I love Italian food, I also love Japanese food. However I have my reservations for "fusion" food such what this restaurant has to offer. You see, a lot of fusion restaurants tend to incorporate more than one kind of cooking into their dishes without first mastering the basics of one particular cooking style. This tends to make the taste of their food out of balance and balance is what separate the good from the bad, or in this case, the good from the great.Lets get one thing straight off the bat, some of the dishes (at least the ones that I have tasted so far) in this place is above average compared to other places in Ipoh, and IT SERVES PORK which to me says "the chef has some balls! and integrity" because it is very very difficult to survive (in the F&B industry) in Ipoh if you are not giving 2 hoots to our Malay friends. Many many entrepreneurs who opened restaurants that serves pork in this place closed shop because they were unable to serve the 30% Malay population (at least) thus loosing potentially 1/3 of business revenue. And I love pork. For me, if you are not serving pork in a so called "Japanese" or "Italian" restaurant you DON'T DESERVE to be called that because pork is the soul of the food of these 2 great nations.Now comes the specific (personal) analysis of the dishes that my group ordered. Firstly the appetizers, the Caesar salad with bruschettas and mushroom soup. The dressing of the salad is spot on, very nice and not overly dressed. To me it is the perfect salad. But it comes with 2 bruschettas and one of them is the ota-ota flavoured. Seriously...ota-ota? If you want to do something different just for the sake of doing something different, DON'T. It RUINED the whole salad dish. What did I say about balance of flavours (this sentence will repeat very often in this review)? First you serve me a fresh, well dressed and very refreshing salad and then you expect to tingle my senses by that ota-ota? Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike ota-ota, I like it on it's own, but not with a perfect Caesar salad. On the other hand, the mushroom soup just tasted like any regular mushroom soup that's was in a package from a Tesco.Then I had my "Classic Carbonara" which is quite confusing because there is NOTHING CLASSIC about this dish. When it arrived I found some bonito flakes on top albeit a very tiny amount shaved very thinly, you would hardly notice them if you do not cook any Japanese dishes. I do, so they are very obvious to me. Ok then, it's NOT Classic in any way, they should name it "Fusion Carbonara" instead. This is just nitpicking in the name and I apologize to waste your time. The question is: WHY? Is it to enhance the flavour of the dish? You can't, not with this tiny amount. Is it to enhance the presentation? You also can't, not with this tiny amount shaved this thin you can hardly notice them. So what's the point? Please be reminded that this is a pasta dish that consist of at least 30% cheese in it, so any subtle ingredients in small amount will just be wasted. The fundamental basics of how to make a good carbonara is the balanced mix of good cheese, good eggs and parsley to accentuate the richness of these 3 core ingredients. The cheese is there for the richness. The eggs are there to combine all the elements, to soften the taste of the cheese a bit and also to make the sauce smoother and runnier. The parsley (which a lot of people ignore and is more important than you think) is there to provide balance of flavours between the 3 core ingredients, to lessen the blow of the cheese - egg mixture and to provide colouring to the whole dish. I am disappointing to say that the parsley was not there in this dish. This caused it to look bland, and too rich because they put too much cheese in the mixture and the balance is totally out.There's the 'Pasta with Bacon and Cherry Tomatoes' that my wife ordered. Most of the time this combination of bacon and cherry tomatoes is perfect. You have flavourful smoky bacon and you have slightly stir fried sweet sweet cherry tomatoes, how can you top that? By adding in long beans? NO! Usually long beans are great if they are the main ingredient but in this case, they are just SOME ingredient they chef put in there to be different. If this pasta is called 'Pasta with Long Beans (with bacon & tomatoes)' with long beans as the core of the dish then it will be great. It's also the way they cooked the long beans. They have been very slightly stir fried to make them look fresh and light green. Good if it's on it's own, bad if mixed with other subtle ingredients. This is a grave error in this particular dish because the their smell covers the entire dish. We had a pasta that only taste like under-cooked long beans with a slight hint of bacon and tomatoes. It's like the rookie's error of under cooking bell peppers for a pasta dish, the whole thing will just taste like raw vege.I almost forgot to mention the pasta itself. If you know how to make fresh pasta yourself it wouldn't be anything special but if you don't (not interested, lazy etc.) then it is something worthwhile to try it out in this place.We also ordered the Sakura Pork which tasted quite amazing. It very juicy and tender with good flavour and reminds me of freshly roasted Chinese pork with a pineapple sauce. Speaking of pineapple sauce, this sauce is the highlight of the day. The balance is spot on, the flavour is incredible and it compliments the pork perfectly.Then comes the dessert. I am not THAT into sweet stuff, but some of the options here are quite good. The Chocolate Mousse is GREAT, it's got a hint of bitterness to it which I love and it actually tasted like Belgium Chocolate and the Creme Brulee was not bad (which is high praises from me). But the Semifreddo is not my cup of tea. The Tiramisu is quite acceptable except for the taste of alcohol was too strong, balance of taste is not up to par here but I applaud the chef for using alcohol, at least it's made the correct way and it's really home made. There are just too many shops in this country selling disgusting feces and they dare to name them Tiramisu without a hint of alcohol in them and then charge a fortune to rip people off. This place is NOT one of them.I also want to mention the environment. There's no denying it, it's quite nice and cozy because the place is so small. The decorations are kept at a minimal but everything is clean and very inviting. The only issue we had is the weather of Malaysia and El Nino. On that evening we are experiencing super high heat, and the 3 tiny 1-2hp air-con units in the dining room were unable to keep up with. They should have installed 2 units of 5hp air-con but due to (presumably) their inexperience in running their own business they opt to save cost in buying 3 units of small air-con. I pity them because in the long run, their electricity bills will stack up like mad, since small air-cons uses so much more juice when they are running at full capacity compared to big ones running at low in the same environment.The conclusion is this restaurant can do better and has huge potential if the chef can adjust his style a bit and improve on his basics. I just hope TNB bills will not make them close shop.
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