THINK of festive Christmas feasting and turkey comes to mind? Italian chefs such as Michele Pavanello would say 'bor-ing' and hasten to remind you that turkey is the American and British tradition, while castrated chicken - or, capon, for a more exotic-sounding name - is the Italian equivalent.

So, he's offering a variation of chicken in his festive set lunch menu from this week onwards, until the end of the year. Along with premium ingredients like Atlantic cod and slipper lobster, made festive with chestnut and cheese pairings.

Three-course set lunches are going for $48+++ per person, with a selection of three choices each in the antipasti, secondi piatti and dolci sections. Chef Michele's specials for the season bring to mind the homely comforts of the Italian kitchen, but in a refined way, with surprising bursts of flavour that pique your inner chef's interest.

Take the porcini mushroom and gorgonzola cheese 'parcel' for instance, a rich, palate-warming blend of mushroom and mild blue cheese-like gorgonzola wrapped up with crispy filo pastry, and served with a spoonful of walnut pesto on the side. This is a dish that conjures up the Italian countryside in all of its earthy, nutty flavours.

If the jovial chef's food was more robust and full-flavoured in the past, his treatment now is a lot more subtle. Thanks also to the newfangled gadgets that he has discovered, such as an air dryer for food.

The slipper lobster and crispy celery salad, for example, had small orange flakes sprinkled over it, which you didn't think much of until you tasted the bursts of fruity sweetness in forkfuls of the shredded lobster. The flakes turned out to be air-dried melon.

The same for the similarly lightly-creamed mafaldine pasta dish, which had an incredibly fresh tartness to it, but we couldn't find any tomatoes even when we riffled through the thin, handmade pasta with diced prawn and asparagus ragout. It was the tomato powder sprinkled over the pasta that gave off this intense, fresh flavour, chef Michele explained, made from air-dried fresh tomato. The thing about air-drying ingredients is that the inherent flavours are preserved and intensified.

The pasta dish was quite unique, given the tarragon-scented handmade mafaldine pasta which is a thinner version of papardelle, so it's more al dente to the bite and could be better-enveloped by the cream sauce. It's part of Pontini's Christmas Eve dinner set (five courses for $118++), however, not its daily festive set lunch.

For the daily festive lunch set, it's meats like chestnut-filled chicken roll with truffle and taleggio cheese fondue, and a pan-roasted Atlantic cod with Barolo wine-braised artichoke slices. The sumptuous chicken roll was our preferred choice of the two, given its moist chicken wrapped with chestnut and enriched with a 'gravy' of milky taleggio cheese.

Desserts are light, such as the strawberry parfait with chocolate and a few strokes of balsamic vinegar on the side. If turkey's not your thing, or you've had just a few slices too many for the season, then check out the (tastier) alternative at Pontini's, which is a contemporary take on traditional Italian offerings.

Pontini
Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel
392 Havelock Road
Tel: 6733-0880
Rating: 8/10

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