Gary's Restaurant - New Italian Restaurant at Rochester Park

Gary’s Restaurant is a new restaurant in an old house in Rochester Park. It is said to serve “… Italian cuisine indulgence that carries the signature touches of its founder and award-winning chef Gary Wu, drawing out the layered and nuanced yet exhilarating flavours and tastes that will undoubtedly excite Italian food lovers”.

New Italian Restaurant at Rochester Park

Occupying a small black and white bungalow across the road from Star Vista, the simplest way to get to Gary’s Restaurant is by MRT to the Buona Vista station. Those who are driving can park at Rochester Mall (which is also the same building as Rochester Residences) or Star Vista.

We had been to this building before when it was occupied by DW Workshop Singapore Bistro. The decor was quite different then. Now it has been transformed into a more serious dining venue. There is a dark main dining hall (picture above) and a bright balcony area which is also air-conditioned. We were happy to be shown a table at the balcony. The light airy feel outside was felt better than the sombre atmosphere inside.

Gary’s Restaurant Menu

Gary’s Restaurant is helmed by chef Gary Wu who has an impressive CV. According to the restaurant website, Chef Gary has worked at a number of top restaurants. He was the Senior Sous Chef of Buona Terra Italian Restaurant, a 1 Michelin Star Restaurant and has been a ‘Chef for Hire’ for many well-heeled customers including the Royal Family of Brunei, Cabinet Ministers, celebrities. Here are pictures of some pages from the Gary’s Restaurant menu including the weekday set lunch menu.

Here are pictures of a couple of pages of the wine list. There is a wide selection of Italian wines starting from around $70 a bottle to the expensive Super Tuscans. We were quite tempted by the Gary’s Restaurant set lunch which starts from $38++ for a three course lunch with coffee. But decided to be adventurous and picked a few dishes from the a la carte menu instead.

What We Ate

The dishes that we ordered that day were the beef lasagna ($22), lamb rack ($48) and baked cod fish ($48).

Some warm bread was served soon after our orders were placed. We were quite hungry that day and quickly finished the bread. We were happy that the bread was quickly replenished.

This is a picture of our half-eaten lasagna. We must have been really hungry that day and only realised that we had not taken a picture of it until we were halfway through it. This was our best dish of the day. The tomato gravy was perfectly favoured and there were lots of minced beef in the dish. They combined well to provide a tasty and hearty dish which we would surely order again.

Thank goodness for the lasagna as the remaining dishes were quite small. The lamb rack was a single stick of rib, although it should be said that the nob of meat stuck to this one rib was probably above average in size. The taste of the lamb was good – strong enough to be identifiable as lamb but without any offensive gamey overtones.

The baked cod was accompanied by a large mussel and some small clams. The shellfish were good – fresh and sweet but the fish was very salty. We provided this feedback and they offered to not charge for this dish. Excellent service recovery!