PerBacco: Northen Italian Cuisine with 90 Wines to Choose From

For an Italian restaurant, it is almost textbook for it to evoke such warm rustic charms. But in addition to red brick walls and dark wood furniture, Craig Road’s PerBacco comes framed inside and out, fittingly with wooden wine crates to reflect its stronghold of 90 quality wines from Italy and France, handpicked for their taste, variety and region. The food here is tipped towards Northern Italian cuisine. So rather than tomato-based dishes, you can expect more cheese, milk and cream-based dishes with no holding back on butter of course.

Your meal typically starts with some small savoury snacks known as cicchetti. Think Spicy Crab Meat Croquettes (Crocchette di Granchio, $12, pictured above) that oozes of ricotta, potato and fresh crab meat, served with creamy tuna sauce, or sweet and sour prawns wrapped in parma ham on a bed of slow-cooked onions.

Under PerBacco’s umbrella of meat and seafood mains, we stand by the fork-tender Stewed Veal Cheek (Guanciale di Vitello Brasato, $34, pictured above) as our top pick. After an overnight marination in red wine and three hours in the slow-cooker, all you really need is a spoon to cut through those butter-like layers. Don’t skim over Chef Marco’s signature homemade pasta creations, cooked his nonna’s-style, which vary from the norm in terms of in texture. Instead of chewy morsels, the potato gnocchi has a mushier consistency that takes some getting used to – which isn’t hard, especially with that creamy gorgonzola cheese sauce.

And unless you’re willing to continue the journey further down the cheese route with a ricotta cheesecake, go for the luscious Hazelnut Panna Cotta (Pannacotta Nocciola, $12, pictured above) when dessert calls. Note: PerBacco offers a three-course lunch menu at $29.90, which is refreshed on a weekly basis.

Written by Peh Yi Wen Images: Peh Yi Wen