No Menu

We're big fans of Osvaldo Forlino, and when we found out about No Menu back at the beginning of the year, we knew we had to try it. It's probably been written about to death by now, but when we went there in March for a belated Valentine's Day dinner, it was still really new and we had to book 2 weeks in advance.

The system works with a degustation menu where the chef cooks whatever he manages to get fresh from the market or off the plane that day, and serves 14-15 small portions of the different dishes. There are a la carte pasta dishes, but we though we would try the degustation menu, which was the highlight of the place anyway.

The restaurant was packed - it had a nice cosy feel at the first storey of the shophouse.

The amuse bouche - some sort of mortadella on crostini

Course 1: Cold cuts. I loved the salami but wasn't so sure about the lard. I ate it anyway.

This was another cured meat with potato salad.

And parma ham on rockmelon. Lovely!

Followed by bruschetta

And buffalo mozzarella on tomatoes - we loved this.

We ordered a half bottle of Chianti to share - our standard tipple

The hotter dishes started arriving. We had prawns cooked with a bit of garlic

And porcini risotto. This was pretty amazing.

Especially with parmesan cheese

Followed by sea urchin spaghetti. I'm not quite an uni fan, but this was very interesting.

And I loved loved loved the veal ravioli with a beefy buttery stock. Osvaldo Forlino's pastas have always been wonderful - and still are.

The meats came - the husband had the sea bass, which I wasn't too thrilled about

And I had the beef on mash potato. This was fairly normal, nothing mind blowing.

Dessert was this amazing gianduja chocolate thing with some cake - I only remember the gianduja. It was very smooth and was choc-full (excuse the pun) of flavour

Up close

And some meringue-like drops to seal the deal with coffee : )

Apart from the food, what I love about Osvaldo Forlino is that he can still take the time to walk around the room and speak personally to the diners. Better service can never be bad for business. We were also pleasantly surprised to find the chef's mother (or mother in law?), daughter, and niece were serving food and at the same time, taking the time to chat with patrons. Left us with a really good feeling about the place, and a "I should come back soon" thought in our heads.

The degustation menu cost $98 per person, and the bottle of wine set us back $50, making it a total of $289 for 2 persons. The wife paid. Hmph.

23 Boon Tat Street

Tel: 6224 0091

Website: http://www.nomenusingapore.com/