had a niku nanban soba on menu which was a lot better than we had imagined. The soba that was used here apparently is freshly made from one of the peer concept stalls. It was all in a light yet smoky dashi broth filled with mushrooms, shabu styled beef slices and even a poached egg that had molten yolk.

We had an order of their tagliatelle bolognese which turned out to be a lot better than I had imagined. The difference from a traditional rendition and this was a large dollop of ricotta cheese on top of the pasta. Which made very little difference if you had attempted to toss them into the rest of the pasta since it would melt away into a puddle of very little flavors. Having the ricotta on bolognese was interesting but probably not the best of ideas. There wasn't enough of the cheese to go around.

What I did really like was the sauce which didn't taste like it came from a jar with the usual atrocious herby aroma. This tasted home made and quite hearty at it.