By Beppe De Vito, and the same people at &Sons, Osteria Art is a fine-dining Italian restaurant, focusing on traditional dishes, fresh ingredients, and 500 wines. Set lunch goes for $32++, and since the lunch offering wasn’t interesting, we went for a la carte.

I recognized the server, who served me at Me@OUE, so I cajoled him to shave more truffles onto the porcini mushroom flan with truffle leek veloute ($22). (Perhaps he was won over by my sparkling personality, so we had friendly, and attentive service by him throughout our meal.) Back to food: The flan was mushy throughout and lacked texture; and that cheese wafer wasn’t crisp; but when you mop the bread in the sauce, umami ensues.

The papardelle in pork cheek and red wine ($26) was the best dish we had. From the rusticity of the shape, you could tell it’s handmade. The pork cheek tasted more like pork belly, and the dish was too salty, but we ain’t complaining, because we love fat and salt, and this dish was divine.

The fish from black cod caciucco with scampi ($32) was strange to us: it wasn’t sweet and fat like cods should be, but it had a pungent, choking, turpentine taste. That said, the cooking skill was top-notch: crispy outside, moist inside.

Another strange dish to us, the lamb rack with caponata ($49) was overwhelmingly sour for both protein and fibre, when caponata is supposed to be sweet. Again, the cooking was perfect: pink inside.

From the description, “strawberry and moscato jelly” ($12), we thought the jelly was mixed with both strawberry and moscato, but the two elements remained separate. Nothing bad about it, but we were underwhelmed.

I went with the expectations that Osteria Art would be as good as &Sons, but every dish here was flawed, although the papardelle was flawed in ways that we liked. The atmosphere and the service did make up for the imperfect food. We paid $166 for two.

Osteria Art Singapore

55 Market Street Singapore 048941
T: +65 6877 6933
M-F 12pm-2.30pm, 5pm-12am, Sat 5pm-12am, closed Sun
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Decor: 8.5/10
Service: 9/10
Value: 7/10
Food: 6/10
Rating: 3.438/5 

Written by A. Nathanael Ho.