Da Paolo Il Giardino (Cluny Court)

Da Paolo's weekdays set lunches are incredibly yummy and affordable. For $22 , you'll be able to get a starter, main (pasta), dessert of the day and coffee/tea. And of course, the bread basket and olive oil. For $30 , you can also get the fish of the day or the meat of the day. Meat of the day was tenderloin when I visited.

For starters, we had the Parma Ham with melon & salad, as well as the smoked salmon. There were 2 big pieces of parma ham and the melon was very very sweet. The serving of salmon was very generous, 2 slices of smoked salmon bigger than my hand dressed in olive oil and black pepper. The smoked salmon wasn't the over salty kind which leaves the throat feeling dry.

I had the Spaghetti with seafood and tomato sauce (can't remember exact name but it's the frutti one) - expect nothing less than al dente pasta, delicious fresh morsels of seafood (scallops mussels prawn and squid) in a chunky tomato sauce. Most other places would already charge you about $20 for a plate of spaghetti, but the Da Palo set lunch costs $22 only. Pretty worth it for me.

The meat of the day tenderloin, which was a juicy beef tenderloined seared to perfection.It was still pink and juicy but not too raw and bloody - perfect for a medium rare done-ness.

Chocolate brownie - the dessert was quite dissappointing - if the starters weren't so good I'd probably not recommend this lunch cos the brownies were very simple. Really nothing to shout about. It's a pity that they didn't give a nicer dessert because the starter and main were so good - I had high hopes for the dessert. There isn't any choice for dessert - it's just dessert of the day.

Overall, I'll recommend this place for lunch - it's cheaper than Au Petit Salute - but then you're getting less variety. I still prefer APS, but it's good for the $22 I paid.