Best Cafe and Deli if you happen to be in the vicinity of Marina Bay Financial Centre / The Sail or One Raffles Quay and want a good salad/soup/pasta or ciabatta sandwich. You get what you pay for here if you are keen on veering away from hawker fare and coffee chains for a quick lunch. Try their brilliant breakfast if you have time to sit down.

A pretty simple food stall with sandwiches and pasta options. They have a bunch of them all over Singapore, so it does not warrant philisophical musings like so many people do reviewing Starbucks or McDonald's.

I ordered the Parma ham and enmental cheese on focaccia ($13) which was delicious. Not the largest sandwich in the world, but a good amount of ham, cheese and greens. Worth checking out the pastas.

Well I have had the opportunity to eat at Da Paolo quite a few times and this would be simply the take on what ive had so far.

Their white chocolate yoghurt crumbed cake (at $8) is excellent. Actually, its freaking fantastic. Personally I cant quite taste anything yoghurt, but I do think that it may be the reason why the white chocolate is not so potently sweet (although my secretary still thinks that it is too sweet). Well basically this white yoghurt crumbed cake isn’t really a cake per se – its more like a thick mess of viscous white chocolate (yoghurt) topped generously with white shavings and crumbed biscuits (think of what the base of cheesecakes are usually made of), but falling into the cake definition or not – the entire combination tastes wonderful. They also have this in dark chocolate (which in my opinion is not dark chocolate – more like milk chocolate), which ive have not tried, and not likely to – unless im truly desperate and theyre out of white chocolate.

Da Paolo also has a rotating pasta menu which has a slight emphasis on vegetarian options (and also to my dismay, the standard pastas used are only spaghetti and penne, both of which I do not care for). On Wednesday afternoon I called to see what they had (and the owner’s socialite daughter who basically runs this particular outlet picked up) and was informed that they do have home made tagliolini and tagliatelle which you could switch to at an additional cost of $2. So I had the beef bolognaise (or Bolognese if you would prefer its Italian term) with tagliatelle which cost $16. A little steep – but you pay for the pasta I suppose.

The beef bolognaise wasn’t too fantastic – a little stingy with the bolognaise sauce which tasted only slightly better than ordinary, but served with a decent portion of tagliatelle. The tagliatelle was actually pretty good, not too heavy (starchy) or thick and easy to eat. I would say probably not to bother with the spaghetti or penne especially if its the kind you can get at all grocery shops.

There are only a few seats at the table top counter at this restaurant (at the most I would think 10), but if you can snag yourself a seat on one of the funny round giant pebble benches outside, this shouldn’t be a problem. Or you could always bring it back to the office. Mostly, I’d prefer calling to order and then going over to collect. Ambience wise the set up is pretty standard – but I think their displayed pizzas look a little wilted at the edges and sad, and their cupcakes not particularly appetising.

They also serve a variety of sandwiches, which one my good friends think is slightly on the expensive side – think $10 to $12. May give it a go one day if I get bored and feel like a gourmet sandwich.