La Villa @ River Valley Road (Part III)

This place is just 16 minutes from my office via bus #139. Visited again to bade "Bon Voyage" to a friend before she's being posted to Cambodia.

Happy hour from 6-8pm, so we got ourselves a prosecco rizardi (@$12++) 1-for-1. But the bubbly warmed to room temperature pretty fast, so we drank pretty quickly too! Somehow, when all the fizz went flat, the drink became a little sweeter. Hmm.

real plant on the table

As usual, there'll be complimentary bread basket while we waited for the food. The foccacia was rather compact and more dense than other places. Too bad they didn't have that lovely white roll that day.

foccacia, nutty roll and flat bread

For starters, we ordered the calamari from the Bar Bites menu. It's actually the same stuff from the main menu but in smaller portion, so the pricing is slightly lower.

deep fried calamari (@$12++)

skinny sotong, yummy sauce, appetizing greens

The calamari was not rubbery but a little skinny. The sauce was piquant and whets the appetite, with very very mild spice. Nice to have that small mound of greens along with this dish.

Our mains for the night was the La Villa Antipasto. Was too stuffed from this alone! Why? Because, it has parma ham, salami, bresaola (beef), cooked ham, duck rilletes and pickles. Think this would've made a good starter for four pax, and great to have along with wine. If only, there were some cheese on this platter...

La Villa Antipasto (@$25++)

beautiful meats

My friend doesn't take beef, so all of the bresaola went into my tummy. Not too salty, and has a distinct beefy taste.

paper thin bresaola, air dried salted beef

The duck rilletes here was interesting. Tasted pepperish, and slightly luncheon meatish kind of flavour. My friend said, probably the seasoning.

duck rilletes

duck rilletes on bread, savoury

The parma ham was good. Tender slivers, and yummy with bubbly.

parma ham goodness

Ate the antipasto with bread, so between the two of us, we polished off two bread baskets. That's like at least six pieces of bread each. Wow. If the taste got too heavy after a while, alternate it with the pickled items; the black olives, pearl onions and gherkins. The olives was quite salty, but tasted nice with a sip of wine.

pitted black olives

pearl onions and gherkins

Already feeling full after breads and antipasto, but we ordered a dessert to try. Ordered the pannacotta, and my friend had the earl grey tea (by cup only).

earl grey tea (@$6++)

pannacotta with strawberry coulis (@$14++)

(trying to be) arty shot

The pannacotta was pretty looking. The texture of the pannacotta was smooth and creamy, but denser than tau-huay (not as wobbly). Tangy and not too sweet.

with passionfruit sauce

denser than tofu

Service, as usual, was courteous and friendly.

The $2.50 parking rebate and 15% discount when paying via Standard Chartered credit card promotion, is still on-going.

Here are the links to visit1, and visit2.