Saporita (Makansutra Gluttons Bay)

This Italian food stall interestingly gained really good ratings on Google, so decided to try it when I’m here for shows at Esplanade.

Open in the late evening till night, they offer pasta, salad and fried dishes.

I got their carbonara which is one of their signature items. It is a spaghetti with crispy turkey bacon and creamy white sauce. Topped with poached egg and grated parmesan.

It tastes very creamy but not too overwhelming.

The standard is pretty good for a hawker stall, as I enjoyed the creamy carbonara with the egg yolk on the top that’s adds a creamy mouthfeel, and the generous meat. The truffle fries were freshly fried and crispy when served, with a good amount of parmesan cheese and some truffle, worth the price for the huge portion.

Enjoy affordable and scrumptious pizza and pasta that will satisfy your cravings at Saporita, located in Makansutra Glutton Bay! This 100% Muslim-owned Italian gem is your passport to authentic Italian flavours right in the heart of Singapore’s hawker center heritage.

Drawn by the numerous tiktoks/ig on this Cheesewheel Pasta, we dropped by Saporita on a sweltering, busy, Saturday night. The outdoor foodcourt was packed with tourists and we felt out of place being there. This was the first time I've eaten here!

Now, on the the pasta. Creamy and suitable cheesy, there was a hint of truffle from the scoop of Truffle Pate they finished off the dish with. Overall, tasted pretty normal and thought there could have been a more robust flavour other than just cream and cheese. Worth a try if you pass by when it's less busy.

Another one of @saporitasg signatures is their Steak Tagliata ($18 nett). A thick sirloin steak is seared to your preferred doneness and served on a bed of arugula & cherry tomatoes, and that’s all she wrote. When you really deep it, it’s essentially a steak salad. Simple as it may be, it’s suitably savoury. The steak is seasoned well and perfumed with rosemary, giving it ample aroma & ambrosia.⠀
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Unfortunately, the steak was quite tough. I certainly wasn’t expecting USDA Prime grade beef for eighteen bucks at a hawker centre, but I certainly didn’t expect the steak to be quite as tough as it was. There are many methods to tenderise a steak, and I wish Saporita had tried at least one of those methods.⠀
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However, according to our lengthy chat with one of the stakeholders in the stall, the Steak Tagliata might not be on the menu for much longer. Apparently, it takes a long time to cook & serve the way Saporita does it, so it might get the can. Despite its flaws, the Steak Tagliata is still decent enough to satisfy any red meat cravings.

@saporitasg claim to fame is their signature Truffle Cheese wheel Pasta ($15 nett), and you’ve probably seen at least one article or tiktok about this pasta. A whole Grana Padano cheese wheel is imported all the way from Italy and hollowed out so the the pasta can be twirled around within to acquire extra cheesiness. After a quick spin in the colossal cheese wheel, the heap of pasta is drizzled with fragrant truffle oil.⠀
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Of course, there’s more to this pasta than it just being twirled in the cheese wheel & being lashed with truffle oil. The al dente fettuccine is tossed in a béchamel sauce before getting that iconic toss in the cheese wheel, and then the pasta gets returned to the frypan to let the béchamel, Grana Padano & fettuccine unite properly. As you might expect, it’s an incredibly cheesy & creamy experience, capped off by the charming chew of the fettuccine.⠀
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Unfortunately, there was one thing conspicuously absent from the pasta. Yup, there was absolutely no truffle scent. Despite @visualindulgence being very sure that he ordered the truffle one instead of the Fettucine Cheese-wheel ($14), we neither smelt nor tasted any truffle. Despite the missing truffle aroma, the Truffle Cheese-wheel Pasta was plenty palatable, and it’s definitely worth sampling.