Finalmente Gastronomia

Just one more post and it's going to be all about New York and Boston!

If you believe Italian food should always be starch-heavy... If you believe in eating till the button on your jeans threatens to dislodge itself...

Then Finalmente isn't the place for you.



The soup of the day -broccoli soup with clams- was a statement on its own. No, that’s not a typo error, and the restaurant indeed served a green-flower-head-and-mollusk soup. Broccoli and clams might seem like an appalling combination but it really worked as sweetness of clams eased its way into the pureed soup. What's more, the foccacia cracker was a welcome change from the plain roll.





The antipasto mix for two was a sumptuous spread of grilled eggplants, zuchinnis, cherry tomatoes, red and yellow peppers, sauteed mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, cheese-topped baked eggplant and focaccia slices, heavily sizzled with olive oil. We could have fed our neighbours too if only they hadn't one humongous tray themselves. I felt like we’ve just been teleported to an Italian farmhouse, and the vegetables and mushrooms had been freshly harvested and prepared for us.



From their rotisserie, we had the “pork lion”, stuffed with cooked ham, spinach and cheese, served with salad and focaccia bread. The words “rotisserie” and “stuffed” had me imagine a roasted pork cordon bleu but it was a dish unlike anything I had been served before. Then again, if I had known that it was going to look like that, I might not even have ordered it.



However, despite its unattractive appearance, the stuffed pork slices bore a subtle but interesting exchange of flavours between the rich ricotta and light loin. It suddenly occurred to me that I should have sliced up that block of foccacia, slipped in the pork slices and greens, and made myself a triple decker gourmet sandwich. Question: what on earth is “pork lion”?



I usually shun pasta, dismissing them as prepacked Italian instant noodles. To make an exception, 2 conditions should ideally be fulfilled- it must be tagliatelle and made in house. Finalmente’s homemade black ink tagliatelle was all that and more. Cooked Al dente el perfecto, the tagliatelle was coated with a chili-padi-infused white wine gravy, though slightly let down by the small prawns.



Of course we couldn't visit without trying out their pizzas. The parma ham pizza was topped with tomatoes, mozzarella nuances, parma ham, rocket and fresh parmesan shavings. Despite the varied toppings, the pungency of the arugula pretty much wiped out out everything else.

Finalmente’s pizza, just a couple of centimeters shy of becoming a WASA crispbread, was the thinnest I have ever come- not that that’s a bad thing if you over-ordered and was hoping the pizza wouldn’t be over kill. To me, the pizza resembled a seasoned flatbread and as a pizza, wasn't cheese or chewy enough; post-New-York-and-Boston, I was hoping for something ‘fiercer’.



For dessert, we had the Love Cake, a flaming molten chocolate cake. Oh I’m a sucker for theatrics (bring on the crepe suzette cart!). Though the flame extinguished in a minute, a whiff of alcohol lingered. While this is a ubiquitous chocolate dessert, I can’t fault it for being omnipresent if it’s done well. With a pierce, the bittersweet molten chocolate trampled all over the heated sponge cake much to our delight.



Even though Finalmente is located on Macpherson Road, it is not wise to come thinking you can dine on a ‘Macpherson Road budget’. Furthermore, the restaurant risked incurring dissatisfaction for my #1 Peeve of not serving tap water; however at least a relatively modest bottle of Ice Mountain not Fiji was offered. Although there wasn’t any service charge or GST, service was affable without being intrusive, knowledgeable without being know-it-all-like. Though only 4 months old, Finalmente is a welcome change from eat-till-you-drop Italian restaurants.

Oh well, at least you can keep 'The Body'.