da Mario Pizzeria At The Quayside

It was a lazy 1st day of the Chinese New Year celebrations when my cousins and sister were gathered at my place casting about for a dinner place. We decided on something simple and Italian like pizza and pasta.

Unfortunately, as most of the restaurants I know off the top of my head were closed, I turned to the one place I know for reliable recommendations of good places to eat that no one has discovered yet.

As the URL of her blog states, Joone! loves food and I’ve found her recommendations usually spot-on for me. This time she gave a pretty glowing report on da Mario Pizzeria.

A quick phone call and reservations were made. ~~Corkage was not a problem~~ Actually, they have started to charge corkage as the Chef puts it “the liquor license is $2000 and I have to pay for it”. I guess that they have a problem making $167 a month.

There’s a slight confusion (for me at least) because I read (from the traditional left-right) the signage as Pizzeria da Mario, whereas everyone (including their website) calls it da Mario Pizzeria.

With the holiday season, they were really short-handed; being one of the few places open for dinner, they were crowded. Thankfully, the weather was cool as we were seated outside on fold-away tables. This was fun as it reminded me of the wedding scene in the Godfather.

The menu had the usual array of pasta and pizzas and the wine list had a nice selection of wines, my only wish would be they expanded their dessert wines to include more Italian wineries. And if you are going to order wine at an Italian restaurant, go Italian; the wines, seemingly, are designed to match Italian food. In this case, we ordered a very young but full-bodied Chianti Classico from Tuscany. Made from 100% Sangiovese, which my friend Florence pronounces “Sng-Gah-Bey-See” (Hokkien for “very sour”), it’s youthfully strong tannins were the perfect foil for the sweetish tomato-based sauces as well as the warm flavors of olive oil and garlic.

Unfortunately, they ran out of stemware and while everyone else got crystal, we got generic glass. Alas.

The nice thing about visiting a restaurant with a group of people is that you get to order a wider array of food than if you just go solo or duo. The starters were not extraordinarily good, but they served to ease the hunger in our stomaches. In particular was the Mozzarella cheese platter.

I like the balance between the strong olive oil, creamy Mozzarella, tart tomatoes and bitter, peppery Arugula.

Whenever I’m at a new Italian restaurant that serves pasta, there are two particular pastas that I order – this may come as a surprise as both a vegetarian – as a test of bona fides: Pasta alla Puttanesca and Pesto Pasta. Both pastas look deceptively simple, but trust me, to get the balance of flavors is not easy.

The Pasta Puttanesca was the best I’ve tasted in a long time.

People might be put off with the particularly pungent pasta named Puttanesca – – an acquired taste perhaps, but the resultant dish is reminiscent of a good bowl of Penang Laksa; strong, tart with a long finish and a good bite.

On the other end of the taste spectrum is the Pesto Pasta. Where the Pasta Puttanesca is an explosion of strong flavors, the Pesto Pasta is an expression of warm comfort, like chilling out in the bright sun. Or, in the case of this blog, sitting in air-conditioned comfort on a hot sunny day.

I liked the Pesto Pasta at da Mario Pizzeria; it’s amazing the difference between pesto made from scratch and pesto from a bottle. Pesto over warm pasta and smothered in olive oil, it is no wonder that this is the favorite pasta of a lot of people.

Again, as a test for pizzas, this blog tends to order the combo-cheese pizza, usually known as Three Cheeses or some variation. As you can guess by now, I like to experience the interaction of flavors of different ingredients in my food to keep in my mental flavor dictionary.

This food blog is a casual cook that does not really pay attention to quantities (except when baking), so learning how ingredients interact is important to me. Besides, it makes a great cheese sandwich no?

Anyway, while the pizzas at da Mario are competently done, this blog was more impressed with the pasta. I liked the all-cheese pizza.

Food at da Mario Pizzeria is good and service was a little green but enthusiastic but mind you this was the first day of the Chinese New Year, so bearing this in mind and using the Joone! LikeItEnough Index, I’d definitely rate this as “I’ll definitely come back again”.

Pizzeria da Mario is at 60 Robertson Quay #01-10, The Quayside, Tel: 6235-7623, Closed on Mondays, so presumably they have even less time to earn enough to recover the liquor licence.

Posted on 10th Apr 2008 in Italian

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There Are 5 Comments

AKIHIRO ITO commented on April 12, 2008 at 11:08 am

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I want to often visit your site from now on.
Do you like Japanese Food and fashion and animation…?
If you are interested in Japan, please link to my site
My site has information about Japanese culture
(For example, Japanese health food, animation, games).
Would you introduce information?URL?in your site if you like it?
http://japanesefood-cultuer-history-anime.blogspot.com/
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Ivan commented on April 20, 2008 at 9:35 am

@Akihiro Ito: Thanks! Will try.

ice commented on August 7, 2008 at 7:44 pm

hey the pasta Puttanesca is here at da mario. why did you say it closed?

ivan commented on August 7, 2008 at 11:33 pm

@ice: I didn’t say they closed. Last I checked, the Pasta Puttanesca is no longer on their menu, which is a shame as, along with their pesto pasta, I liked it.

ice commented on August 8, 2008 at 7:14 am

ivan you have traveled (and eaten ) alot, what is your criteria for a truly “authentic” Italian restaurant in Singapore? There have been lots of debate recently over the “authenticity” of Italian restaurants here, I’m just wondering if there really isn’t any locally. But I’m not anal about it.

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