La Strada - 3rd February 2012

This is our club’s 3^rd visit to La Strada! The first was by ex-President Sheng (now president of the one-man shanghai branch) and the second was by Gilbert (now president of the also one-man HK branch).

Having had the utterly poor foresight to join the club late, Collin Cheong was unfortunate not to have had the opportunity of the earlier La Strada visits. So with the establishment finally re-opening its doors after some renovations which has seen the place halved in size (the private room which we took during our previous visits has now been turned into a Viet restaurant), CC decided that it was time for him to try out for himself, what can plausibly be considered one of our club’s favourite Italian joint.

As per the agreed driving roster, Jon was the designated driver for the day. Along the way, MG enquired if Dann would be so kind as to consider deferring his BML scheduled next Friday till the following week as he would be up in HK for a wedding and as it so happened to be, to also collect his HKD 6,000 cash grant by the HK government. Dann in his attempt to be accommodating considered the request and asked if such a deferral would constitute a consumption of his free postponement pass. To this, Jon and I deliberated extensively for about all of 2.5 seconds and retorted … YES! So Dann in his further pretense of trying to help MG out asked if he would pay for the EUR50 penalty should Dann really need to make a further postponement, to which MG replied instantaneously (without deliberation)… “Of course not la!” Jon and I then added fuel to the debate telling MG what a cheapo he was. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and in this case MG was obviously trying to attempt at achieving the unachievable. We pointed out further that why not he request for a postponement of the wedding in HK, or for that matter, since he was going to receive HKD 6,000 that he should consider throwing in at least a SGD30 sweetener (since the value of his meal is at least EUR30) for Dann and the club. To this MG claimed that he was going to pass the HKD 6,000 to his dad (To Mr Cheung Senior, if you are reading this blog please add a comment to confirm the claim by your son on your receipt of the HKD 6,000. If you did not and would like us to slap him more than a few times for telling a lie, please add that as well) and so had no real monetary benefit going to HK.

The argument concluded with Dann deciding not to postpone, and MG fuming and leaving Dann and the rest of us with a “its ok Dann, dun wanna postpone right? I’ll remember….” warning.

We arrived and got down to the business of ordering. Thanks to the spending requirement, we all opted for the 4 course set lunch. Collectively we chose every dish in the set menu, except for the Gnocchi which was not available and the replacement for the day was their lovely carbonara.We wolfed down 2 helpings of the tasty and warm complimentary bread that was offered, although Jon mentioned that he remembered the old La Strada offering a much wider variety of bread for starters including their pizza bread and bread sticks. 

Moving on to the starters, we agreed the soup was so-so. For comparison, you could say it was a superior version of Campbell’s alphabet soup without the alphabets (used to love it as a kid). 

The capellini was light and fresh but a tad bland. 

The star dish for starters was really the grilled calamari. It was grilled to perfection. Someone mentioned it was possibly partly torched to achieve such a result. The flesh was tender and juicy although you could still smell and taste the grilled smokiness. It went perfectly with the sweet caramelized onions.

For the pasta course, I foolishly chose the spaghetti with mussels and tomatoes whilst the rest chose carbonara. Foolish because that meant that I had to let all 5 of them try my dish whilst I got to try only 1 of theirs! This is another sneaky unspoken strategy of all club members. Much like sitting in the middle is preferable to sitting at the edge as you would have the best access to shared dishes and all. All future BMC wannabes do note that topographical and geographical advantages extend to the dining arena as well!

The mussels were fat, juicy and absolutely delicious! The tomato sauce was not too thick, sour or overpowering, and just right to go with the shellfish. The pasta though was somewhat ordinary. 

As for the carbonara, it was hands down delicious, and in my view still the best carbonara in Singapore, to which all the other club members agreed. It is done the traditional way without cream and La Strada’s style is generally much saucier than other non-cream based carbonaras you may find elsewhere. The artery clogging yolky sauce combined with crispy ham, parmesan cheese shavings and topped up with a poached egg yolk and truffle oil on top of a bed of pasta is mind blowing. Impressive as each ingredient may be on its own, the synergy of combining it all together in one dish shows a result that is simply astounding! The only complaint is that the portion could be bigger.

For the meat course, Businessman was the odd man out choosing the salmon, to which he lost a third of his fish within seconds to other hungry forks. The fish was cooked perfectly leaving it ever so slightly undercooked in the centre keeping it moist and oily. 

The osso bucco was decent, although the meat was a tad dry, but this was compensated by the delicious marrow which was fully intact in the bone cavity. 

The star dish for this course was the roasted pork rack. The pork was tasty, flavourful, somewhat crisp on the outside and yet not at all dry. Collin mentioned that it was pork that did not really taste like pork (personally I could not figure what that meant, but from the look on his face, it was definitely a thumbs up for the dish).

For desert, the tiramisu was the best dish, and one of the better tiramisu’s you can find. 

But for anyone looking for some texture, the Iced nougatine is quite a treat as well. It is an iced and creamed version of nougat with a coulis of berries. The crunchiness of the hazelnuts with the sweetness of the nougat and the tartness of the coulis combine nicely. 

As for the apple tart and gelato, it was given an overall so-so grade by the diners.

Whilst finishing up, Dann casually mentioned that for his turn next week, he think he had made the pledge of an additional S$100 bonus spend over and above the minimum of EUR180 (owing to his poor performance at Jade restaurant), to which we were all smiles with the exception of MG. We even re-affirmed by reminding Dann that we had proof of his commitment to the additional spend should he forget.

Final note...the lower photographic quality is partly due to the use of our back-up cameraman as our actual cameraman, being the paymaster was relieved of his duties.

By: Club Scribe