Mid week is a good time to detox after all the glorious meals from the weekends and happy treats from your Monday Blues. Salad bowls or healthy bowls are becoming increasing popular with more outlets selling them for meals
At the basement of Raffles City, Da Paolo has an outlet selling healthy meals, pizza and sweet desserts.
The cafe is open concept with huge tables for sharing as well as individual table for groups. There is not much privacy dining here since shoppers all around can see the cafe in full view.
The healthy bowl basic selection allows you to choose a grain and base made up of mostly multigrains, quinoa, salad or buckwheat soba. You can then choose 2 vegetable and legumes from a selection of broccoli, pumpkin, mushrooms and more. Next you get to choose 1 from chicken thigh, salmon, dory and more with some selection requiring a top up. Lastly you get your selection of sauce like the cucumber and mint yoghurt which is extremely interesting. Some sauces require a top up as well. There is also a plus option where you can pick more protein.
For SGD 13.90, the serving for the basic set is neither large nor small. It was just about filling for me as dinner as I had a soup as well. If I only had this, I would probably still be hungry. The ingredients were quite fresh with some of their proteins heavily seasoned.
My friend’s serving was somewhat smaller and the sauce given was quite pathetic for the additional cash she had to top up.
There was an option to top up SGD5 to make the bowl a meal with soup of the day and a bottle of juice, still or sparling water. The vegetable soup was very bland and watery and quite disappointing from Da Paolo.
Known for desserts, we bought an additional berry crumble but it was quite a letdown with the crumble slightly soggy.
My verdict is that I will not visit for meals again as the bowls are pricey and not of exceptional quality. There are many others with better food quality. Perhaps they should stick with Italian food which is their expertise.
Address: 252 North Bridge Rd, #B1-45 Raffles City Shopping Centre, Singapore 179103
Operating hours: 8am to 10 pm
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