Lenas

Last weekend, Jeffrey and I headed over to Lenas at Bugis because we heard that they serve affordable and good food (:

Lenas is located just next to Sketches, which is another great Italian restaurant that my family likes quite a bit.

Lenas was surprisingly quiet on that Saturday afternoon, probably because many Singaporeans took advantage of the long weekend to go on a holiday, or perhaps they were in a chingchong Chinese New Year mood and they preferred having Chinese food that day. Whatever the reason, we were quite thankful that we didn't have to queue for a table or wait too long for our food to be served.

The interior of Lenas is very woody. I don't recall being in any restaurant that has as many slanted wooden planks placed all over the restaurant as Lenas. The seemingly disorganised placement of wooden planks gave the restaurant a rather 'in progress' kind of vibe which I thought was pretty interesting.

I didn't know that Lenas was related to MOF till I saw this coaster. I actually like MOF quite a bit so I knew that the food that I got at Lenas wouldn't be terrible (:

We wanted to order their chef's recommendation for starters but alas it wasn't meant to be because the dish was unavailable. Undaunted, Jeffrey and I chose to have calamari fritto ($7), which proved to be an excellent choice because the bitesize pieces of squid were mouth-watering-ly delicious (:

Their ham & mushroom pizza ($14), in Jeffrey's opinion, was "similar to or may be even better than Modestos". I guess he really likes the thin but un-biscuit-y crust and the not-too-sour tomato sauce.

Initially, I wanted to order a pasta or pizza dish but when I saw that Lenas serves 'sweet pizza's, I immediately decided to forgo my original choices so that I could eat a sweet pizza. I chose their chef's recommendation sweet pizza called Wonderous Winona ($12), which is essentially nutella spread & slices of banana on a thin and biscuity pizza base. I would have preferred it if the base was slightly more doughy/ less hard but it's still a relatively good alternative dish to have if you're in the mood for sweet stuff.

And because I've an extremely sweet tooth and an insatiable appetite when it comes to sweet stuff, I ordered a brownie bettina ($13), which is brownie on hot plate with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. It looked somewhat like Swensens' apple/ banana crumble and I was excited to have my first bite (: Sadly, I thought this dish was only average because the brownie wasn't as dense as it could have been and the quality of the vanilla icecream wasn't top notch either. Having said that, I'd still consider this a relatively decent dessert though.

One little gripe that I've with Lenas is that they do not serve free icewater! =( Each glass of water costs 50cents. On hindsight, I should have ordered my favourite drink instead of having water but I guess water's the cheapest beverage on their drinks list.

Alright that's all for now (: Hope that everyone will have a great week ahead! (: