Saturday, January 22

Da Paolo Bistro Bar

Hello! (:

I'm glad the weekend's here because I get a little more time to catch up on rest! Last night, I decided to watch Greys because I was feeling too tired from the long day at work to do anything but after an episode or so, I crashed and fell asleep on the couch, where I remained for the rest of the night till this morning! I woke up feeling like I could still continue sleeping more but because the sun was shining so brightly, I decided to drag myself out of bed instead of being a lazy couch potato.

Now that I just came back home from my late lunch and am feeling a bit of post-lunch-sleepiness, I'll attempt to blog about my visit to Da Paolo Bistro Bar at Rochester on New Year's Day to keep myself awake! =)

We decided to head to Da Paolo at Rochester partly because it is pretty nearby and also because I remember one student telling me that the Da Paolo at Rochester serves good Italian food. The restaurant was not difficult to locate because there're only that many restaurants at the Rochester area.

As it was New Year's Day, the streets and restaurants were pretty quiet, presumably because many people stayed up to count down and thus weren't awake at noon. We didn't make a reservation because it was quite an impromptu decision to have lunch there but thankfully there were plenty of seats left for us that day! The seating area is actually not very big but thanks to a floor-to-ceiling mirror standing at one end of the floor, the space looks much larger than usual.

Surprisingly, we weren't served any complimentary bread or buns, which I took for granted would be the case in Italian restaurants. So instead we relied on our large bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling mineral water ($8) to keep us company while waiting for our food to arrive. I'm really starting to like drinking sparkling mineral water but I'm painfully aware that they are overpriced in restaurants and that I should perhaps just stick to normal still tapwater so that I can save some money!

For our first main, we decided to order a dish called Tagliatelle Granchio ($26), which is flat pasta with crabmeat in creamsauce. It was one of the best crabmeat pasta that the both of us have tasted to date! I loved how the cream sauce wasn't too overpowering and that they were extremely generous with the crab meat! =) I felt so happy after eating this that I decided that I'll make it a point to consider ordering crabmeat/ lobster pasta whenever I eat at a Western/ Italian restaurant.

The other main dish that we had was nothing new - Pizza Prosciutto ($19) - ham and mushroom pizza. We tried it before when we ate at the other Da Paolo outlet in Holland Village and it tasted pretty similar. Nothing particularly spectacular about this pizza but it's something safe and it won't taste bad.

For desserts, I would highly recommend Crespelle ($12) - thin crepe wih custard and one scoop of vanilla icecream. It's a perfect dish for two to share and you'll not feel terribly bloated after having this. I actually liked this dish because I felt that the crepe was very well-cooked - it retained its slight pancake-texture instead of being crispy at the edges and I liked it that way (:

In contrast, the Torta Al Cioccolato ($12) - chocolate cake with vanilla icecream - was a complete let down. The sponge layers were hard and the chocolate fudge didn't do much to help it =( The best thing about this dessert was the scoop of vanilla icecream! It's something that I would highly encourage you to pass even if you're a chocolate lover like myself.

In short, I don't think that the food at Da Paolo Bistro Bar is any better or worse than its other Da Paolo outlets and I think it's a good thing because it means that we can get quality Italian food at the Da Paolo outlets! (: I'm sure that I'll go back to Da Paolo from time to time for some Italian food but I wouldn't go so far to say that it's the best Italian restaurant in Singapore.

Okay that's all for now! Happy weekend everyone! (:

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