I went to PasarBella yesterday with a couple of friends and it took me almost 24 hours to recover from the food coma that resulted from that brunch. That was how much we ate. “Pasar” means “market” in Malay and essentially, this is what PasarBella is, a huge market place where you can find fresh produce, food and other things. It is similar to many of our local markets but with a more European feel. At this point, I need to mention that unlike our local markets, this place has fantastic ventilation, there are pretty much no smells in the air, good or bad, which is pretty strange to me. This is particularly apparent when you walk out of PasarBella into the food section of The Grandstand, which is where PasarBella is located, and you are hit with all the scents coming out of all the other restaurants.

Before taking the trip down to PasarBella, I read a few blog posts that talked about it and everyone raved about the seafood paella from Le Patio and that was on top of my list. When we got there at 11am, the huge pan of paella was just starting to bubble away…

…and by 11.45am, a queue of people waiting to taste this gorgeous pan of paella had formed.

It was gorgeous. The rich flavours permeated the rice and every mouthful was so good. It was a little dry, but the flavours more than made up for it. Each portion (S$13.50) is good-sized and comes with three mussels, a prawn, and a wedge of lemon. Also, I love the wooden utensils that they use 🙂 The paella was probably the highlight for me.

There were plenty of pork on offer – Iberico ham, roast pork belly, roast piglets and so forth. We definitely couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have us some pork! We got some amazing roast pork belly from this tiny little stall at a corner of PasarBella that we didn’t even catch the name of. It’s a small stall that only sells roast pork belly, trust me, try it. A half portion costs S$8 and it has some amazing crackling, every time one of us bit into the cracking, my heart skipped a beat. It is served with a watery mustard that really kicks a punch (and I do really like my food spicy). You can also choose to add some chili padi, otherwise known as bird’s eye chilli. I think the spiciness of the mustard and the chili really kicks the pork belly up a notch.

Then there was the stall located next to Le Patio that sells Iberico ham and other porky delicacies, like whole roasted piglet. We didn’t get to try the ham, but we did buy almost 400 grams of roast piglet (S$8/100g). The roast pork was ok, the meat was incredibly tender, but it tasted very porky with not much seasoning.

At the same stall, they also sell baked goods and they have some amazing macarons (S$10 for 6). There are six flavours, coffee, chocolate, strawberry, lemon, vanilla and pistachios. I adored these. They weren’t too sweet and tasted just fantastic.  Second favourite of the day!

Da Paolo Gastronomia was selling Crodos (their version of cronuts), so naturally we had to try it. From Gastronomia, we also got this huge ass chocolate scone and a cottage pie.

I like the Crodo, but to me, it’s a chocolate croissant. What am I missing here??? I would probably give the scone a miss the next time, too dry and nothing I find special. I really liked the cottage pie though, best part being the mashed potatoes.

From Huber’s Deli we tried the veal sausage hotdog topped with caramelised onions (S$7.50), which was a bit of disappointment. The onions overpowered the sausage and it just didn’t gel. That said, I would go back to try either the curry wurst and the chicken cheese hotdog.

We did walk around PasarBella a bit, but after the ginormous brunch, there was nothing I wanted to do more than curl up somewhere and cradle my food baby. I do, however, foresee myself spending many more hours, and much more money, at PasarBella in the future. Anyway, here’s me leaving you with a couple of other pictures I took.