Saturday 5 December 2015

UNA @ One Rochester (Buona Vista)


 UNA is a Spanish restaurant located near Rochester Mall in Buona Vista in a little "village" of mid to high end restaurants. The ambience of the place is quite quaint as the restaurant is a colonial house with plenty of garden space and outside seating.



Normal bread (complimentary)
Starters: "Generic" Bread
I didn't know that they were serving complimentary bread, otherwise I may not have ordered the Pan con tomate. However, the complimentary bread were of different shapes and sizes, including bread sticks. Most were lightly toasted and was served with olive oil. A pretty good starter, and the bread is refillable.


Price: Complimentary




Pan con tomate

Pan con tomate (Lightly toasted bread with fresh tomatoes & herbs)

The main difference between this and the one above is the tomato "sauce" and the type of bread. This bread is crispier and tastes lighter (not a bad thing). But the highlight is the "sauce" which is not overly thick and provides a comforting "cold" that contrasts well with the warm bread. The tomato is light on the flavoring and is mainly there for the texture.


Price: $11



Pimentos de padron (Sweet Spanish peppers – fried & sprinkled with sea salt)

Quite a good starter if you like vegetables. The crunchiness of the lightly grilled pepper and the sprinkled salt makes this a must-try.


Price: $15


Grilled octopus (Smoky tender grilled octopus on a bed of ratte potatoes with paprika) 


The octopus reminded me of a more tender (and less chewy) abalone. Quite a unique taste. While the octopus was nice to eat and I would recommend ordering this, be warned that this dish's portion is ridiculously small and its price is on the high side. 



Price: $32


Suckling Pig
Suckling Pig (Crispy roast suckling pig served with mashed potatoes & quince jelly)

The skin was exceptionally crispy while the meat was very tender. Portion size is decent (the picture doesn't do it much justice). This is better than My Little Spanish Place's suckling pig.


Price: $38



Pluma Iberica

Pluma Ibérica (Grilled pluma Ibérico pork with a smoky sweet marinade)

It's supposed to be pork but it tasted more like those overly tenderized (and fake-tasting) beef. But to be fair, it was because I didn't like the sweet marinade. I would definitely recommend the suckling pig over this.

Rating: $40
Pluma Iberiuca (left) Pluma Iberica (right)

 Grilled whole sea bass (sea bass slow-grilled with a dry rub of sea salt, garlic, shallots, lemon & green chilli)

The "highlight" of my meal. The sea bass was supposed to be like a baked sea salt type dish but unfortunately it it was uneven salted at certain parts. However, this was compensated by the crisp of the fish skin.  I like eating fish and I would recommend this for anyone with similar taste. This particular fish unfortunately had a fishy smell, but nonetheless was overall still enjoyable.

Price: $55

 Pork belly chop with charred rosemary (Pork belly slow-braised till tender & smoky)

Please don't order this unless you enjoy overly fat meat.

Price: $33
House wine:
The wine glass and the amount of wine given is extremely small. I do not recommend it given its price unless you truly love wine.

Price: $15
Churros & chocolat (Crispy churros with dark chocolate sauce & light honey ice cream)

I've tried quite a few churros in Singapore and this has quite good presentation. Hopefully taste-wise it was quite underwhelming as the inside of the churros were slightly uncooked. The ice-cream and chocolate dip helped mitigate this though. Maybe this batch just happened to be slightly under-cooked.

Price: $14



Overall rating: 7.5/10

Overall UNA is quite a chill place to have a meal and the ambiance is particularly good for dinner. Quality of the food is generally quite good and is representative of Spanish cuisine. However, prices of the dishes are on the high end and the portion sizes are generally quite small.

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