Ristorante da Valentino

Finally, Miss Very Busy -> Mindy called me for lunch after weeks of waiting. Lol..

We decided to go to Valentino to try out after hearing raves and raves about it. It's located at Jalan Bingka off Riffle Range Road, Bukit Timah Road. Get this.. reservations are a must even on a weekday afternoon! It's that hot..

Dunno why but everytime when Mindy and i go out for lunch, it'll rain. Every single time including our latest luncheon. Funny right? But it's never pouring.. always drizzling.. nice and cooling -- those that need no umbrella kind -- :)

Anyway, the food at Valentino was not too bad. We ordered the combo salad from the specials, chicken lasagna, gnocchi with cheese cream sauce and tiramisu. Salad was ok, would prefer more flavour on the dressing and it's darn expensive! Didn't know it'll cost us a whopping $22.90 because it wasn't on the menu. If we were to know, i don't think we would have ordered it.

As for the lasagna, i'd say.. pretty ok but i guess for Singapore's standard, it should be considered good. I've never ever eaten a very good one here. Bad ones? Tons!

I got to know gnocchi from my collection of cook books. Ever since i saw the pics of it, i've been dying to try'em! Unfortunately, the gnocchi in the cook books and the gnocchi we had was so different! The size, that is. Gnocchi at Valentino was tiny, like macaroni? And the gnocchi i saw in the books is as big as ravioli. Nevertheless, the gnocchi was good.. taste just nice. However, after a few spoonfuls, you'll get sick of it though, due to the cheese cream. Too rich. But oh well, now i know how gnocchi tastes like *grin*

One of the biggest regret of the day is that i never order their specials for pasta. It was stewed duck with homemade linguine. I've seen the dish being prepared by Jamie Oliver before and it looks so darn good! Was pretty torn between the gnocchi and the pasta but in the end, i picked the gnocchi. I totally regretted my decision the moment i saw the linguine being served at the table next to ours. Sigh. It looks exactly like Jamie's duck pasta. Dang! *bang head*:P

Tiramisu tiramisu.. We both love tiramisu to death! Lol.. Unfortunately, the tiramisu here wasn't as good as we've expected. The mascarpone cheese cream was nice but the sponge cake wasn't. Too bitter for our liking. Think they must have soaked it with lotsa alcohol.. Simply not for us.

Overall, we feel that the price is a bit too steep for lunch. For the amount we paid, we could have gone to Shangri La for hi-tea. Oh how i miss Shang's hi-tea... Yums!

But.. i will still go back to Valentino again to try it out with hb.. Hehe. This time, i'll order wood fire pizza and hopefully, the stewed duck linguine will be available then too! :D