Oink Noona: Atmastel, South Beach
"Wanna take a spin? Wanna take a roll?
You know you're dealing with a wildcard."
Anyeong! Noona has just finished her midweek dinner date with her high school buddy, R5. Since R5 has gotten married, it's kinda challenging to find a common timing for us to date each other. Especially since both of us have gotten ourselves busy with work work work. Ugh. But today R5 has agreed to my date invitation. Yeay! So we went to the hipster office cum retail space at Esplanade, South Beach to have a lovely dinner.
R5 was so tired after dealing with her day-to-day task. Noona finds this quite ironic because she's not working in a profit-driven organization. In fact, she's working in those non-profit education organization which people presumes to be quite family-friendly and work-life balance supporter. Turns out there are so many things to do everyday up to the point that she simply feels so drained with her weekdays. Since R5 was feeling so tired, Noona let her choose what to eat for tonight.
And that's how we came to Atmastel. The name of the restaurant is kinda hard to pronounce but anyway, the most important is the venue and the food. From the menu, Atmastel seems to specialize in pasta and pizza. Oh wait, it also offers some mains to select from.
We were actually planning to eat pizza but the pizza chef was on sick leave that day. If all the chefs are having an epidemic, the restaurant will have to close for the day for sure. Apparently chefs are a very high-calling job. If you are working as a chef, please ensure to be healthy always. Anyway, back to the food, since there are only the two of us, we only ordered one appetizer and one pasta to share. For the appetizer, we ordered Calamari & Zucchini Fritters (SGD 18). While Noona personally thinks nothing can or shall go wrong with fried calamari, the zucchini fritters are so interesting. It's basically deep fried zucchini and the feeling is like you are eating fries and yet it's technically healthier because zucchini is after all a type of vegetable. Right?
The pasta that we ordered does not look pretty and in fact, it looks kinda ordinary. However, the Garganelli with Homemade Sausage (SGD 21) tastes yummy despite its so-so appearance. This was the first time Noona has ever heard of a pasta type named Garganelli. It is apparently an egg-based pasta which is formed by rolling a flat, square noodle into tubular shape.
The pasta is chewy and really suitable to Noona's liking. But what Noona loves the best about the pasta is definitely the tomato sauce since it's on the creamier side. Noona is a creamy pasta eater and she does not really love eating Aglio Olio kind of pasta so this Garganelli scores big in her book. Hahaha.
Atmastel is located at:
South Beach Avenue,
26 Beach Road #B1-22
Nearest MRT: Esplanade
Opening hours:
Monday to Thursday 11AM - 10PM
Friday and Saturday 11AM - 11PM
Closed on Sunday