RecipesSame Italian Recipe Pasta For 15 Years
"Everyone is selling Italian food, even in food courts, and everyone is confused as to what a good one really is these days. Every chef we hire, I tell them to do pasta our way or it"s no way."
WHEN my younger colleague Thomas dug into the $30 lobster tagliolini here, "wah, worth it lah!" was his immediate response.
This, from a Gen-X man who grew up on a diet of $9.90 fast food pastas made with freeze-packed sauces.
Then he wolfed down the Ossobuco in Cremolata (mee pok with veal shank in white wine and herbed tomato sauce) in blissful silence.
He also had a distinct smile when he bit into the fresh bread smeared with the dangerously smooth sliver of marrow, carefully dug out of the shank, softly trampled with droplets of the wine and tomato sauce.
All in an old Italian restaurant, in the very volatile pasta business, which nearly closed twice in its 15-year history since the early "90s.
"It is very hard to run a successful restaurant business here if you don"t put your knee and elbow grease into the operations," said owner Rolando Luceri.
He wound down from the glamorous world of hotel management and operations and took over from the previous owner of Pasta Brava, who had contemplated winding up because he was "just not into the business as it was a venture his father paid to get him into".
So Mr Luceri revamped the operations at the age of 52.
Fifteen years on, this is still one of the better dedicated pasta joints around.
The secret to their staying power - a stubborn determination to maintain consistency despite changing demographics with fickle expectations.
Mr Luceri said: "We still hand-make our own pastas and have the dried and fresh range. It is not practical to maintain the snooty appeal of Italian restaurants anymore.
That position he took did well for him and on any given day, the ShentonWay regulars make up 70 per cent of the business.
He also feels hiring locals with a hunger to learn is better than a wannabe egomaniac Italian chef.
And it helps that he pays them "a bit more than the others".
His restaurant, in a pre-war shophouse with a woody decor that has hardly changed over the years, has hints of Peranakan heritage.
An old shelf and an ornate partition screen, which is more at home in a Peranakan house, sit proudly amid touches of Italian arts and crafts.
Their menu, which is also a misfit, looks like a tabloid newspaper which lists full Italian offerings from antipastis, two main dish sections to risotto.
To be in the Italian restaurant business specialising in pasta for over a decade and a half takes more than grit and toil.
Many good Italian eateries have come and gone, like Gaetano"s.
Every other little cafe just around the back alley or in a cosy corner of many retail malls is serving an $8.80 version of it.
Some hawkers will tout it for $5.50.
It helps that Mr Luceri has that "hawker" appeal - some popular pasta dishes are still done in the same way since day one and regulars, by default, return for the same dish expecting the same experience every time.
Each time I visit, without fail, their seafood pastas and linguine are the same ol", same ol".