Pasta Fresca da Salvatore and Udders Ice Cream (Upper East Coast Road)

To take advantage of the numerous higher-end landed properties and condominiums along Upper East Coast Road, quite a number of restaurants and eateries have sprouted up serving a mixture of Indian and European delights. Case in point: Pasta Fresca de Salvatore Italian Restaurant.


Opening up with the Parma Ham and Melone (SGD16.90). Having first tried this starter in Nairobi, I find that the version served here in Pasta Fresca is mediocre in comparison. The melon slices were (relatively) dry, and the ham tasted like it hadn't been properly stored before being sliced and served.


For mains, I order the Lasagne Gratinate All'Emiliana (SGD18.40) off the "recommended dishes" portion of the menu, and it turns out pretty bad. Soggy, mushy pasta sheets and bland, poorly cooked-and-put-together meat/sauce - it's pretty shocking that the chefs didn't pay better attention to a dish they recommend. It tasted like it had been fully cooked in the morning and left lying around all day before being microwaved and served up for dinner.


The Pizza Capricciosa (SGD19.90) at least was decent. Heaped with pork salami, ham, artichokes, mushrooms, anchovies and olives, the ingredients on the pizza complemented each other pretty well. I also especially liked the chilli flakes that were served on the side. Crust could have been better though - was sort of an "I can't decide" compromise between thin, crunchy/crispy dough, and fluffier, pan pizza-style dough.


Taking a page out of Eat Drink KL's three-restaurants-per-post book, a short walk away is Udders Ice Cream. This no-frills ice cream shop also has an upstairs seating area and is almost always packed past 8pm.


With a host of fancy self-made flavours such as Lychee Martini, Lemoncello Sorbet (with alcohol!), Mao Shan Wang Durian and Gila Melaka, you'd be hard pressed to find these same combinations elsewhere.

We settle for a double scoop of Snickers Mars Honeycomb Vanilla and Orange Choc Bitters in a cone. The former is rather lacklustre, but the latter ranks among the best ice creams I've ever tasted. Dark, bitter and smooth rich Belgian chocolate Ice Cream spiced with Triple Sec (orange liqeur), I'll definitely be re-ordering this one the next time I'm here.


Pasta Fresca and Udders Ice Cream are 77 and 87 (respectively), Upper East Coast Road. It's not within walking distance from any MRT station, so you'll have to either take a cab, or Bus service #16 from Bedok Interchange. Non-halal.

Chili Crab and More at the Seafood International Market & Restaurant.

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Chinese-style set dinners are awesome. One dinner, 8-10 different dishes to tease the palate and stuff the stomach, it's a shame that I don't have nine other regular dining partners with whom I can go eat more of these set dinners with. Or a blessing in disguise, depending on whether I'm thinking of satisfying my stomach or taking care of my wallet :) Anyways, the darling and I needed to plan a family dinner so we decided on the Peking Duck & Abalone Seafood Set at The Seafood International Market & Restaurant.


The nine-dish set comes with a "complimentary" bottle of Elderton Estate Cabernet Sauvignon - "complimentary" being another word for "included into the price we pay," of course!


First dish - the Special Deluxe Four Hot Dishes. Presentation-wise it's perhaps a bit lacking in color, but taste-wise it's decent. The four dishes are scallops with veges, deep fried crispy baby squid, soft shell crab, and some sort of clam that we couldn't identify :)


Moving on to the Braised Special Shark’s Fin with Enoki Mushroom & Crabmeat in Supreme Pumpkin Stock, a candidate for the longest name for a dish record, perhaps? I found the soup nice-tasting but a tad bit too starchy. Oh, and apologies if you're of the "save the sharks" persuasion ...


One reason we chose this particular set (other than budget) was because my mum likes Traditional Sliced Peking Duck. As is standard with Peking Duck servings, the skin is carved out & wrapped in pancakes, and the meat is then taken back to the kitchen to be cooked with some other dish to come later.



What isn't so standard is that the waitress wrapped the crispy duck skin with the spring onions, cucumber and pancake for us. Which is both good and bad, in my opinion - good because it's convenient, bad because you can't customize the amount of sauce, or duck skin, etc. Not everyone likes spring onion, for instance.


Tonight was also the first time I've sampled Singapore's "iconic" dish - Chili Crab! Named Lion City Chilli Crab in this restaurant, it was actually pretty good! The crab was quite fresh, and the sauce was just the right blend of tangy and spicy to make it a very "refreshing" dish to eat. My favorite crab style is still fried with salted egg though.


After that's done we move on to a fish dish that frankly needed lots more work on presentation - the Baked Garoupa with Whole Garlic in Opeh Leaf. The fish was pretty fresh, but tasted a bit ... hmm, ordinary.


Oh and before I forget, somewhere around here we had the Baked King Prawn with Trio Pepper Sauce which was also decently good. I forgot to take a photograph of it, though, possibly because my fingers were all dirty from manhandling the chili crab :)

I did manage to snap the Braised Sliced Abalone with Sea Cucumber (Sand Fish) & Greens! I think by this time most of us were close to throwing in the towel, so perhaps we couldn't really appreciate the dish. That, and I don't really dig the (lack of) taste of abalone or sea cucumber.

The last dish is almost always a stomach-filler fried rice or noodles, and tonight's dinner was no exception - the meat from the peking duck being used in the Tossed Eggs Noodles with Shredded Duck. I thought that the noodles were nicely done - they were not at all "heavy" tasting which is a good thing when you've already had seven courses of food in the tummy.


Finally, some Mango Pomelo with Twin Thai Kueh to round up the night. Thought that it was a nice touch that the desserts were served in individual bowls. The dessert was sweet and had some nice strong mango-ey taste, but the pomelo was a bit bitter and so ruined the experience a bit for me.


Overall, we found the food very solid and, at slightly over $60 per person after service charge and GST, pretty good value for money as well. Ambience wasn't too bad - we had a private room which has a $500 minimum charge - although this being a Chinese restaurant, you can't expect peace and quiet.

Service was a bit of a mixed bag, though. The sweet-young-thing Vietnamese waitress assigned to our table was very 'proactive' in wrapping our peking duck pancakes, cutting & splitting up the fish & serving to all ten people individually, etc. But we also had to keep on asking for chinese tea refills. In the end she redeemed her shortcomings by taking this awesome group photo! Was pleasantly surprising because most waiters/waitresses botch up these things :)


The Seafood International Market & Restaurant is in the Big Splash compound in the East Coast Park. There isn't much in the way of bus or MRT transport here, though, so if you don't have a car you'd probably need to take a taxi.

Possibly the Best Value Sashimi in Singapore - Fish Mart SAKURAYA!

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The more budget-conscious sushi and sashimi-eaters/lovers among us will undoubtedly know that the best possible value you can get is to buy a chunk of sashimi-grade fish at Jusco, Cold Storage, and take it home to eat. That's a lot of hassle, though, but it's the price we have to pay for stretching our dollar (or ringgit) as far as it will go.

Or is it? What if there was a shop where you could buy a chunk of fish at the same prices, hand it to the cook staff/chefs for them to slice it for you to eat there and then?


That's exactly the concept behind Fish Market SAKURAYA in Parkway Parade. The outer half of the shoplot is a Japanese grocery store, and the inner half is a restaurant! We picked out this $15 block of salmon, and it comes to our table in 11 big chunky slices. Awesome!


They've got a pretty big variety, too - salmon, tuna, kanpachi (yellow tail), squid, octopus, tai (sea bream), and even oh- and chuu- toros! It's not only just sashimi, they also do a decent variety of sushi and various 丼's (rice bowls). We pig out on an order of 大トロ (fatty tuna belly) sushi for SGD15. The fish is creamy and oily, but not as melt-in-the-mouth as the one we had in Daiwa Sushi.


Unagi, Tamago and Inari sushi's ($8 total). Pretty standard sushi fare - though we did think that the sushi rice was a bit off balance due to having way too much sushi vinegar.


Unagidon was SGD13 and was just 'okay' on the serving size. I didn't appreciate that they used vinegar'ed rice instead of just plain rice - by the time I polished off the bowl I was close to vinegar overload.


Conclusion? The sushi and other food here is decently priced but nothing to shout about taste-wise. However, the sashimi is unbeatable for its' quality and value for money - they don't add any service charge onto the sticker price, and huge, huge plus points for having toro (tuna belly) which I haven't been able to find at any other supermarket or Japanese food/fish market in Singapore.

Fish Market SAKURAYA is in Parkway Parade. If you don't have a car and don't want to take a cab, the easiest way would probably be to take the MRT to Bedok. Exit at Bedok South and wait at the bus stand - there's a free shuttle bus that takes you there every 20 minutes on weekends only.