Although the decor of Al Forno may be a little intimidating, I swear that this place is not an upmarket restaurant, but a cosy Italian restaurant that is good for groups and dates.

It took me a while to decide what to order for the dinner, because they have a wide variety of starters, pasta, pizza and main courses to choose from. Somehow the Farfalle Al Granchio (S$25.00) called out to me. It is generally the bow-tie pasta with crab meat, garlic and a dash of chilli (padi) in pink (tomato-cream) sauce.

I was not too sure what will be served on my plate, but I liked the mild intensity of spiciness of the pink sauce, even though the chilli padi appeared a little intimidating. There is not much sauce to form a pool of “gravy”, but every piece of the al dente Farfalle pasta were adequately covered. The dish could probably be even closer to perfection if the sauce tasted richer with stronger flavours of chilli or crab though; at times the taste of pasta stood out more than the sauce itself. But I guess that is also because of a pre-conceived notion that I was ordering a “chilli crab pasta”.

Judging by this plate of pasta without other basis of comparison, I actually liked it for the good mix of tomato and cream sauces, plus that generous portion of crab meat.