We ordered 4 dishes to share. We had escargots, pizza, seafood gratin and sausages. The food was quite decent. Although the servings were rather small, each dish was pretty cheap and in total dinner cost $30 after taxes.

Saizeriya Italian Restaurant
B2 City Square Mall
Tel: 68344878

I find the escargots rather nice. Oily and buttery with lots of onions. There were 6 escargots so Bell and I had 3 each.

The hawaiian pizza was nice and the restaurant was quite generous with the toppings. It wasn’t a thin crust pizza but neither was the crust too thick.

The top of the seafood gratin was covered with cheese, prawns, scallops and squid, baked over a layer of penne pasta. When Bell and I first ate the seafood gratin, we thought that it was too creamy. But as we continued eating, it didn’t felt so creamy and turned out to be pretty tasty.

Then feeling greedy, we ordered some spicy sausages with wedges. The sausages were fat and juicy but not really spicy.

The menu had changed a bit, some dishes were gone and there were some new dishes. Both of us ate pasta because we felt that the best dish at Aerin’s was the pasta.

I ate Aerin’s signature dish – Aerin’s Tagliatelle which contained a generous amount of smoked salmon, salmon roe and mushrooms. The sauce was thick, sticky and creamy. I enjoyed it and cleaned up my plate. I think the amount is just right as I was feeling a bit tired of the creamy sauce by the end of the meal.

Bell had a black pepper beef pasta. Besides sliced beef, the dish also contained capsicums, onions and garlic. The black pepper made the whole dish very fragrant.

We went to the Cedele All-day dining outlet for dessert. Bell ordered the chocolate truffle cake which is supposedly quite famous as it won several awards. The cake is rich and chocolaty. It seemed almost entirely made up of chocolate and cream and very little (if there is any) cake.

I ordered the real chocolate pancakes which is probably my favourite dish at Cedele. The two pancakes had a generously sprinkling of couverture chocolate. The pancakes came with some strawberries and blueberries and scoop of vanilla mascarpone cheese. The soft, sweet, creamy cheese goes well with chocolate pancakes. Bell and I had a pancake each and we almost fought over the cheese.

Aerin’s
252 North Bridge Road
#B1-11/12 Raffles City Shopping Centre
Tel: 63372231

Cedele All-day Dining
#03-28A Raffles City Shopping Centre
Tel: 63378017

Peperoni Pizzeria
6 Greenwood Avenue
Hillcrest Park
Tel: 64656556

More on the food after the jump

Calamari fritti ($13)

Once again we had calamari fritti. It was as nice as last time.

Carbonara pasta ($21)

Sorry, about the photo. Everybody attacked the pasta and I wasn’t able to take a photo in it’s untouched condition. The carbonara pasta was my favourite pasta of the lunch. It had a thick, creamy sauce, the consistency of mayonnaise. It stuck to the pasta so you could taste it in every bite. I enjoyed it very much although I wondered if I could finish the whole dish by myself as it was so rich.

Funghi & polio pasta ($20)

This is Mao Mao’s favourite pasta. I didn’t like it as much as her so I only took a little bit. As I’ve said before the dish tasted pretty ordinary to me.

Mushroom & cheese pizza

We ordered the giant family size pizza which was huge. We asked for half to be covered in mushrooms and the half in cheese.

Salmon pizza

The salmon pizza was nice with a generous serving of chunks of salmon. There really was a lot of salmon in the pizza.

Suprema pizza

We also ordered the suprema pizza again.

Risotto ($23)

The risotto had prawns and zucchini in tomato base. The prawns were juicy and fresh and the rest liked the dish. I decided that I don’t know how to appreciate risotto as it just tasted normal to me. I also got tired of the dish quite quickly, after only a few mouthfuls.

Peperoni Pizzeria is a cheery restaurant with walls filled with pictures drawn by previous customers. Each table was covered with coloured paper which as served as tablecloths. There was a cup filled with crayons so that people could draw on the paper. I liked the casual atmosphere of the restaurant. As Mao Mao had been to the restaurant before, we let her do the ordering. It was a good meal and I enjoyed myself.

Being our birthday treat, Bright Eyes and I were forbidden to see the bill. It didn’t stopped us from trying though. As the waitress was standing next to us, we would try to crane our necks to get a peep. Until the waitress realised what we were trying to do and quickly held the bill away from our reach. Later on I found out that Peperoni Pizzeria posted the menu online, completed with prices. Bless the internet.

Peperoni Pizzeria
6 Greenwood Avenue
Hillcrest Park
Tel: 64656556

More on the food after the jump

Calamari fritti ($13)

The calamari came with two dipping sauces; a somewhat spicy chopped tomato sauce and mayo. Being lousy at spicy food, I ate the mayo sauce most of the time. I liked the deep-fried calamari and when everyone was distracted after the arrival of the pizzas and pastas, I quietly finished them.

All the pizzas we ordered have crispy thin crust and were priced according to the size:

Medium 9 inch $18
Large 12 inch $22
XXL 21 inch $45

Funghi (mushroom) pizza

There were 3 different types of mushrooms in the pizza; button mushroom, shitake mushroom and porcini mushroom. There was a generous amount of mushrooms and they were cut into little bits, instead of being thinly sliced.

Suprema pizza

The suprema pizza contained shitake mushroom, chicken, sausage, onions and red chilli. The chilli was kept to a minimum and wasn’t very spicy. Even I could eat it.

4 formaggi (cheese) pizza

The pizza contained 4 types of cheese; mozzallera, taleggio, scarmorza and gorgonzola. Of course after it was all mixed and melted down, it just tasted cheesy to me. The pizza was flavourful and a little salty.

For pasta dishes, we could choose between spaghetti, fettuccini, linguine, penne, fussilli and angel hair. From what we ate, I can tell you that the pasta were very good. It was the best pasta I have ever tasted; not too soft, not too hard but cooked just right and a little springy. But despite the great pasta, the dishes did not impress. I think it is because the pasta is so good that the other ingredients could not match up to it, resulting in a dish where one ingredient outshone all the others. But of course, we only ate 3 pasta dishes so maybe other combinations would be better?

Funghi and pollo ($20)

First I would like to say that I do not like the fettuccini with button mushroom and chicken in brown sauce. It is not because the dish is yucky. The pasta was cooked very well, the chunks of chicken meat were tender and the button mushrooms were nice. Yet even though each ingredient by itself was really quite well done, putting them all together into the dish resulted in something that tasted “meh” to me. Someone commented that it felt like soy sauce chicken meepok.

Aglio olio and peperoncino ($17)

The aglio olio linguine was much better because the pasta is the only main star of the dish and all the other ingredients were seasonings. One could really enjoy the pasta without distractions from other ingredients.

Squid ink ($21)

The squid ink pasta was flavourful and I quite like it. It came with 3-4 mussels but since it is not my favourite shellfish, I did not eat any and only ate the pasta. The pasta was coated in the squid ink sauce and all of us had black teeth and tongues after eating it. We joked that it wasn’t a dish that one should eat for the first date.

After finishing 3 pizzas and 3 pasta dishes, we reached the stage where we were full but still able to eat more. Being greedy people, we ordered another 2 more pizzas.

Margherita pizza

We had one of the classics, margherita. This was the first time I ate a margherita pizza and it felt a little like the 4 cheese pizza except that it wasn’t as cheesy.

Truffle pizza

We also ordered a pizza containing truffles, capsicum and egg. The egg was still soft and we had to be careful not to let the yolk drip on us when we ate it. It is a colourful pizza, quite cheery to look at. We could all smell and taste the truffles on the pizza. Mao Mao liked this pizza a lot.

After writing everything down, I just realized that there wasn’t a lot of meat in this meal. Well, have to see who did the ordering.