Kopitiam Italian Food by The Real Italian

It seems that many expatriate chefs and former local hotel executive chefs are uprooting from their snazzy kitchens and setting up shop in the heartlands, selling atas food at prices that are wallet friendly. Carnivora Baked Rice Il Piccolo, roughly translated as The Little One in Italian (source: Babelfish), is no exception. Owner and head chef, Peter Bontoi, proudly labels all his stalls (peppered over a few locations in Singapore, not unlike Botak Jones) with the tagline, The Real Italian. Truth be told, after googling around for a while, I found out that The Real Italian is no more Italian than my Filippo Inzaghi wig lying around in one sad corner of my room. In fact, Peter was born in Romania, has lived in Singapore for more than 13 years and speaks with a Singlish accent. Talk about being confused. (Source: Asiaone Wine And Dine). So what is it about Il Piccolo that entices the masses? Is it because of the kopitiam prices for relatively expensive Italian food? Or is it because the food is just too darn good? Fried Calamari Armed with a very thin wallet and a very big appetite, I decided to head on down to Il Piccolo's Clementi branch to see if I could satisfy my craving for Italian food without having to end up as The Real Italian Dishwasher. At first sight, the front facade of all his stalls will definitely appeal to almost everyone with it's snazzy looking black panels and an LCD TV repeating reruns of Makan King. It was cool at first being able to watch how Peter makes his pizzas but it got rather repulsive after a while with repeated images of Adrian Pang downing his pizza and making his trademark shiok face. Orders were taken from a booth separated away from the main kitchen (reminiscent of Botak Jones) which ensures that you don't get too close to the smoke and heat. Nicely printed menus ( which were creased due to wear and tear, a pity) showed amiably taken photos of the food and prices that put a rather sweet smile on my face. The staff was rather chirpy and repeated my orders in a professional manner. We were told that orders for pasta would take a bout seven to ten minutes, while pizza would take about ten to fifteen minutes. I thought that it was a rather mean feat for them to churn out orders so quickly, if you ask me, since we were there at peak of dinner time. Other haute food joints tend to take ten to fifteen minutes longer during these hours. Was it because there were lesser orders as compared to the Botak Jones stall just across the kopitiam? I think I'll leave it till I sample the food to make an assumption. Il Piccolo's Tasty Bruschetta The first to arrive was the Bruschetta. A pleasant suprise was that Il Piccolo's version uses a different, thicker kind of bread, a change from the run of the mill baguette which is so overused. It was also not too hard to bite into, and the combination of diced tomatoes, fragrant olive oil and the aforementioned bread gave a nice flavour and texture to the Bruschetta. Wow. If the mains are as good as the antipasti, then I'm very sure that this is one stall that's worth visiting again and again. The Fried Calamari came not too long after and was pretty standard in both taste and presentation, being served along with a lemon wedge and mayonnaise. Puttanesca Pasta Next came the mains after a waiting time of about ten minutes. I ordered the Puttanesca Pasta (anchovies, black olive, capers mushroom, chilli in tomato sauce & cream sauce) while The Missus had a baked Carnivora Rice (herbed italian rice w/ bacon, ham, sausage, pepperoni w/special white sauce & loads of mozarella) Tucking into the pasta, I found my pasta a little bland, but the salty capers and anchovies proved to be the saving grace of an otherwise unsavoury main course. The pasta, which was a little overcooked, was a letdown though as it was too soft. Don't all cooks know that the basic rule of cooking pasta is until it's al dente and not under or overcooking it? Wifey also found her Baked Rice a tad too bland. While the mixture of bacon, ham, sausage and pepperoni lent a little flavour to the rice, I guess the cooks were a little too scrimpy when they were adding the ingredients. They were really generous with the mozzarella though. And one point to note was also the generous portions. Wifey was so full by the end of her main course that she decided to pass for dessert. Since I was the lone survivor, I had to choose between the three desserts on offer. I decided to take the Tiramisu over the Panna Cotta and Chocolate. Well, Tiramisu had to be the piece de resistance for any Italian Chef right? Tiramisu When it came, I realised that the presentation wasn't too appealing as it was served in a plastic (read:disposable) container akin to those used for mango puddings. The taste wasn't too bad though, but it lacked that extra oomph you find in other places such as Finalmente Gastronomia. Perhaps the coffee liqueur in the sponge finger wasn't enough? All in all, I guess I can only rate the food as slightly above average. I think it's probably because Chef Bontoi wasn't in the kitchen. From what I could see, there were a few chefs slogging away so I guess he must have tried his best to impart his culinary skills to them but to no avail. I think the next time round, I'll head on down to the branch where Chef Bontoi is to try out the real Il Piccolo.