Adrian and I sneaked off for a date last Wednesday and we visited Trattoria Bonissima in Tanjong Katong. It’s a lovely place that’s great for a quiet meal without the little ones. But we’re planning to bring them along the next time we go because I’m sure Anya would love the pasta there!

I took my time to look through the menu because there were so many delicious-sounding options! In the end, we decided on the off-menu specials for our appetiser and pasta. The deep fried whitebait was a great start to our meal. Even though it was deep fried, our appetiser was light on the palate and not oily. The little fish were fresh, sweet and nicely complemented with salad, cherry tomatoes and slivers of radish. I’m not kidding when I tell you we ate up every single thing on the plate.

Our venison pasta with caciovallo cheese sauce was pretty amazing. One week on, I’m still dreaming of that cheese sauce. Argh, my stomach’s growling as I write this and it’s demanding caciovallo cheese sauce. The pasta was perfectly al dente and the venison was tender. The cheese sauce was spectacular! If you look at the right-bottom corner of the picture of Adrian talking to Chef Andrea, you can see that we practically licked our plate clean.

The lamb chops were a winner as well. Unbelievably tender, delicious and not gamey at all. Probably the best lamb chops I’ve ever had. Instead of boring old mint sauce, the lamb chops were served with the restaurant’s special concoction of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, fresh mint, salt, pepper and rosemary. The home fries served with the lamb chops were very good too! I usually don’t bother with them but the ones we had were yummy so we ate them all up. Chef Andrea told us that they roast the potatoes before frying them.

We were stuffed after all the wonderful food but we just had to have dessert! We tried the panna cotta which was very substantial, unlike the ones you find in some other Italian restaurants where milk and gelatine masquerade as panna cotta. Chef Andrea shared with us that he only uses cream, not milk, for his panna cotta. I found the strawberry topping a bit too sweet but Adrian liked it.

Our final item was the lava cake, which was a plate of warm, gooey chocolatey goodness. Really good stuff. On the whole, such a satisfying meal and I’m dying to go back again soon!

Trattoria Bonissima is at 308 Tanjong Katong Rd, Singapore 437091. They are open daily except Tuesdays. There’s an ongoing AMEX promotion where you get a complimentary dessert of the day (worth $9) with every $50 spent. If you don’t have an AMEX card, you can get the complimentary dessert (with every $50 spent) by showing them this blog post! :)

They have some weekday lunch discounts (30% off for pastas, pizzas, desserts, coffee, tea) as well so it’d be worth your while to drop by if you work in the area. Parking is available along Tanjong Katong Road and the open air carpark space in front of Canadian International School.