we've been wanting to try michelangelo's for awhile now, so i made reservations for the place. being the greedy overzealous food lover that i am, i went online to the site to check out the menu. disappointingly, i realized that the menu was extremely limited. they only had about 5 mains and even less starters. so i had second thoughts. on its site, however, i saw a link to zambuca, in addition to original sin and sistina. the menu there looked much better, and wine and dine seemed to give its stamp of approval too. so of we went to the pan pacific.
when you walk in, you turn to your right and you're greeted by a large open room dressed in noir. the whole place is dimly lit, and the decor is simply black. it wasn't even crowded for a saturday night, which made it great for a quiet dinner. the waitstaff were attentive, but i got mildly annoyed when the waiter had to "ask the chef" if i could change my choice of pasta. its the first time i ever had been told to wait when i asked to change my pasta. such inflexibility. regardless, they managed to do it so everything was fine. i only eat carbonara with linguini so i'm really particular about that. plus d just likes fetuccine on everything.
the menu was good. nice and extensive with a wide choice of pastas and risottos, along with a nice selection of other mains. the wine list was huge. a whole booklet that was thicker than the menu. apparently all the michelangelos wine lists are really complete. i had the pinot noir which was great, very smooth and not to dry.
all 3 mains came out together, despite me telling them to just bring out whatever is cooked first. i took a taste of the frutti de mare. very nice. the rosé sauce is a mixture of cream sauce and tomato sauce, so its like a little carbonara combined with some marinara, and the mixture turned out to be pretty good. a slight tinge of sweetness and sourness from the tomatos, but at the same time nicely fused with the cream. they were really generous with the seafood (unlike prego's), and the portions were very large.
linguini carbonara: linguini cooked with bacon and mushroom in a tasty cream sauce - 9/10
i tried my carbonara. excellent. pasta was al dente with the right amount of creaminess in it. not overwhelming at all. and one thing i like was that it came with lots of bacon and mushrooms. the portions was large. one full serving would be about just nice for me. this is probably one of the better carbonara's i had. restaurants either cook it too creamy or not creamy enough. i think this was about just right for my taste.
squid in tagliatelle: tossed with Jerusalem artichoke cream, freshwater crab, asparagus and sea urchin - 8/10
when i ordered this, i thought it would come out black; ie squid in pasta with squid ink sauce. so apparently i was wrong. the tagliatelle was squid ink but the sauce wasn't. nonetheless, this wasn't a bad choice. generous servings of crab meat were found inside, which went really well with the pasta and the creaminess of the dish. i couldn't find any sea urchin though, but it then again it was all smothered in the cream sauce and i couldn't even see the crab until i ate it. the sauce was creamy, but not like that of a carbonara. it had a slight cheesy taste to it.
by the end of the meal, we were totally stuffed. i think we made a mistake of ordering too many creamy dishes. but it was good..
Zambuca - Pan Pacific Hotel
Prices are about 30+ for mains
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