Re-revisiting Pizza Fabbrica

This was just a return trip waiting to happen since we pretty much enjoyed what we had from the last visit to Pizza Fabbrica. This time round, a pasta and a pizza. 

The former - pappardelle made in house with Challans duck and orange ragout. There was a light perfume of orange in the sauce while most of the actual orange bits came from carrots. I had been imagining more citrus from the orange though. The ragout was both savoury and hearty while the noodles had excellent bite texture, just like the ones from Cicheti. What really rounded up all the good flavours were the decent portions which proved that there is much better value to be found here than the tiny servings Gattopardo. Definitely good for returns.

Pizza was one with prosciutto di Parma, walnuts, Gorgonzola and figs. A light punch from the blue cheese bolstered with more saltiness from the strips of prosciutto and a countering touch of sweetness from the figs. I thought we would have done as well without those walnuts.

A tenderloin from Saveur

This piece of tenderloin from Saveur was nicely done with a well seared exterior and warm reddish insides full of moisture. For what they were charging, I can't think of any better price to quality ratio to be had around. I could be wrong but I don't think I am.

OverEasy, Liat Towers

That's the truffle burger up there from OverEasy (541 Orchard Road, #01-01 Liat Towers). Pretty good. The patty was a nice beefy medium with adequate char and natural flavours which were well balanced with the truffle mayo and the light Swiss cheese. Their "mac & cheeks" was a nicely done mac & cheese with beef cheeks. Was sufficiently rich and cheesy rather than simply going the creamy route that most people do here. I'm surprised by how much I liked what we had. 

If I had to complain - it'll be that the restaurant suffers from poor acoustics, the tables are a little too small with very odd space to table placement and their blue cheese dip for their buffalo wings was really diluted. Seriously weak stuff. Food's also a little overpriced. But I could see myself coming back.

Bistecca alla Singapura from District 10 at Suntec

I'm kidding about the title, the Florentians would not have legitimized this as a bistecca alla Fiorentina anyways. The folks from District 10 have set up a new shop down at Suntec (#01-514/515 Suntec City Mall, 3 Temasek Boulevard) with a menu that focuses on beef. So that's their 45 days dry aged USDA Prime Black Angus done alla Fiorentina over open flamed grill with Japanese charcoal. No Chianina cattle involved. It's a mixed beast of a steak, but it's probably as close as what we can get over here.

So the $220 question here would be how was the steak? I liked it. This was a flavourful t-bone grilled in a nice medium rare with the prerequisite burnt ends with little but salt to allow the meat to shine. I'll admit it's rather pricey, let's also consider that it's dry aged USDA versus the Australian beef that most of the other places that offers bistecca this style.

Home delivery from Spizza

It's been a really long time since I've had anything from Spizza and here's a Quinta from their home delivery. The one with the black truffle paste. I kinda liked it for its simplicity and the truffle flavour which got through. The egg was totally cooked by the time it arrived though. While these things still don't look exactly like what they put up in the menu, it wasn't too far off and if I might say so, Spizza is probably one of the better ones that you get amidst the other options. But I may try another service the next time just for comparisons.

Gattopardo Ristorante di Mare, Tras Street

I was debating over whether to put up this entry, so now we know how that particular debate with myself ended.

Gattopardo Ristorante di Mare (34 Tras Street, tel : +65 6338 5498) is the same as the Gattopardo previously located at Fort Canning which I had visited twice. Run by the same Lino Sauro whose specialty is southern Italian styled cooking. They've relocated to this current spot, rebranded and made some changes to their food. The current setup was more upmarket than the previous and pizza had been taken off the menu.

Even though I am no expert on that brand of cuisine, I'm pretty sure I won't be getting the same kind of food as the ones here if I were in that part of Italy. On both occasions, I have had mixed feelings. Today, I've finally gotten off the fence on how I feel about them.

Something that they didn't do previously was amuse bouche. But maybe there was a need to keep up with that upmarket status and perhaps also to justify why the menu has gotten more expensive. This was ricotta foam on rice crackers and paprika. The rice crackers wasn't so crispy but the foam was nice.

We liked the chilled heirloom tomato salad. With a little bit of knife skills and some administrative diligence, this was difficult to get wrong. The freshness of the fruit paired with olive oil and sea salt - it was nothing less than refreshing and certainly spoke nothing of the skills of the kitchen. I just wanted to be sure that the last part of the previous sentence got through as a point to be made.

Figs were in season so it was some figs and prosciutto di Parma. I wished there was more of that nice ham. The figs were not bad, but somehow, we've been having difficulty finding the same flavour from figs since that time at Valentino's. While this was nice, it wasn't as good as that. Again, we were yet to see what came out of the cooking since we've been eating imports so far that hasn't been further processed beyond what could have been done with a blade.

I was initially excited over their fregola. With sea urchin sauce and no less. In that excitement, I had been imagining a clean looking fregola infused with sea urchin bits/sauce/whatever. Certainly didn't expect the dish to be so tiny and it looked like it had been in al forno. This particular pasta tasted of crab and cheese. And yes, we were disappointed. 

As I had said earlier, I'm not an expert on southern Italian, so maybe that's their take on sea urchin sauces.

The menu described the busiate to be accompanied with zucchini flowers and bottarga. Small portions aside, there was no zucchini flowers. Leaves perhaps and probably enough zucchini to form an eighth of a gourd. No flowers. That those little sprinkles over the top does not constitute bottarga. Or otherwise, we would have to add a "pepper" at the end of the name of every dish wouldn't we?

We inquired with the wait staff about the portion and the reason we were given was because it was prima platti portions. When inquired further about a large plate of vongole pasta over at the neighbouring table, the response was that it was because that was an off the menu special and all linguine came in larger potions. And hence without proper explanation, we poor customers were expected to know all these things? I smell something here.

Some crespelle infused with orange liqueur and orange jam. The jam was non-existent and the pancake tasted underdone. For all the pretentious sprinkling of crumbs to beautify the dessert, this tasted worse than an amateur cook's attempt. It tasted like it was made by someone who didn't know how to cook at all.

The EVOO cake fared better. That being said, it looked better than it tasted. The menu mentioned poached fruit and ice cream. Obviously, there wasn't a single piece of fruit, poached or not in there. Ice cream?  It's just cream. No ice. But the cream was kinda nice and the rosemary perfume was a good idea. Still, I found the slightly chewy dense texture of the cake odd for a dessert. 

I will not come back and I'm striking this restaurant off my list for good. This place may work for people with a extra money to spend with not enough sense to spend wisely and possibly for those to impress a date who doesn't know any better about good food.