While waiting outside for Valerie to arrive at Ciao Italia, a customer asked us “Why do Asians like to dine at Ciao Italia?”. We answered, “If a place offered good food, that’s where you will find asians because we, asians love our food.” As a local institution for Italian fanfare, Ciao Italia has been very popular not only among us university students, but to locals living around the area too. The space at Ciao Italia may be confined, as tables and chairs are very close to each other, but this creates an atmosphere of a classic Italian restaurant in Italy. Did I forget to mention that the waitstaff are mostly Italians too?

We started off with the Open Calzone Pizza ($29.50). Here is Siti’s review of the Calzone Pizza: The Calzone pizza is a must try! Personally, I like the opened style Calzone to the traditional folded style. This thin crust pizza that is topped with fresh sliced juicy tomatoes, lovely mushrooms, tasty chicken slices and yummy cheese is to die for. The pizza is baked to perfection and seriously finger licking good (sorry KFC). And why is it yummy again? when i said it’s baked to perfection, it means that the pizza crust is light and crisp, not even too hard or chewy on the sides. The ingredients are well cooked, leaving the mushrooms, chicken slices and tomatoes still juicy and tender. So the next time you go to Ciao’s, be sure to get your hands on the mouthwatering, opened style, Calzone pizza!

Calzone Pizza

Here’s the Spaghetti Marinara ($33.50) – a combination of marinated seafood in fresh tomato sauce. The Spaghetti was cooked perfectly to al dente and firm in texture. The fresh and succulent seafood compliments the tomato based sauce well, giving it a hint of saltiness from the seafood and the sauce. Overall, the spaghetti marinara was very generous in portion, delicious and flavoursome. A great choice if you love seafood with your pasta!

Spaghetti Marinara

Here is Valerie’s review of the Squid Ink Fettuccine: The squid ink fettuccine with tomato base sauce was tasty. The light tomato sauce gave a sweet and sour taste to the spaghetti, making it irresistibly good! The prawns that went with this dish was fresh and juicy. There were two choices of sauce for the squid ink spaghetti, one was the tomato and the other was the cream sauce. I tried the cream sauce on my previous visit and personally preferred the tomato sauced squid ink spaghetti. The cream sauce was too thick and creamy which made the whole dish really filling whilst the tomato sauce was light and good. I would definitely go for the tomato sauced squid ink spaghetti again on my next visit!

Squid Ink Fettucine

Here is Chloe’s review of the Fettucine Ciao Italia ($29.50) – Fettucine Ciao Italia is one of our must-haves whenever we go to Ciao Italia. The creamy sauce is not too thick and not too runny, it’s done just nice, without leaving you feeling too full. It is also extremely flavourful and with the combination of chicken and tomatoes, it’s simply one of my favourite pasta dishes at Ciao Italia.

Fettucine Ciao Italia

The reason why we shared most of the dishes was that the portions at Ciao Italia are very generous. To complement a great catch up session filled with laughter and happiness, a hearty and generous meal is always a must.

A few handy hints: Expect long queues at Ciao Italia especially on the weekends because they don’t accept bookings. Make sure your whole party arrives on time because they won’t offer you a table if everyone is not present.

Mel’s Rating : mmm (good)