Dinner buddy and I organized a quick dinner catch up sometime back in June. After much deliberation, we decided on a new-ish Italian restaurant at TripleOne Somerset. From the restaurant name, I had thought of the restaurant as a pure Italian play in the restaurant scene and not as an American-Italian diner as their website so proudly states.

To tell you the truth, while I knew that the old Singapore Power building had recently undergone a retrofit, I did not know that it was to be renamed Tripleone Somerset. At least, it was not renamed as TripleOne@Somerset (noting Singaporeans and their obsessive compulsion to use the ‘@’ sign. Read this quirky, fun post for more on this bad branding.

We arrived earlier than our reservation and tables were not freed up yet. As a polite gesture, the manager offered us a glass of coke each to quench our thirsts while we waited at the bar and I very much appreciated this. However, besides the complimentary glass, service was clearly lacking. They clearly had forgotten about the complimentary bread (I’m not a sucker for free things but — just one of those things where I saw tables who arrived earlier, seated behind us getting their breads while we were not served ours.

They did serve the bread anyway, albeit only together with our pizza.

Another thing that got my attention is the fact that Italiannies does not serve free iced water to its patrons. Yes, I can understand if the fine dining restaurants choose not to serve free H20 to better capitalize on the ROI per customer, but heck, most do so nowadays anyway. I would have preferred a simple notice that, “Would you like any drinks to go with the meal as we don’t serve iced water”, rather than having to figure it out ourselves. That said, I couldn’t remember if it was on the menu?

The complimentary slices of focaccia were really rather good.

To start of the meal, we ordered a 9″ Margherita pizza (S$9.90) to share. I’m sorry to the chefs at Italiannies, but unfortunately, I did not quite take to this pizza. Not only was the lack of tomato paste clearly evident, the slices of tomatoes were rather sour.

Harris found his chicken parmagiana (S$19.90) to be, and I quote, “(of) promise”. I had a tiny bite and I had to agree with him – this was perhaps one of the better dishes that Italiannies executed. The pasta was, however, slightly overcooked.

My order of the Linguine Vongole (S$18.90) was an utter disappointment. Case in point, I had more closed clams than opened shells. Fresh shellfish like clams and mussels, open up when cooked. Clearly, the clams at Italiannies’ were not.

Italiannies

TripleOne Somerset, #01-02.
(The old Singapore Power building)

http://www.italiannies.com.sg/

No related posts.