Birthday Month @ Pete's Place & Mezza

My friend brought me to Pete's place for a birthday dinner treat. Honestly, I didn't know of Pete's existence not till that very night and I was glad he brought me there. 

Located at the basement of Grand Hyatt Hotel, this cosy restaurant might be easily missed. I don't think the food was mind blowing-ly great; what I liked about this place was the warm service, the comfy and inviting ambience and basically the entire idea of dining at your Italian grandma's kitchen if i were to have an italian grdma of course!

Dinner came with a round of salad/ appetizer/ bread. I love the spread of the greens offered! There were  plump button mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, artichokes, beetroot, stuff which you wont find at your regular salad bar. In addition, the bread offered were pretty impressive as well. Do note that this "complimentary" salad bar is only applicable for "1 round" hence an additional trip to the salad bar/bread station would be charged. I didn't know that and I think my poor dining partner was charged accordingly.

I love pizza and would normally order a pizza when going italian. However, as the month of May was filled with tons of feasting, I decided to be more disciplined and went for the pasta instead. Honestly, not much difference in terms of calories per serving. =S

I'm a great fan of gnocchi but have yet to find a good one. I think the best gnocchi I had was at Prego, 4 years back. It was a pesto Gnocchi and was darn delicious! I'm not too sure what makes a good gnocchi or how a well executed gnocchi should taste like; but I like mine slightly chewy, like a savoury version of a tang yuan.

Pete's Gnocchi came with eggplant ragu, mozzarella and doused with tomato sauce. Honestly, I didn't quite like my dish as creamy tomato sauce just doesn't work for me. I think I kinda anticipated a bowl of gnocchi in bolognese sauce but what was served was a plate of creamy tomato sauce with pieces of eggplant and shredded cheese. Sauce aside, I didn't quite like the texture of the gnocchi as well. It was kinda soft and turned mushy after awhile.

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Gnocchi Alla Norma $26

M ordered the Diavola pizza which essentially is a pepperoni pizza. Pete's pizza comes with a thin crust and honestly looked pretty tasty! 

Diavola $24 

We skipped dessert and headed to Mezza for some chocolate indulgence. We ordered a chocolate hazelnut fondant and it came with a scoop of salted caramel ice cream. The cake wasn't über flowy but had a more luscious melted hazelnut ganache in it. What shone was the salty caramel ice cream! It had the right ratio of saltiness to sweetness and had a nice sticky texture. All in all, great dessert but tagged at an exorbitant price.

OH! check out my bdae gift! M bought a carton load of peanut butter which I think would should last me a year. Peanut butter is so so so so so so so fattening but sososososososo good. I'm an avid peanut butter fan, like... I literally eat peanut butter with spoon, out of a jar. Guess who's gonna grow fat and bonkers soon!? #fatdieme

I guess the only plus point is that the peanut butter & co's pb is all natural and slightly "better" for you. M bought this online and the entire box had 4 variants of PB (white chocolate, dark chocolate, honey & plain old PB) and 2 jars of jam- raspberry and strawberry.

Oh ya, and I think I should end my lengthy post with a verdict at the end as I tend to go on and on and on and on and honestly, I do not expect anyone to read all this shit anyway.

Verdict:

• Pete's place-
• Good for bigger crowd, family-share-the-love kinda gathering
• Warm Service, Great ambience
• Great salad bar/ bread/ appetizer
• Average food
• Mezza-
• Great for special occasion, quite Atas
• Great Service (hotel standard mah..)
• Great dessert
• Relatively pricey 
• Peanut Butter & Co. 
• Dark chocolate: Not very chocolatey, peanut butter gets lost in the midst, kinda "neither here nor there"
• Honey: SO DAMN GOOD
• Plain: Tasted ordinary, felt less guilty eating from the jar as it is supposedly natural
  *Will blog about the rest when I've tried them