OChre has some fantastic Italian food that brought back fond memories of our Italian honeymoon over a year ago. Located at the top of Orchard Central, seating at the restaurant surrounds the open kitchen where the chefs can be seen doing their stuff. Surprisingly, the ventilation is pretty good and so you won't get blasts of hot air, or get choked by the smoke etc. Instead, you get to watch how the chef prepare their dishes, and sometimes, hear the banter of staff too.
For the starter, we went for their Burrata dish, which is a concoction of mozarella cheese and cream. OChre's Burrata arrived on a bed of proscuitto, It was nice and soft, and when cut open, cream/butter oozed out slowly. The menu said there was supposed to be tomato slices so we were a little disappointed that there weren't any tomatoes to be seen. Imagine our surprise when we found the baby tomato slices folded WITHIN the mozarella cheese itself! What a gem! You can also flavour the Burrata with a choice of sea salt, vinegar, pesto or herbs, giving a nice variety of tastes throughout the whole course.
For the starter, we went for their Burrata dish, which is a concoction of mozarella cheese and cream. OChre's Burrata arrived on a bed of proscuitto, It was nice and soft, and when cut open, cream/butter oozed out slowly. The menu said there was supposed to be tomato slices so we were a little disappointed that there weren't any tomatoes to be seen. Imagine our surprise when we found the baby tomato slices folded WITHIN the mozarella cheese itself! What a gem! You can also flavour the Burrata with a choice of sea salt, vinegar, pesto or herbs, giving a nice variety of tastes throughout the whole course.
Our first course was a seafood linguine pasta that we asked to be portioned into two (we learnt to share one of the courses if we were going to do the full Italian 2 courses + dessert). Pictured is one portion of the order of pasta - can you see how much ingredients it has? The quality of the squid, clams and mussels were top notch, apart from the type of prawn used. Sorry to say, crystal prawn (low on flavour but full of bite), seemed out of place in this seafood dish. But the white wine sauce and other ingredients more than made up for it, and we both savoured the dish joyfully.
Moving on to the second course - Mky ordered a Tristecca, which is OChre's version of a beef steak (ours might have been a ribeye - no bone), seared on the outside like a bistecca fiorentina, and medium done on the inside. It was full of flavour and bite. Excellent! For under $50, this is a more affordable version of beef steak than the one at Valentino's, and one that definitely satisfies! The truffle potato slices that came with it did not lose its aroma the more one ate of it, unlike some other truffle dishes we have eaten elsewhere. It was soo good and very moreish.
I went for the Osso Bucco, which was stewed veal shanks on a bed of saffron risotto cake. Ordinarily, this would be a dish that I would really enjoy, however, compared with the linguine and steak earlier, the Osso Bucco just didn't sing for me. As Mky said, by itself, this dish was excellent, with the veal meat gently breaking off the bone with only a little coaxing. She particularly appreciated the slightly crisp and very fragrant saffron risotto cake. Unfortunately, the Tristecca and Seafood Linguine were just that good, and the stew was totally outshone!
I have to say, OChre has some delicious Italian food that is priced just above your regular restaurant fare. For the quality of the ingredients and the perfection of execution, this restaurant deserves the attention of more patrons who are looking for great tasting Italian food without having to burn a hole in their pockets. The only complaint we had was the presence of flies. Don't ask me why a restaurant on the 11th floor has those small annoying pests, but it did reduce our level of enjoyment a tad. A little more effort with that issue and we would definitely be back for that Tristecca!
OChre
181 Orchard Road
#11-03/04 Orchard Central
Tel: 66340423
