Antica Osteria

Crema di zucca

The Italian cuisine is probably the most popular in the whole world – I haven’t met anyone yet who didn’t like Italian food. Have you? If yes, tell me about it :-). For authentic Italian food in Surabaya, La Rucola is our favourite place but last weekend, we tried Antica Osteria and were surprised – in a good way.

Antica Osteria is located in the centre of Surabaya and we had quite a hard time to find it. Some rather annoying traffic rules (i.e. one-way streets) combined with Carlo’s not-really-good driving skills and our bad orientation made us go some extra rounds, so when we finally arrived there, we were already super hungry. The place itself is quite nice and it really reminded me of a European restaurant. There was Italian music in the background and a huge screen which displayed FashionTV. Some restaurants and bars I have been to in Italy also displayed FashionTV so this evoked some good old memories. So if you eat at Antica Osteria and are bored with your dinner date, you can just watch FashionTV.

One part of testing if the restaurant is really authentic is to look at their menu. A quick check of the Italian names of the dishes was positive – no spelling mistakes. They offer antipasti (50-145K), (homemade) pasta (from 60K), main dishes with meat or fish, pizza (55-95K) and dessert.  We had Crema di zucca (pumpkin soup) as starter, Duo gnocchi pesto & pomodoro and Cannelloni with beef, bechamel sauce & tomato as main dishes. The pumpkin soup was not really a soup but more like a cream (as the Italian name suggests). It was rather sweet and came with a sweet cookie. I was a bit disappointed because I thought it would be like my mum’s pumpkin soup which I really miss. But it still tasted good. Carlo had the Cannelloni, the taste could be compared to Lasagna, just the form of the pasta is different and lasagna has more tomato sauce. I was very tempted to try the pizza but in the end chose gnocchi because they are harder to find in other restaurants than pizza. Gnocchi are a special kind of pasta, they are made of potato dough. You can easily make them at home too (email me for the recipe or google J ). The gnocchi at Antica Osteria were a bit too soft in my opinion. They were served with two kinds of sauces: pesto Genovese (basil pesto) and tomato sauce. The pesto was average but the tomato sauce was heaven! It was super delicious! I still dream about it! Next time we will definitely try another dish with tomato sauce and pizza. The Foodgrapher called the pizza one of his favourite pizzas in Surabaya, so we are curious!

An interesting detail: Antica Osteria also serves black ink pasta which is one of the popular dishes at Domicile (read our review). We haven’t tried it at Antica Osteria but we think that the taste may be more authentic as compared to Domicile. Have you tried it yet?

What are your experiences with Antica Osteria? Let us know in the comments below and feel free to comment in Indonesian.

Conclusion: Antica Osteria is the number 2 most authentic Italian restaurant in Surabaya (after La Rucola).

Good to know: Homemade pasta. Vegetarian options available.

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Cannelloni

Duo gnocchi pesto & pomodoro

Details:

Antica Osteria

Jl. Sriwijaya 22, Surabaya

Tel: 031-77788866

Monday – Sunday: 12.00 – 24.00