Friday, September 16, 2011

Ristorante Bologna With The Parentals


The man and I had separate engagements and missed the weekly dinner with the parentals. So we rescheduled it for later in the week. It's a date we'd always try to keep, regardless of how busy we are. Thankfully, the parentals eat late too. Dinner at 9pm makes it much easier to stick to our date.

We earlier picked Candlenut Kitchen as the restaurant for the week, completely forgetting that they've gone off to NYC for the Singapore Takeout happening this weekend. When we finally realized that, we scrapped the idea of Peranakan food. Not feeling like popping into the other few traditional restaurants. So it was an easy switch to Italian fare, and it was off to the dependable and often underrated Ristorante Bologna.

It's an ideal venue if the table comprises of fussy eaters. There's always something for everyone. Service is decent and the kitchen never fails to accommodate all our quirky requests. Importantly, Chef Carlo Marengoni is still at helm. For the past few years, we've gotten used to his cooking. He serves up consistently good food that comes with comforting, familiar tastes.

Since our dinners have been arranged at progressively later (from 8pm to 9pm!) slots due to work and every other social appointment, the food at dinner has also proportionately lessened. Nobody really needs to eat that much. A light dinner would suffice. After all, most people are going to eat breakfast, isn't it? Over the past 2 years, the stomach has learnt to accommodate less in the nights when I don't have enough time to work it off before bedtime. The table passed on the meats and fish and stuck to a couple of different starters and pasta for the mains.

My garden pasta was beautifully done. The portion's too much for me, so it was shared. The kitchen was generous with the clams in our order, so those were spread around too. However, the mussels came tightly closed with the pasta. All 3 of them. Odd. So we sent the 3 miserable pieces back to the rather horrified server. Within 10 minutes, there was a replacement plate piled high with piping hot (opened) mussels. Heh. Yummy.

7 comments:

Jo said...

closed clams means that they were already dead when they were cooked. Not good.

Jo said...

man! your pasta is making me hungry.. and I'm in one of those craving-for-food-all-the-time days. Arggghh!!

imp said...

Dear Jomel, I predict you're going to walk to the kitchen to boil up something in a pot within 20 minutes. :P

Anonymous said...

*merrily eating my beef hor fun at work* (in denial, haha)
-tuti

Anonymous said...

If I had to provide a last meal request, I think (and my mum would kill me if she read this) it would have to be Italian food. Do you know if they do a decent spaghetti vongole there?

I do so enjoy reading your blog as I can take note of places to drink at/eat at/look at when I am next in Singapore. So much is completely new to me! So much has changed.

Please excuse me while I put my science nerd hat on for a sec :)
Just regarding the closed mussels - Too right that you sent them back as they're meant to be easy to access, i.e. not in a tightly shut shell. However, it's a little known fact that a closed mussel is not indicative of an inedible mussel. More likely, it's due to cooking's effect on the adducter muscles that keep the shell shut. The recommendation is to open anyway and see what the meat looks like, as with mussels, it's usually easy to tell if it's gone off from the slimy, withered appearance.

Jo said...

a bit late, but just to report back to you, that your prediction was..... WRONG! :D :D

imp said...

tuti: :)

fangirlyness: this place does a pretty good one. when you're in town, just email me! i'll pass you a possible list to see which one you'd like to try! i eat closed mussels all the time, unless they kinda stink. but since the parentals at the table don't, i cannot be bothered to argue with that. so they'll just send it back as per usual since they swear that each time they eat closed mussels, they get the runs.

jomel: heh. good restraint shown!