Cuisine: Greek, Italian and Spanish
Address: 2 Greenwood Avenue Singapore (289189)
Nearest MRT: Tan Kah Kee (Downtown Line)

Back to the Mediterranean ROOTS! This is a new restaurant concept with a great selection of Spanish, Greek and Italian dishes. Located in Bukit Timah area, ROOTS offers a cozy and laid-back ambience with a nice alfresco area where to have a drink with a tapas or a full dinner with friends or family. The interior of the restaurant was spacious and beautiful vintage wines adorned the shelves.

A steady crowd of expats could be seen steadily filling up the restaurant’s expansive premises, till it was practically full house when we visited on a Sunday evening. Reservation is recommended so that you can guarantee a table.

For an aperitif, I ordered a Greek beer. I thought it would be served in a mug but it came in a table. It would have been clearer if they stated the volume of the beer or it is is fresh / bottled beer on the menu. There are also other beers, such as Spanish Estrella and Italian Peroni, both of which I had tried before.

Roots Mediterranean’s appetisers has a wide range from bite-sized goodies to sharing plates. For starters, we ordered the hummus with focaccia. For those not familiar with hummus, it is one of the iconic Middle Eastern dips, made with mashed chick peas and sesame, lemon and evo. With the freshly baked focaccia Italian flat bread, the dip was soon gone.

With the appetizer done, our next dish is this 1 metre long pizza ($50). As the menu cheekily stated, this fulfils the safe distancing measures currently implemented. The pizza dough was made over 36 hours and prepared with 50% whole wheat flour, making it extremely light and digestible. We could choose to mix and match 4 different flavours for our pizza, so we had truffle and burrata, burrata and parma, crab meat and Salsiccia which is salami slices.

The other appetizer that we ordered was the Spanako Tiropita ($10), which arrived after the pizza. This is a Greek dish, made from crispy phyllo dough pie with spinach and feta cheese. It was difficult to cut this pastry for sharing because of the flaky crust. The filling was not too salty and the creamy texture of the cheese coated the spinach wonderfully.

Our second main course took some time to prepare. We chatted and tried to finish the pizza before the next dish came. However, the metre long pizza was really a lot, so we asked the staff to pack it for us in a takeaway box, which would become my breakfast the following day. The Paidakia ($35) was finally served to our table. It is a Greek style grilled lamb chop, marinated with oregano, garlic and lemon. It was really good, because there was no gamey taste that my mum would be very particular of. With some grilled vegetables and the tzatziki sauce on the side, the 3 slices of lamb chops were split among the 5 of us and quickly disappeared off the plate.

Last but not least, it was time for desserts. Even though I specified that I was celebrating my birthday at the restaurant when making the reservation, I suppose the stuff had forgotten about the side notes. I did not bother asking them about a slice of cake. Anyway we ordered a tiramisu and a panna cotta, both of which are Italian desserts. Surprisingly, there was no Greek representation of a dessert on the menu. The Spanish one was churros served with chocolate and cream.

The tiramisu ($10) was light and creamy. There was quite a lot of coffee liqueur and it does not seem as firm as I imagined. However, we were satisfied with the taste of the tiramisu. It was up to expectations.

As for the panna cotta ($10), it was new on the menu and we decided to give it a try. When I saw that it was served in a glass bottle, I was slightly disappointed. I knew that the taste would not be as great, because the authentic panna cotta would be served wobbly on a plate. This one had too much gelatin and less of the cream, so it was harder. There was chocolate sauce served on the side, but it was optional for me. The vanilla taste in the panna cotta was strong enough so it did not need to be paired with chocolate sauce.

Most people who visit Roots Mediterranean would go there by private car because it is quite inaccessible. If you take public transport, you would have to walk in for quite a long distance. The area is happening at night and on weekends due to the high number of expats or landed property residents, who bring their dogs along and they dine outside. I was satisfied to be transported to Greece, Italy and Spain for one night. We did not order wine on that day because not everybody wanted. I would like to try out some of the wines the next time. The prices of the wine bottles used to be priced more reasonably when they first started out, from $29 onwards per bottle, but the updated menu has wines starting from $59.