Chicco Pasta Bar

I’m not a very picky eater when it comes to pasta. Regardless of their reputation in the general consensus, I don’t mind having pasta at Saizeriya and Pastamania (especially the former). They’re not exactly authentic or highbrow establishments, I know, but you get what you pay for. All things considered, they do a serviceable job with what they serve.

But occasionally, I would embrace my adventurous side and hunt for pasta from slightly fancier restaurants such as Chicco Pasta Bar located at Telok Ayer Street. Obviously, they’re on the pricier side compared to the likes of Saizeriya, but unlike other restaurants that require customers to dress in formal attire, Chicco leans more towards the casual end where any patron are welcome to dine in, which I’ll explain more in the next section.

Brief History

Chicco Pasta Bar was opened quite recently last year by renowned Chef Drew Nocente¹, a chef born and raised in Australia who grew up learning how to cook from his Italian father. While he has already established an Italian restaurant (Cenzo) prior to opening Chicco, Chicco has a more ‘chill’ atmosphere in comparison where he wanted customers to feel right at home when they enter the store. There aren’t as many rules to comply in Chicco compared to high-end restaurants, and it’s more of a place where people can sit down and dine in while they catch up with one another.

Despite the more laid-back feel to the place, Chicco embraces Cenzo’s spirit where quality over quantity still reigns supreme with a much affordable option compared to the latter. Unlike most pasta places commonly found in Singapore, Chicco serves lesser known pasta such as rigatoni. As you would have seen in one of my mini-reviews of PastaGo, mafaldine and gigli have been given the spotlight for the everyday Singaporean in recent years, so maybe rigatoni will be next?

Experience

I visited Chicco Pasta Bar in mid-December, and lo and behold, the restaurant’s loaded with Christmas decoration on the inside and outside. Even before entering Chicco, I already felt like I was going to step into a winter wonderland, but alas, this is only possible in the fragments of my imagination. Pigs will fly the day Singapore snows, and not too promising for our planet if that ever occurs with the threat of climate change looming for the last couple of decades.

I dropped by the restaurant around lunch hours and to my surprise, the tables weren’t loaded with many customers. Most of them were seated together with friends and families, making me the only customer on my own as the server escorted me to the bar seat. A little awkward as I was all too aware of my plight, but I kept reminding myself that I was here for the pasta and I’ll dash off elsewhere once I’m done.

Taste Test (Rigatoni Carbonara, $18)

This is my first time trying rigatoni pasta. While I’m used to strand-type pasta like the usual spaghetti, linguine and (more recently) mafaldine, rigatoni seems like an unusual choice at first until I popped one into my mouth. I understood why rigatoni was preferred over spaghetti, since the openings of the rigatoni were able to scoop the creamy carbonara sauce much effectively.

While this isn’t my first time having guanciale, for anyone who has carbonara with bacon (the Italians would sneer, I’d imagine), this is where the similarity ends. For the uninitiated, guanciale is salt-cured pork cheek or pork jowl, whereas bacon comes from the pig’s back, belly, and side. Guess which one’s more easily available?

So for Chicco to use guanciale (well, duh!) at this price point, it’s actually quite modest once you look at the bigger picture. It’s much saltier than bacon given its preparation method, making me reach out to my glass of water occasionally when the salt gets the better of me. It’s definitely decadent to top it off with the creamy and thick sauce, making the entire dish taste extremely rich as I savour each bite down to the last rigatoni.

The dish may seem quite bare bones with the dish sticking to the original ingredients and methods the Italians prepare carbonara. But the fewer the ingredients, the harder it is to pull off a dish with excellent quality. And that is where Chicco’s rigatoni carbonara shines where all the best ingredients are selected and crafted with love and respect for Italian cuisine. For carbonara, personally I like having plenty of pepper in it. Too bad I was enjoying my meal so much that I forgot to ask whether if I could add some more black pepper to give it a more coarser texture and additional heat that lasts longer in my mouth.

Final Thoughts

You can never go wrong with carbonara, and Chicco Pasta Bar certainly delivers. Looking back at my pasta preferences for the past couple of years, it might be time for me to take a more daring route and take the first steps in trying more obscure pasta with unusual pasta sauces in future reviews to expand my horizons.

Glad I signed up for the membership to get a free scoop of Chocolate Hazelnut Gelato. As expected, the gelato was creamy and choke-full of chocolate flavour, with the crunchy nut bits serving as the perfect topping to this dessert to balance out the thickness of the carbonara sauce and rigatoni pasta.

As we go closer into the end of 2024, I have one last review in store before we wrap things up as we look back at how far this site has come in barely five months. It’s been a rough but enjoyable journey so far, and I have plenty of thoughts about where to go from here in 2025, now that I am loaded with additional commitments beyond this site. But for now, let’s enjoy this festive occasion and to all my readers out there, have a merry Christmas and wishing everyone jolly times during this festive holiday! 🎄

Address & Opening Hours

Address

208 Telok Ayer St, Singapore 068642

Opening Hours

Mon to Thu, 11.30am to 2.30pm, 5pm to 10pm
Fri, 11:30 am to 2:30 pm, 5pm to 10:30 pm
Sat, 11.30am to 10.30pm
Sun, 11am to 10pm

Nearest MRT: Telok Ayer (DT18)

1. From CNA article: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/dining/chicco-pasta-bar-restaurant-chef-drew-nocente-379911 ↩︎