Wessex village, a tranquil and peaceful estate in the leafy Portsdown Road area is no stranger to the art scene in Singapore. Recently, with the entry of some new restaurants, it is slowly becoming the “It” place to be.

This will be good news for my fellow “west-erners” since LIC always lament the fact that the east side has more good food. With Holland Village, Chips Bee garden, Greenwood Avenue, Sunset way, Rochester Park, and now Wessex Village, who says there isn’t good places to chill in the West!

But this may not be music to the ears to some others, people who enjoyed the quaint environment and would rather preferred Wessex Village not to become the next Dempsey, over-rated and over-populated.

Have no fret about that, because currently in Wessex Village, there is only Pietrasanta an Italian restaurant, Laurent’s Cafe & Chocolate Bar, Klee a cocktail bar, and Colbar a very old-school coffee shop.

My friend and i explored the serene area, we checked out Pietrasanta but my friend wasn’t in the mood for Italian delights, but the place looks great and will definitely try it the next time round.

We decided on Cicada, an art centric casual restaurant lounge.

Nestled amid lush green vegetations, Wessex Village is a colonial style residential area surrounded by open space and trees to provide a soothing and relaxing ambience.

The building structure there are mostly colonial style, and this is the same for Cicada in a colonial type of bungalow building.

Al fresco area in Cicada is also spacious and roomy, which makes it a great place for friends to chill out under the the natural environment surrounded by greens, the village feel.

A large group of Caucasians chilling out, but don’t be quite mistaken by this scene. According to the manager Ronald, their main customers are actually locals and not Caucasians, and most of them are people from other area rather than the residents in Wessex estate.

Seafood Mango Salad ($13.90)
Marinated seafood and honey balsamic dressing makes up the Seafood Mango Salad. The mango is sweet, and the prawn springy. The greens together with the sweet honey balsamic dressing opens up your taste bud for the meal.

Sauteed Organic Mushrooms ($5.90)
Mushrooms are always a tricky dish, cook for too long and the mushroom becomes over-cooked, while finish it too early the mushroom will fail to absorb the essence of the other ingredients.

The Sauteed Organic mushrooms have a slight hint of white wine, wild herbs and tomato taste.

Smoothie Oreo Orgasm ($12)
The Oreo Smoothie isn’t good enough, the oreo bits are left too big to go through the straw, usually they will be crushed and mixed with milk. We gave the feedback and the manager Ronald told us the reason was due to fault in the blender that day.

However it is still quite unforgivable as this is a restaurant after all, and the least they can do is to notified us about the problem which unfortunately, they didn’t.

Butter Croissant toast with smoked salmon ($13.90)
The butter croissant toast besides with the smoked salmon, comes with alternatives in ham, bacon or sausages. The greens in the toast complement the smoked salmon salty taste.

However, we lamented the fact that the croissant toast is not cripsy enough, the bread is too soft, and same for the green. We felt that it will be better if there is crunchier greens like cucumber added in, for a more complete taste.

The mayonnaise sauce also threatens to spoil the smoked salmon, fresh avocado sauce will perhaps be a better option to go along with the smoked salmon. The sandwich is an otherwise good and hearty dish, if Cicada can improve on the small issues.

Penne Pasta with seafood ($24.50)
The most expensive pasta on the menu, no doubt so with the ocean prawn, scallops and calamari in spicy marinara sauce. Different type of pasta suits different type of base, tomato base spaghetti is the only choice to go with it. Well for a spicier version, the penne pasta works well.

The first savor of the Penne pasta with seafood is excellent, the spicy sauce together with the oceanic taste floods our taste bud. However, the dish seems to lack in something, because after a while we got a little sick of the dish as it starts to be overwhelming.

Cicada Club Sandwich ($15.90)
The Cicada Club sandwich consists of bacon, lettuce, tomato, weisswurst sausage in focaccia bun. The bacon and sausage is decent, but again the use of mayo sauce here doesn’t quite complement the ingredients. Mayo will be better off when paired up with fried stuff.


Total Bill is $96.90 for the 2 of us. I think we sort of over-ordered given we had two appetizer, two sandwich, a pasta and a drink. The sandwich ranges in the tens, while pastas are in tens to twenty. The drink is definitely no go, while the sandwiches can really be better. And for once, i didn’t have any room for desserts.

I checked out the dinner menu as well, while lunch at Cicada is causal and simple food, dinner is more sophisticated with more selections of mains in the high twenty range. According to the manager, the atmosphere for dinner is more romantic and the area more closed up for more coziness.

We found the day-time area to be too ‘open’. Cicada should be going for the french open space concept, but this does not really encourage longer stay because the space is too bare and open. We believed that a more enclosed area, using different type of curtains can just do the trick.

All in all, Cicada promises a lot with its art-centric causal restaurant tag, but we ended up quite disappointed. Cicada certainly can be better, and hopefully the next time i dropped by Wessex, it will be a very different Cicada.

You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words. Food, my dear, is what they call an adventure!

” The next time, hopefully a very different Cicada “

This is was highly recommeded by my friends who has been there recently. Armed with a "must" order list, a group of 4 arrive at Cicada just before 8 pm. We were greeted at the front by a waiter and we chose to seat outside. It quite a nice cosy place to chill out. They use a lot of candles light (each on every table)and I like particularly the big trees by the restuarant.

Here's what we ordered:-

1) Archipelago Samui - a nice fruity draft beer (our first try). The other tap they have is Heineken. 1 for 1 promotion for their draft beer and selected bottles til 9 pm.
2) We shared a 12" mushroom pizza, caesar Salad.
3) Mushrooms Soups
4) 2 Infamous Cicada Burgers, slipper lobster pasta and seabass as mains
5) Choc Peanut Butter Brownie. MUST TRY. 4 of us shared one 'cos we were too full by then.

The food is good. I will come back for their juicy wagyu beef burger the next time. We generally had a good night out at Cicada dining right under the stars and moon. Probably not many ppl know about portsdown, the area is not as overly crowded as Dempsey. Parking is easy. We saw an newly opened italian restuarant as we leave Cicada. Looks cool too, may check them out.

Decided to try out Cicada because Colbar is closed on Mondays.

Perhaps because it was a Monday evening and they did not expect that many customers, only 2 wait staff were on hand. They forgot our drinks order and we had to request for water refills.

We had the Caesar crab salad, the poached egg was cold, yolk was mostly cooked, bacon was also pretty tough. Also had the burger which from the menu looked like their specialty. I love gorgonzola but I think they overdid it on the burger and the taste overpowered everything else. The salsa and sour cream that came with the side order of fries was completely bland.

For the prices charged I don't think Cicada offers much value for money.

We sat indoors and got bitten by mosquitos as well.

Went to Cicada for a business lunch. Service was relatively prompt and attentive. Our glasses were always re-filled.

Food-wise, no unique selling point really. It seems like most bistros serving a mix of sandwiches, pastas, eggs (for brunch), soups etc. Had a pasta and a side of veggies. Wish I could try the dessert!

When I wanted to leave, I got the service staff to call me a cab. As I sat on the patio to wait for the cab, the waiter actually brought me a glass of iced water. As it started drizzling when the cab arrived, the waiter also sheltered me to the cab. That, I thought was service :)

Overall, an ideal cozy chill out place!

My SIL chose the restaurant and I thought it might be an interesting place to try. My family was starving and decided to order the Pizza as a starter. They inform us that it will take about 15-20mins which was acceptable - hence we placed our order. 45mins later, our pizza was no where in sight! The table beside us, which came much later, had their food served! We got hold of one of the waitress and they informed us that there are a lot of orders for pizza which was why it took so long. Shouldn't they tell us earlier since they informed us that it takes only 20mins? Ok fine, we let the matter rest and continue to wait.

20mins later, our mains arrive and our starter is no where in sight again! Oh well.. we asked about it once again. They informed us that they had overheated the oven and need to cool it down before they can can cook the pizza. Once again.. we had to ask to know what was happening to the pizza that they promised us 1.5hrs ago that it take 20mins to serve it. They did try to make up for it later by offering us complimentary drinks.

Enough about the delays in food. The mains were average. I had steak and it tasted ordinary. The flavour was lacking and it is not juicy even though I ordered medium. The serving is relatively small given the price that we paid. My husband had the spatchcock. The skin was crispy and tasty but the meat was rather bland as well. It seems like they didnt marinade it long enogh.

As for dessert, I had apple crumble and my SIL had Creme Brulee. Both the desserts are good. I like them. The apple crumble was served warm with a scoop of ice-cream. It is not too sweet and the portion is quite big. I think I might come back for the dessert but not the mains.