InITALY

C says:

InITALY is a fairly new Italian restaurant along Craig Road serving simple, unpretentious Italian fare. Prices are quite reasonable - their priciest dish is a $38 lobster risotto. Starters are under $25, and the mains are generally under $30. I guess that's one of the reasons why they're usually fully booked on Fridays and Saturdays. They were pretty quiet on an early Sunday evening though.

We tried the Stracciatella cheese with a sweet and sour eggplant caponata to start. I liked the cheese a lot - it was like a creamy burrata, but the eggplant was a bit overwhelming. If you didn't eat the cheese separately, you wouldn't have been able to taste it at all.

One of their signature dishes is the Crostino, essentially a thin crust pizza with Taleggio cheese, proscuitto, black olives and endives. This was pretty good, though again you couldn't really taste much of the cheese.

I quite liked the squid ink tonnarelli, with prawns, broccolini, bottargo, garlic and chilli. The heat builds up slowly, so while not unbearable, you do get quite a kick after a while. The pasta was well cooked, and the bottarga added a nice depth to the sauce.

I didn't feel like any of the desserts, so A had the Granite - a coffee-flavoured shaved ice with vanilla ice cream and topped with a glazed chestnut brittle. Not bad, but I could've done without the brittle.

Prices are definitely quite reasonable here, but the food, while above average, isn't particularly outstanding. If you compare the prices here to those at Valentino's (the regular a la carte menu, not the off menu specials that tend to be much pricier), then like for like Valentino's is only about 10% to 15% more expensive. That being the case, I think I'd still rather have a more satisfying experience at Valentino's, or even Pasta Brava just across the street.

A says:

The food's pretty good, especially considering the reasonable price. Although C has pointed out that if you order judiciously, you can get roughly the same thing at Valentino's or Pasta Brava. I'd recommend this as a fallback if those two are fully booked.

InITALY
38 Craig Road
Tel: 6423-0918
www.initaly.asia