Etna Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria

In a very elegant and cosy ambience decorated with unique Italian artefacts, Etna Italian Restaurant serves a delightful contemporary Italian cuisine with a Sicilian touch. The name of the restaurant derives from Mount Etna, which is an active volcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy.

Opened for 6 years, Etna Restaurant serves delightful Italian Chef’s specialties, unique recipes from the Italian region of Sicily, and the best original Italian pizza, all using finest ingredients imported from Italy.

Etna is one of the 18 restaurants which get accredited by Italian Embassy. The few criteria that entails this accreditation are: chef must be Italian, 70% of the ingredients must come from Italy and have DOP certification. DOP stands for the Italian phrase Denominazione d’ Origine Protetta (roughly, “protected designation of origin”).

The purpose of the DOP mark is to “protect the reputation of the regional foods and eliminate the unfair competition and misleading of consumers by non-genuine products, which may be of inferior quality or of different flavor.”(source: Wikipedia)

Dinner started with some Fresh mozzarella cheese with rocket salad, Pachino cherry tomatoes and Parma raw ham ($32). These are the freshest batch of air-flown cheese from Italy, they are firm on the outside but milky and smooth on the inside. The ham and tomatoes are good too! If you didn’t realize, the ingredients here form the colours of the Italy flag.

For someone like me who doesn’t like eggplant, it’s quite an achievement to be able to enjoy the Baked eggplant ($18) with buffalo mozzarella cheese and light basil pesto in a tomato sauce. The eggplant is soft and has a hint of sweetness from the tomato sauce.

Grilled calamari ($18) is topped with crispy garlic and chilli, served with home-made Aioli sauce. The texture is chewy but I think it is quite mild. Perhaps abit more garlic or a hint of zest will be good.

Everyday, Etna will come up with daily specials which will be displayed in the chalkboard above the open concept kitchen. One of the daily specials we had that day was Mussels with Mixed Herbs. The herbs and pistachio left the mussels a wonderfully fragrant flavour.

Lasagna Tradizionale Emiliana (Oven-baked pasta with Bolognese ragout (minced beef and pork), béchamel sauce, mozzarella and Parmesan cheese) – familiar but more generous in fillings, a challenged even for big eaters like me

Anything with mushrooms and truffle tastes good. My favourite for that night was Homemade Semolina Pasta in a cream sauce of porcini mushroom, homemade pork sausage and Italian truffle cream ($28). The truffle cream permeates through the pasta, just do a slight toss and everything will fall in place.

We had many dishes with a bright orange cream sauce and it all looked the same, but taste different lah. Linguine with scallops in a prawn cream sauce ($25) had nicely grilled scallops.

Perhaps we had other pasta with stronger flavours, Spaghetti with sea-urchin and Carloforte bottarga (cured mullet roe) ($30) wasn’t as impressive as the rest.

Here’s a plate of rich Linguine with crab meat in a lobster cream sauce ($25) which is my second favourite paste. The thick and distinct lobster cream coated the noodles perfectly with visible crab meat strands.

Love the presentation of Slow-cooked braised veal shank with chopped herbs with Italian Saffron rice ($34).

One of Etna’s signature is the Italian style Roasted pork knuckle with potatoes ($48). The pork knuckle may look deep fried, but it is actually braised with beer sauce for 4 good hours. The end result? Very tender meat!

Instead of the usual panna cotta, we had a Bi-coloured panna cotta in a glass ($14) with mango and mixed berries. Refreshing!

Tiramisu with pistachio cream ($14) is one of restaurant’s signature and it was ranked as the top 10 desserts by Standard Chartered. The pistachio cream came from Bronte in Sicily and there are a few drops of mandarin liqueur.

It is my first time trying Fresh sabayon with Pantelleria Moscato wine ($14) and I fell in love with it. Can’t make comparison with any but this a light, mousse-y Italian dessert that’s made by whisking eggs, sugar and white wine is addictive.

We are also give three small cups of Italian liqueurs to give it a try. They are Limoncello (yellow), Amaro (red) and Grappa (colourless). The Grappa has the strong alcohol level of 45%.

Lovely food at Etna. Heard they have very good pizzas, would love to come back and try it next time! By the way, from now till 31 Dec 2013, DBS/POSB cardholders enjoy a 10% discount on a la carte food items!

Etna Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria (East Coast)

110 Upper East Coast Road
Tel: 64449530
Website: http://etnaitalianrestaurant.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EtnaItalianRestaurantPizzeria/

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