Pasta J Asian @Upper Thomson

Homely interior

This is one of the newer restaurant along this stretch of eateries, and we had wanted to try out the famed pesto sauce here for a while. Today is the day!

It was completely empty when I arrived around 7.15pm, and was very quickly offered a drink while I waited for hubby to arrive as I enjoyed the warm homely interior of this little restaurant.

This place makes their own pasta sauces, and sell them in little bottles that you can cook at home. They also offer cooking lessons for anyone who is interested in preparing your own pasta.

Reviews on the Net have mentioned that they do slow cooking and everything is prepared from scratch so we were prepared for a wait. But we were early and there was only another table around.. 🙂

We ordered a Muddy Mushroom Soup ($6.50), Pesto Pasta with prawns and squid ($19.90), a medium Garlic Herb Chicken on pasta ($18.90) and Rustic Shrooms ($10.90). We were told that the chicken would take longer, but that was OK with us, since we would be sharing anyway 🙂

First to arrive was the mushroom soup which came in a mug. First thing that caught NY attention was the unique pepper grinder, which the staff allowed me to try! Haha! The pepper was crushed and dispensed by rapid hand crunching motions… Very fun!

Muddy Mushroom Soup

Rustic Shrooms

The mushroom soup was not the thick and creamy type, it was more of an in-between sort. Filled with aromatic yummy goodness though!

Next up was the Rustic Shrooms that the staff recommended, and boy, we were very glad that we ordered it. It was even better than the soup! Very fragrant and addictive, we could not stop eating it…

Pesto Pasta and Garlic Herb Chicken Pasta

Then strangely, the garlic herb chicken on pasta came first. We were told that it was best to eat the pesto pasta while hot and freshly made, so the kitchen rushed out the chicken pasta first. Kinda strange? Were we taking too long to eat our appetisers?

But anyway, the chicken was lovely and the pasta was cooked just right and the sauce was good!

Finally the pesto pasta arrived and it was different from what we had expected! Our previous experience with pesto was that it was slightly salty, but this one was actually sweet. There were a generous amount of 10 small grilled prawns, that was salty and sweet. I preferred the 2 whole grilled mini squids, as they were not at all rubbery 🙂 It was also true that we should eat this while hot, because there was a small puddle of oil by the time I was done with the pasta.

Lemon Curd with Shortcake Biscuit and Cherry Sauce

Food was delicious enough that I decided to give dessert a try. Staff recommended Lemon Curd with Shortcake Biscuit and Cherry Sauce ($6.90). It was a refreshing way to end the meal!

The biscuit was home-made and went very well with the lemon curd mixed with cherry sauce, which seemed more like crushed cherries. The lemon curd was also light without being overly sour, so I was really happy with this dessert!

No GST but with 10% service charge