Oca Grassa

When food reviews tell you that you need a "part giant or party of four" to share a Florentine steak, you cannot help but feel a tad cheated when the portion comes small. Especially when the Chef really was genius in (apparently) grilling meat over Japanese charcoal embers with no flame - a technique which gave the well-aged meat an amazingly smoky charred-but-not-burnt flavour, and a I-want-more-melt-in-your-mouth texture.

No fair. At $158 a portion, we just couldn't afford to order a second serving #innerstrength.

I honestly cannot see how the hot slab of salt the steak arrived on enhanced its taste though. But it was pretty. One wonders how long they recycle each slab for, or if they will throw it away if rogue customers decide to lick it *grin*.

I wouldn't exactly call Oca Grassa an Italian restaurant since the head Chef is Edwin Lau, but labels don't matter as long as the food is good, I suppose. By the time we arrived at 8.30pm for the 2nd seating, quite a number of items on the menu were already sold out. Oh well. Of the ones we did manage to order, there were hits and misses.

A big hit with me was the Octopus Salad ($20). It's difficult to cook octopus without making it hard and chewy, but the chunks here were oh-so-tender. I loved the combination of textures between the octopus, mangoes, capsicums and lettuce. I was most impressed that even the octopus had that (see above) lovely smoked flavour - I regret that I didn't take a picture of it.

The Brodetto di Pesce ($56 for two to share) - a garlic/tomato based seafood broth with generous servings of clams, mussels, sea bream and shrimps - was pretty good too.  A bit pricey I thought, but quite enjoyable.

The linguine with sauteed prawns and squid aglio olio ($20) did nothing for me. No offence to the Chef but I could have cooked it myself. Again. Don't trust food reviews blindly - there I was, futilely looking for that zing which the dish purportedly has because "he adds prawn stock to the mix". I felt quite silly haha.

We also had the tiramisu for dessert. It was so-so.

Verdict - I am not too sure if I will be back even though the meat was good. It's a bit pricey, to be honest. The acoustics of the seating area was really bad too - it was very noisy and we had to raise our voices to be heard. Not a place for romantic dates, FYI.