Picolino (Balestier)

Before my final post, a quick shout out to the folks from Burpple and Picolino for generously hosting us for the #eatup!

At $30, the duck leg risoni is the single most expensive item on Picolina's menu. It featured red wine risoni pasta in burnt butter topped with a duck leg confit, hazelnut, balsamic and grated pecorino cheese.

There is nothing much to fault about the duck leg confit. The skin was crisp and the meat tender and well marinated (albeit a little dry).

The risoni pasta though was a little disappointing. Risoni pasta is a rice grained shaped pasta. It may have gotten a little soggy whilst we were busy taking photos and tasted rather starchy. The red wine reduction was rather bitter probably due to a slightly tannic wine being used and its combination with burnt butter and balsamic just didn't work for me as the three strong and distinctive flavours just seem to counteract each other.

Cacio e pepe is a traditional Italian pasta and literally means "cheese and pepper". It will therefore come as no surprise that the dish contains grated pecorino romano cheese and black pepper, together with spaghetti, or traditionally tonnarelli.

Some may consider cacio e pepe to be a "dry" version of carbonara when they are two distinct dishes with different ingredients and taste profiles. The traditional carbonara is richer and more creamy due to the use of eggs and guanciale. Cacio e pepe has a distinct flavour because of the sharp pecorino cheese flavour is more pronounced and the heavier use of pepper.

Picolino's take on this dish is a little non-traditional. It uses mafaldine, a ribbon type pasta and tops the pasta with a fried egg and hamburg steak. The dish kinda works for me as the egg yolk adds an additional layer of richness to the pasta and I ain't saying no to adding a protein to an otherwise meatless dish!

Gnocchi is one of those dishes that you either love or hate.

I am one of the former as the mashed potato stuffing gives the pasta a delicious buttery texture. Picolino serves theirs with bacon cream (yum), baby spinach (no thanks), sundried tomatoes (sweeeet) and red pepper flakes (♨️).

I quite enjoy it but it wasn't that great for the waistline the next day!

Several #burpplers who have tried Picolino or their sister restaurant, Lino, were raving about their Burrata Pizza at the start of our #eatup.

At the end of meal, it was not hard to understand why. The pizza is layered with garlic parsley chimichurri with a huge ball of burrata cheese as its centerpiece. It is then finished with cherry tomato pesto and capsicum.

The rich, creamy and buttery flavour of the burrata cheese was definitely the standout. You definitely can't go wrong when it is paired with the herbaceous chimichurri and sweet yet tangy tomato pesto.

For those who would like to skip the carb, Picolino also serves their Burrata cheese as a starter!

There is much heated debate over whether you should have pineapple over pizza. I'm not sure what's the origins of this debate but it was definitely no cause of concern for us #burpplers when the good folks from Picolino served us their Longanisa Hawaiian Pizza at the recent #eatup.

I did resort to Google to find out what is a Longanisa sausage but was none the wiser. It is a type of Spanish sausage but I don't understand how it is different from the chorizo or the English bangers. It appears though to usually refer to a cured sausage.

Besides the longanisa sausage, the pizza was topped with baby spinach, pineapple & apple chutney. You don't usually have baby spinach or apple chutney over pizza so the combination of these 4 ingredients made for an interesting but tasty combination of flavours. My only qualm though, as with the rest of their pizzas, was that the sausages were cut too thinly. Though there was a decent amount spread throughout the pizza, you could barely taste it through the cheese, pineapple and apply chutney. I will say that if you aren't a fan of Hawaiian pizzas, this may change your mind a little.

Being a big fan of Middle Eastern food, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Picolino has a lamb merguez pizza on their menu which features lamb sausage with baba ganoush, cucumber tzatziki and mint.

For those who are worried about the gamey flavours of the lamb sausage, the deep earthy taste of the baba ganoush and the refreshing garlicky cucumber tzatziki compliments it really well.

As with the duck rilette pizza, my only qualm was that relatively small pieces of lamb sausage was used which meant that they turned out slightly dry and you could barely taste them.