The Cicada

Wessex village, a tranquil and peaceful estate in the leafy Portsdown Road area is no stranger to the art scene in Singapore. Recently, with the entry of some new restaurants, it is slowly becoming the “It” place to be.

This will be good news for my fellow “west-erners” since LIC always lament the fact that the east side has more good food. With Holland Village, Chips Bee garden, Greenwood Avenue, Sunset way, Rochester Park, and now Wessex Village, who says there isn’t good places to chill in the West!

But this may not be music to the ears to some others, people who enjoyed the quaint environment and would rather preferred Wessex Village not to become the next Dempsey, over-rated and over-populated.

Have no fret about that, because currently in Wessex Village, there is only Pietrasanta an Italian restaurant, Laurent’s Cafe & Chocolate Bar, Klee a cocktail bar, and Colbar a very old-school coffee shop.

My friend and i explored the serene area, we checked out Pietrasanta but my friend wasn’t in the mood for Italian delights, but the place looks great and will definitely try it the next time round.

We decided on Cicada, an art centric casual restaurant lounge.

Nestled amid lush green vegetations, Wessex Village is a colonial style residential area surrounded by open space and trees to provide a soothing and relaxing ambience.

The building structure there are mostly colonial style, and this is the same for Cicada in a colonial type of bungalow building.

Al fresco area in Cicada is also spacious and roomy, which makes it a great place for friends to chill out under the the natural environment surrounded by greens, the village feel.

A large group of Caucasians chilling out, but don’t be quite mistaken by this scene. According to the manager Ronald, their main customers are actually locals and not Caucasians, and most of them are people from other area rather than the residents in Wessex estate.

Seafood Mango Salad ($13.90) Marinated seafood and honey balsamic dressing makes up the Seafood Mango Salad. The mango is sweet, and the prawn springy. The greens together with the sweet honey balsamic dressing opens up your taste bud for the meal.

Sauteed Organic Mushrooms ($5.90) Mushrooms are always a tricky dish, cook for too long and the mushroom becomes over-cooked, while finish it too early the mushroom will fail to absorb the essence of the other ingredients.

The Sauteed Organic mushrooms have a slight hint of white wine, wild herbs and tomato taste.

Smoothie Oreo ($12) The Oreo Smoothie isn’t good enough, the oreo bits are left too big to go through the straw, usually they will be crushed and mixed with milk. We gave the feedback and the manager Ronald told us the reason was due to fault in the blender that day.

However it is still quite unforgivable as this is a restaurant after all, and the least they can do is to notified us about the problem which unfortunately, they didn’t.

Butter Croissant toast with smoked salmon ($13.90) The butter croissant toast besides with the smoked salmon, comes with alternatives in ham, bacon or sausages. The greens in the toast complement the smoked salmon salty taste.

However, we lamented the fact that the croissant toast is not cripsy enough, the bread is too soft, and same for the green. We felt that it will be better if there is crunchier greens like cucumber added in, for a more complete taste.

The mayonnaise sauce also threatens to spoil the smoked salmon, fresh avocado sauce will perhaps be a better option to go along with the smoked salmon. The sandwich is an otherwise good and hearty dish, if Cicada can improve on the small issues.

Penne Pasta with seafood ($24.50) The most expensive pasta on the menu, no doubt so with the ocean prawn, scallops and calamari in spicy marinara sauce. Different type of pasta suits different type of base, tomato base spaghetti is the only choice to go with it. Well for a spicier version, the penne pasta works well.

The first savor of the Penne pasta with seafood is excellent, the spicy sauce together with the oceanic taste floods our taste bud. However, the dish seems to lack in something, because after a while we got a little sick of the dish as it starts to be overwhelming.

Cicada Club Sandwich ($15.90) The Cicada Club sandwich consists of bacon, lettuce, tomato, weisswurst sausage in focaccia bun. The bacon and sausage is decent, but again the use of mayo sauce here doesn’t quite complement the ingredients. Mayo will be better off when paired up with fried stuff.

Total Bill is $96.90 for the 2 of us. I think we sort of over-ordered given we had two appetizer, two sandwich, a pasta and a drink. The sandwich ranges in the tens, while pastas are in tens to twenty. The drink is definitely no go, while the sandwiches can really be better. And for once, i didn’t have any room for desserts.

I checked out the dinner menu as well, while lunch at Cicada is causal and simple food, dinner is more sophisticated with more selections of mains in the high twenty range. According to the manager, the atmosphere for dinner is more romantic and the area more closed up for more coziness.

We found the day-time area to be too ‘open’. Cicada should be going for the french open space concept, but this does not really encourage longer stay because the space is too bare and open. We believed that a more enclosed area, using different type of curtains can just do the trick.

All in all, Cicada promises a lot with its art-centric causal restaurant tag, but we ended up quite disappointed. Cicada certainly can be better, and hopefully the next time i dropped by Wessex, it will be a very different Cicada.

You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words. Food, my dear, is what they call an adventure!

” The next time, hopefully a very different Cicada “