Lino Pasta Bar, Shaw Centre

Lino Pasta Bar (#03-23 Shaw Centre, 1 Scotts Road, tel : +65 6235 4653) is sister to Lino - which by extension falls under the wings of the Les Amis Group. The restaurant's small, menu's mostly focused on pasta and the setup is straight to the point - they're there to serve pasta. No frills except for the mafalde.

There was one particular wait staff that was so distracted by his mobile that for the four times that I needed him, I had to walk to him. Now that that's out of the way......

Tagliatelle Bolognese was....edible. It's a little tart with a lot of tomato and either little or no red wine variety which along with whatever herbs they used, reminded me of jarred pasta sauce. It's not nearly as bad but it was kinda disappointing.

We liked their cacio e pepe though - done with mafalde and a fried egg. Unfortunately no molten yolk there. #disappointed. I was expecting more cheese and pepper but what they put in was good enough and sufficiently buttery on those satisfyingly chewy al dente wavy ribbons.

The third plate we had was their chitarra with mentaiko and some cream topped with soft boiled egg and seaweed; flavoured with a bit of plum (it's actually ume if you hadn't already caught on). Very moreish flavours that one would more likely find in a Japanese restaurant. Very little of the ume to go round though since I didn't taste it in most of the pasta. But otherwise I liked it.

Dessert was chocolate gelato - I'm thinking hazelnut chocolate. Topped with caramel pine nuts, white chocolate (which we initially thought might have been condensed milk...haha!) and little bits of lavender. Not bad.