LINO Restaurant Binjai Park Singapore - new Italian restaurant in Bukit Timah

LINO Restaurant at Binjai Park is a new Italian restaurant that opened last week. Basically, the former Pepperoni Pizzeria had been given a make-over and has now become a more up-market Italian restaurant. Both Pepperoni and LINO are brands in the Les Amis Group portfolio. It seems that LINO Restaurant Binjai is the first of this new tier of Italian restaurants in Singapore that is between the casual Pepperoni and the more serious La Strada. We were at LINO Restaurant for lunch recently.

LINO Restaurant Binjai Park is located on the ground floor of this block of walk-up apartments in Bukit Timah. There are residential units above. It is a corner unit with the Capri restaurant on the left and the famous Peranakan restaurant Ivin’s is in the next block on the right. Parking is along the street, which is good because it is free but not so good during peak hours as they can be hard to come by. We understand that valet parking is made available on weekends.

The layout of the LINO Restaurant is a familiar one for suburban restaurants in Singapore. Some tables are located outdoors along the sheltered pavement for those who prefer natural ventilation. The rest of the seating are indoors in air-conditioned comfort. The space is simply furnished, mostly in different shades of grey. Pleasant, but not much more in terms of aesthetics.

LINO Restaurant Binjai Menu

Here are pictures of the LINO Restaurant Binjai Menu. We selected a couple of small sharing plates, a pasta dish and a pizza, followed by desserts.

Some Italian sparkling wine is always a good way to start our meal, especially on a hot Singapore afternoon.

LINO Small Sharing Plates

We selected two items from the list of small plates – Hummus ($14, above picture) and Grilled Octopus ($22, pictures below). It turned out that they were both different types of hummus. The plain hummus was topped with onions and tomatoes. The octopus version was topped with chick peas and small bits of octopus. The octopus was tasty but they were so small and so few. We would just have the regular hummus in the future as they taste substantially the same. The amount of bread provided to go with the hummus was also very limited.

Pasta and Pizza

We tried the tortellini with pork and veal ($24) and the mixed mushroom pizza ($26).

The pieces of tortellini were small but packed with robust flavours of meat and cheese. The parmesan sauce was thick and creamy. In terms of volume, it was a small dish but it was large in terms of taste.

The best dish of the day at LINO Restaurant was the pizza. Unlike the other dishes, the size of this dish was not small. It was a regular sized pizza. The crust was very good, light and airy with crisp edges. The mixed mushrooms and truffle cream provided a satisfying earthy aroma and taste.

Desserts

For desserts we had the Semifreddo (picture below) and Sfera di Cioccolato ($16 each). They were both good and we would be happy to order them again. The chocolate dessert however was the more delicious one. Dark chocolate and orange is usually a potent (and successful) combination. Coffee at LINO Restaurant Binjai Park was very good and reasonably priced ($5) for this quality.