Paolo's @ Sure Pizza by Mr Chardonnay

Catching up with old friends over a good meal is always fun and last Friday, 17th Oct was such a day, coupled with the fact that it will also be my very first attempt at doing a write up of what I will be eating! I met up with Sweet Lychee and Confused Kidz at Sure Pizza for dinner and drinks, which is located at the border of Plaza Sri Hartamas & Plaza Damas. I recalled eating there once about 2 years ago and the food was fair. Sweet Lychee said her current boss goes there quite often and since he is a picky eater, we decided to check it out. We perused through the menu and there was a decent selection of pizzas, pastas, meat and seafood dishes. We ordered the recommended Pane Aglio & Mozzarella ( which is basically garlic pizza bread with cheese) and then decided to play it safe with the potato salad for starters.

The mozzarella garlic pizza bread and cheese was not quite what we had expected, we thought it would be like an enhanced version of the regular garlic bread but instead we got a pizza with cheese and chives! Sweet Lychee took a bite and said that it tasted quite flat though palatable. I tend to agree. Confused Kidz said it was like a Margarita Pizza without tomatoes. I actually was rather disappointed for a dish that came highly recommended and somehow, the baked Mozzarella did not come as aromatic as I had hoped for.

The "safe choice"Potato Salad was did rather well in my view. The potato was done just right, not too hard nor soft and the dish was appropriately chilled, just the way how a good salad should be. There were generous amount of chopped onions and blanched carrot bits, all nicely tossed together with mayonnaise and Italian herbs. The amount of dressing applied was sufficient and not overbearing and this made the dish both appetizing and refreshing.

Confused Kidz wanted to try something from the "Daily Special" list and she immediately spotted the Liver Pate, which Sweet Lychee and I readily agreed. The pate portion was generous and it was served with medium size sliced bread, toasted to perfection, both in terms of taste and colour. Confused Kidz liked the pate as it was very flavourful. While both Sweet Lychee and I agreed that the pate was rich in terms of flavour, we found it a tad dry and brittle. I would have preferred it to be more moist, as bits of it kept falling off my toast as I tried to spread it.

Of course, with liver pate, the perfect accompaniment in my opinion would be a nice glass of red. The wine list was rather limited, much to my dismay but in the end, we settled for 2003 Azure Bay Cabernet Sauvignon. It was an easy drinking wine with hints of plum and cherry and I felt that it complemented the food that we had quite well, though it lacked body and aroma.

After ordering 3 starters and since the Pane Aglio & Mozzarella surpassed our expectations in terms of serving size, we shared one main between us and settled for another highly recommended dish, the Fettuccine Con Pollo e Gamberettti. It is basically a pasta dish- flat noodles with chicken, prawns, garlic and crushed peppercorn in cream and a touch of tomato. I found this to be quite good as the fettuccine was well cooked which is just the way I prefer my pastas to be cooked. Feel free to disagree but "Al Dente" pastas somehow never quite appealed to me. The sauce was fairly creamy yet not overbearing and is slightly tangy and the crushed peppercorn added a nice touch to the overall taste. The mint leaves served together with the fettuccine also enhanced the overall flavour of the dish and they were rather generous with the prawns and chicken meat. By any Italian joint standards, the prawns can be considered rather fresh (of course, one can never compare with Chinese restaurants).

The total bill came to RM251, mainly contributed by the the bottle of red which was RM149 :). The overall verdict for me? It is exactly how I felt 2 years ago- fairly decent Italian food at standard pricing which is nicely positioned as a neighbourhood joint for family and friends.