My first and last time at Pasta Cafe
My favourite dinner partner, Geri, recommended me to head to Pasta Cafe at Takashimaya. She recommended me this place after raving about how wonderful the pasta was here before it underwent renovations.
When reached there on wednesday night, the place was already quite full of diners. We queued behind a group of roughly 6 people.
The place
It was a nicely decorated place, clean and bright, it looked like an American styled diner. I observed the waitresses manning the area. They all looked pretty and young.
The service
We had to wait for a significantly long time for an empty table. Geri noticed that there was an empty table that were left for about 10 mins and that the group queueing before us had to finally request the waitresses to sit them there.
After waiting for another 10 minutes, I asked Geri if she wanted to have dinner at another place, when we were finally led to a table.
The food
Geri and I decided to have the $22 set meal consisting of soup+pasta+gratin. For the first course, we both chose mushroom soup
The mushroom soup wasnt bad. It was thick and full of mushrooms. But it was slightly bland and I had to add pepper to it. I always believed that good meals should not need additional condiments to it.
I then had the Seafood Pasta with Tomato. I thought to myself, “No one could ever get a Tomato Pasta wrong. It is such a simple dish”. I took a bite. And then two. And then three. And I blinked my eyes. Nothing.
The pasta sauce was so diluted that you can see the watery sauce in the picture. It wasnt satisfying at all. It would have been significantly nicer if the cook would have drained the pasta and used better sauce. I chewed listlessly at the prawn and crayfish.
Finally, I had the Salmon gratin which was slightly better than the Seafood Pasta. But to me, it wasnt anything special as it tasted similar to the baked pasta at Swensens or Amirans (which has since ceased operating)
After our dinner, we asked for the bill, and to our horror, we found out that it totalled to $63 with the 10% service charge and GST. My mouth almost reached the floor.
No. We wont be going to this place anymore. For that price, we’d have a nicer and lovelier and more genuine pasta dishes at La Forketta.
July 20th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
hey snowbiscuits here=) i had lunch there on mon actually… and yes, i have to agree the food there wasn’t as nice as i expected=( I had carbonara… but i felt pretty sick after eating 3/4 of it… the service was so-so too. You should try coming down to nus’ munchie monkey’s=) Nice ambience there…
July 20th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
That’s quite expensive for pasta. Worst of all it’s not up to your expectation..
Think you can cook better pasta.
July 20th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
omg, its that~ bad?
July 20th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Blwek.
July 20th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
haha.. *Crosses out Pasta Cafe on the ‘cafes to try’ list*
and yes babe, i believe that good food shd not need additional condiments too!
and i don’t get why people need to have chilli sauce with everything?! … sigh.
July 20th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I been there a couple of times. Actually not that bad. IF you ever set foot there again, try their Gong Bao Chicken pasta. Abit fusion, but not bad. :)
July 20th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
wow yummy heheh =)
July 20th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Snowbiscuits
Carbonara can have this thick feeling in the throat, I try to avoid eating cheese based pasta. Good carbonara’s dont really have that effect. I think I can imagine why you didnt liked it. Hehehehe
Cool! Munchie Monkeys? Can non NUS people go too? :)
Motd
At least I’d drain water out of the pasta properly :P Hehehehe
Malique
Yes, I wont go there again. No thank you.
Geraldine
Yes, as you aptly written, it was blwek :P
Daphne
I guess they like the taste of chilli sauce in their food? I dont know. I only put chilli for my french fries and fried chicken. YUM! I want fries and chicken now! :)
DK
Its not like my standards are so high. But if I can cook better than a restaurant (and we all know I’m not that great a cook) I really dont think its worth $30.
If they cant make tomato pasta properly, I dont have hope for any of their other pasta :P
Hisyam
You havent been reading :P
July 21st, 2007 at 2:20 am
Thanks for the warning! $63 for two? Ouch!!
July 21st, 2007 at 5:04 am
Munchie monkey is open to anyone. That pasta is not bad and is reasonably priced since NUS students do dine there :p
July 21st, 2007 at 11:14 am
Moby
$63 is just too much for pasta. I wouldnt mind paying $30 for good pasta. But this quality of food can be vastly improved.
Arzhou
Thanks for the tip! Hmm … will try to survey the place :)
April 17th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Hmm.. Looks can be quite deceiving. They do look delicious, but I’ll take your word that they are not great. And they are quite expensive too.. Anyway, I hope that you would feature more stuff like this. I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks! Nice post by the way, and great photos too!
–Stephen