menotti, raffles city

is hands down not as good as it's sister restaurant, riciotti. seriously. the experience left me a wee bit dis-satisfied.

this is what we had as part of their set dinner:



the spinach and crabmeat soup. this was actually really quite good, despite the whole swamp-thing look about it. this was probably the best savoury course of the night for me. maybe that also set me up for the rest of the evening as well i suppose.



the soup was followed by a simple caprese salad. you really only get what's listed on the menu for this one. my dinner mates (holla 28/01!) all felt that the cheese, i think it was mozarella, was too subtle that you could hardly taste it. i thought so too at first, but when i had it together with the tomatos and salad leaves, it was actually pretty all right. not fantastic, but not bad either.



this was shuyun's sirloin. the mash looked rather impressive but was a massive let down. you could almost taste water in it for some odd reason. but the steak was otherwise pretty all right.



this was my main course, the bavette marinara (or something like that, i can't remember the name exactly). it was not bad, but i wasn't blown away. i think the best main course the whole night was what yuyuan had... the seafood risotto. now that, i can say, was seriously quite good. it was off the ala carte menu so maybe the lesson to be learnt here is to order ala carte.



and finally to close, jacq and shuyun had the soffiato. it was pretty good but i think i remembered it to be better when we last had it at riciotti (menotti's sister restaurant). the vanilla ice-cream's divine. i had it in my mango float (which also tastes better at riciotti) and i of course had my tiramisu which was good. again a great picture of the tiramisu eludes me. i have to go back and get a good picture again ;)

so... yes. the verdict. basically, i say riciotti any day. although the space at menotti's is urban, cool and comfortable, the restaurant got really noisy as it filled up with diners and conversing became difficult. the food didn't do much for me, aside from the soup, risotto and my stalwart tiramisu. so basically, if you've tried menotti's and have left wanting more: go to riciotti. found along the singapore river at river walk, the space is somewhat smaller but they have al fresco tables outside. it's generally quieter so that you can actually have a decent dinner conversation and the food's seriously quite a bit better than menotti's - at least those that i've tried so far. another plus for riciotti: desserts are half-priced after 9pm. desserts are only half-priced at menotti's after 10pm.

so yeah. go to riciotti.