“With so many restaurants at Holland Village, where should we have our dinner?”

Holland Village is like a foodie paradise in the West of Singapore. Tourists love Holland Village, and there are also plenty of locals who always frequent the area. Meanwhile I have been on the lookout for a good Italian restaurant to add to my list of Best Singapore Italian Restaurant. Since Amici Italian Restaurant is one of the few Holland Village restaurants that has been around for some time, we set off for an Italian feast during a weekday dinner.

My friend had never tried any Squid Ink Pasta before, so I was keen to convert her to a fan of the black and slimy, but absolutely delicious pasta. Unfortunately, Amici’s Spaghetti Nero Di Calamari E Merluzzo ($20.90) was a letdown. It was subtle, bordering on bland, with no distinct taste and the only saving grace was the two tiny pieces of fried cod – definitely not the best place to have Squid Ink pasta.

The Fettuccine Alla Russa ($19.90) on the other hand, was delightful with the bits of smoked salmon and caviar in vodka cream sauce giving the dish a robust and flavorful taste.

Tiramisu is a must-order in an Italian restaurant, and we had the ‘award-winning’ Tiramisu ($10.90) from Amici Italian restaurant. It was a competent rendition, but nothing extraordinary.

The other dessert that we ordered, Country Apple Crumble Pie with gelato ($9.90) was excellent. Each bite brought a refreshing apple chunk under the tooth, and the cold gelato complimented the warm apple pie perfectly.

Among the Seven deadly sins, I’d most likely commit ‘gluttony‘. I am willing to be a sinner just for this apple crumble pie from Amici Italian restaurant.

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I am still undecided as to whether I will return to Amici Italian Restaurant. While it’s interesting to watch the chefs perform in the open kitchen, but it wasn’t very pleasant to leave the restaurant with the smell lingering on our clothes. If I am craving for Italian food, I will probably choose to go to La Nonna at Holland Village instead.

I have only been to Mykii Brasserie Cafe so far, please share with us which restaurants in Holland Village do you usually go to?

Restaurant Review
Amici Italian Restaurant
275 Holland Avenue
Holland Village
Tel: +65 6469 9989

Now that December has gone by and January is officially here, I kind of missed her already! December is the festive month, everyone was in a holiday mood and it provided us with the reason to indulge and feast.

Usually I don’t really fancy going out on Christmas eve and New Year’s eve because the whole world seems to be out on the street, but this year I had an awesome Christmas dinner, and good company to count down as we ushered into the new year.

Oh yes, December has been a good month to me.

Okay I will suggest you run along to grab a bag of chips first, and make yourself comfortable, because the photos are going to make you very hungry. We had a small gathering back in the last week of the year, it was very nice of Ivan to invite Catherine, Cheryl, Leroy & me over for the dinner party.

Call it the Post-Christmas party, or a Pre-New-year celebration, whatever – it’s just an excuse for us to come together and feast!

As a kid, the only form of Salad dressing that I knew, was the thousand island salad sauce. I also figured out that it tasted exceptionally nice with anything, I still like it now, but I came to discover more sophisticated ones like the Dijon vinaigrette that Ivan used for the tomato salad.

Is there a word that is more delicious than delicious?

The braised oxtail stew in red wine jus was simply, uh, delicious. The meat was so tender that it falls off the bone and melts in your mouth splendidly. The baguette that I brought along, came in real handy, everyone was tearing it into bits and soaking everything inside the stew.

Oh my, the potatoes are as simple as it can get, but they are so tasty. As I was trying to save room for the steak, I only had three baby potatoes, but the others adored them, we blinked, and there’s no potatoes left.

I couldn’t believe my ears when Ivan said that he only used salt and pepper to season the meat, and he did that just before it went into the pan. The secret was a block of real, solid butter. I like the medium rare taste of the meat, I like the slightly charred texture, I like how the steak was even thicker than a thumb, and I like it because Ivan cooked it for us.

We were stuffed to the brim by now, but there was still Cheryl’s apple pie for desserts. and I had two helpings of it. We were also spoil for choices when it comes to the ice cream, there were vanilla beans, rum & raisin, and even stem ginger, but I was really excited by the tiny specks of real vanilla seeds. Sweetie, cool vanilla beans ice cream, with the warm crusty apple pie; this, was a slice of heaven.

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Thank you Ivan for inviting all of us to the dinner party! Great food, wonderful company, good wine, sweet desserts, and lots of food stories to share. Oh man, I’m really spoil when it comes to food.

You already know by now, I’m sure, that I like desserts. However, it does get me into trouble as I constantly (read: all the time) think about them and the craving just won’t go away. At least not until I satisfied the sweet tooth. So much so that I eat desserts first, and I can even skipped the main course for the sweet stuff.

Anyway, our initial plan was to have desserts for lunch at Buttercake n Cream – only desserts and nothing else. But we just couldn’t resist the kurobuta pork that was waving at us, I mean who can?

Buttercake n Cream was formerly known as Peaberry & Pretzel (selling German food), but the owners have since changed the concept to an ice cream parlour and dessert place. They are famous for their sundaes, and when I heard that they are serving sundaes, the first thing that came to my mind was MacDonald’s hot chocolate fudge. But trust me, their sundaes are really much better than that; we were considering between their berry berry good and Apple Pie Ala Mode ($7) since we didn’t want chocolate or banana in their other options, and we had the latter.

On paper, it was two scoops of vanilla ice cream, with apple pie fillings and almond crumble. Spotting the speckles of vanilla beans was enough to make my heart flutter, and surprisingly, the manner in which they deconstructed the apple pie ice cream (as we like to call it) turns out to be good. I like how the almond crumble provided the crunch while the apple pie filling added an tangy touch to the cold vanilla ice cream.

Tiramisu. Say it with me: Ti-ra-mi-su!

Desserts too, are special. Why end off your meal with a cup of espresso or a shot of alcohol when you can have soaked sponge fingers into both of them, with the mascarpone special that will set tongues wagging and licking at the whipping combination of coffee-liquor-mascarpone. And there’s the most wonderful cocoa powder sprinkled on top of the fluffy mixture which makes you go: oh-my-it-is-so-good!

As our spoon cuts into the Tiramisu ($5.50), the top cocoa powder layer gave way and filled our spoon. Eaten separately, the soaked finger layer tasted like wet biscuit with espresso, and the masarpone like any other ordinary cream, but combine both together, the result is totally different. The different layers seem to fuse perfectly, and the effect is a yummy sensation.

Maybe it’s just me, but honestly, all tiramisu taste good to me; how bad can a tiramisu be? Okay, you are thinking about the really lousy one; what I meant was between the pretty decent, and the very good one. This means us to the question: is a good tiramisu one that has a) strong liqueur taste b) no liqueur or c) a good mixture of both espresso and liqueur? Some people swear by the strong liqueur taste lingering in the tiramisu, while the original tiramisu actually do not have any alcohol as they were meant for children. There’s no such thing as a best tiramisu, everybody have a different preference to the espresso-alcohol proportion.

I feel silly discussing this with you, but the-best-tiramisu has been over-debated for centuries. But who cares? I like all tiramisu.

Here’s another reason for you to explore Sunset way, TGIF!

Buttercake N Cream
Blk 106 Clementi St 12
(Sunset way) #01-52
Tel: 6777 3477

It’s not difficult to associate District 10 with Wild rocket, not when they have the bitter green for almost all their dishes.

Much as I agreed that Wild rocket is aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, but it’s too much when all the appetizers and the mains are adorned with the same greens. And yes, we started our first appetizer with Wild Rocket Salad ($10).

The Selection of traditional cold cuts ($14) had an assortment of parma ham, salami, chicken, with grilled ciabatta bread.

How about some Deep fried calamari and tiger prawns ($10) to get you started? Oh yes! I was actually looking at the portion and realise there’s at most one prawn and two calamari for each of us, so I immediately took my fork and started eating. And after that? I kept a lookout for signs to see whether the others wanted their share!

Wow, there’s even duck in spring rolls now?

The name Homemade duck spring roll ($10) caught my attention first, from the exterior you would have think that it’s just like the other normal spring roll, but there’s shreds of duck meat enveloped within the crispy fried skin. There’s a subtle taste of duck meat, and I like how the sweet sauce actually complimented the dish very well.

The Chili crab pizza definitely has the “Made-in-Singapore” brand stamp all over it. While credits have to be given to the chef who came up with the audacious creation, but the chilli gravy meant that the crispy pizza was moist and soggy. There’s other interesting new school selections such as the sambal chilli prawn and chilli flakes pork floss pizza.

Wagyu meat balls? Isn’t that a waste of the Japanese beef! I’m never a fan of penne, and this case the pasta was a bit over-cooked. But somehow I got hooked to the fulsome tomato sauce in the Rigatoni ($18)

When we were browsing through the menu, I knew we had to order the Crispy Duck Confit ($24). One of the things that I always lamented about, was the lack of duck dishes in restaurants, there’s nothing like a good duck confit to make you happy all day! The duck confit here was a lot smaller than expected, and while I tried very hard to convince myself this will be good, but it wasn’t. The lack of the crispy skin and the dry duck meat – let’s just say I had better duck confit elsewhere.

I thoroughly enjoyed the steak fries that came along with the Country style baby back ribs ($24), but the portions of the ribs were not as hearty as I would like it to be. Come on, give me a full rack, I can finish it!

Did I tell you how I like the way District 10 presented their fish and chips on the old-fashioned newspaper? And how excited I got when I saw peas (yes green peas) served along side the chunky fries and beer battered fish? Fish & chips is all about the crispy battered fish, the thick-slab of fries, with tartar sauce and green peas! I couldn’t remember much of the beer-infused taste in the soggy buttered crust though. But everything’s forgiven with the fresh fillet, and not to mention I totally adored the way they dressed up the fish & chips ($19).

I was tempted to order the beef burger but reckoned that we should save some room for the many desserts that were coming up. And luckily among the six of us that night, there’s four desserts enthusiasts, so we ordered almost everything from their dessert menu. The tiramisu ($9) caught my eye immediately, I’m a sucker of the Italian dessert and all of them tasted good to me.

The American Bramley apple pie ($9) was sweet-licious too. We ignored the accompanying butterscotch set cream and attacked the crusty apple pie. Every mouthful was filled with delightful apple flavour.

This wasn’t the typical heavy type, you know the thing about cheesecake; it’s the kind where you either love it or hate it. For those who preferred the creamy texture, this was a no-no, while for those who enjoyed the light airy cheesecake, the white chocolate and strawberry cheesecake ($10) will be the one for you.

I always wanted to try profiteroles ($9) and you must thinking how can I have not tried since I absolutely swore by my cream puffs. Taking a spoonful of the choux pastry, I carefully placed it into my mouth, and swoon! At that precise moment, I kicked myself for not knowing you earlier, it was good – it was damn good. If cream puffs with whipped cream is wonderful, imagine what’s it like when there’s ice cream in cream puffs!

For a split second, I thought that my taste bud must have gone haywire as punishment for being a glutton. There’s liqueur taste in creme brulee! But luckily the others reassured me that I’m not the only one who tasted that, there’s really rum-infused with the burnt cream. Traditional creme brulee with Bourbon vanilla & rum ($9).

Oh-oh-oh! the Palvova must be the prettiest among the rest. She’s so sweet, and charmed everyone with her beautiful red coat. You like meringue? You will like her here.

There’s something about old school that’s irresistible to me; the charming environment as though you are taking a trip back in time, with flashbacks of your carefree innocent school days. It was District 10 (by Bonta Italian restaurant) second week of operation when we went, and they were packed full house (160 seaters) on a Tuesday night. That’s something to reckon with! To be frank, there wasn’t any particular memorable dishes which wow me, but the reasonable prices and charming location might just do the trick. I’ll like to thank Hungrygowhere.com for the invitation to the food tasting session.

District 10 Bistro
10 Winstedt road
#01-17
Tel: 6738 4788