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Basilico: Food An Italian Mama Would Be Proud Of
By daniel | February 21, 2009
Esther and I have been very impressed with Basilico at the Regent Hotel ever since our first visit some months back. However, the pictures we took during the first time turned out really poor so I didn’t bother to blog about it. When we went back again this afternoon with our friend Jen in tow to sample their Saturday lunch buffet, the pictures turned out well.
Basilico, as I found out later, was named after the herb basil and not a type of medieval church as I thought (which is actually basilica). Interestingly enough, I didn’t see any basil in the restaurant, but there were quite a lot of pots of fresh mint scattered around the buffet spread as decorations. Go figure.
What caught my eye was this machine displayed in the centre of the buffet table, with which a chef was shaving extremely thin slices of parma ham (she ducked when I took the picture). One of the reasons why we really like Basilico is their spread of cold meats – mortadella and salami, for example – which are hard to find in other buffets in Singapore.
This is the same for their cheeses – today there was a selection of seven to choose from including parmigiana, provolone, and my favourite percorino! I was also astounded by the wide selection of condiments and dried fruits supposed to accompany the cheeses.
And if you’re wondering, this is the size of the parmigiano. Yes, it was huge. I recommend stabbing the cheese vigorously with the knife to relieve stress and tension. Food therapy, if you will.
But of course, that was just the antipasti section. We proceeded to the hot food section. There was a curiously out-of-place station comprising of Asian dishes such as beef rendang and sweet-and-sour chicken. This we utterly ignored. Instead we swooped onto the pasta station and proceeded to build our own pastas.
Jen totally loved the sauce in her squid ink pasta but she couldn’t place her finger on what gave the dish a special zing. We were so curious that we went back to the station to ask the lady chef what went into the sauce, and we found out that the secret ingredient in the secret ingredient sauce is… anchovies! Tiny anchovies are crushed and added into the cream sauce for that heavenly salty, smoky flavour. We’re so going to try to recreate that some time. The spinach linguine in tomato sauce that Esther and I shared – not so great.
Native Italians would feel at home here – al-dente risotto, oozing lasagne, hot thin-crust pizzas that came out of the oven in a constant stream and eagerly snapped up by patrons. One dish that deserves special mention was the roast lamb. Usually I hate the roasted meats at buffets because they tend to be tough from overcooking and being left out for too long. But the roast lamb here was tender, juicy and so flavourful that even Jen went for seconds (which is a surprise because she is the petite sort). The roasted peppers that accompanied it? Mama mia!
And of course, no Italian meal is ever complete without dessert, and in particular, tiramisu. The dessert selection is fantastic, and the tiramisu here in my opinion is to die for. The poached pear with zagblione was decent too. It was hard to resist the gelato, to go along with the apple strudel that just came out of the oven (Esther spied the pastry chef poking at it while in the oven so we waited for it to come out fresh and piping hot).
Most hotel buffets usually try too hard to impress with a humongous selection of dishes from multiple cuisines in the world, and hence you get a very confused culinary experience. At Basilico, you get unabashedly great Italian food. Other than the disgraceful Asian hot food station (which it really should get rid of), it eschews the hallmarks of most hotel buffets – sashimi and cold seafood for example – and instead focuses on quality Italian ingredients (airflown Romano tomatoes, for example) and cooking techniques.
So if you like hearty Italian food, you could do a lot worse than Basilico. If you’re the sort who insists that all hotel buffets should have Japanese sashimi, oysters or lobsters, give this a miss – I’ll be more than glad to take your place.
Basilico is located at Level 2, The Regent Hotel, One Cuscaden Road Singapore 249715. Tel: 6733-8888.
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