Altro Zafferano

Fresh pasta above Collyer Quay

The pasta is made fresh for the day’s service while Andrea de Paola, Chef at Altro Zafferano in Singapore, keeps the Italian line taut between comfort and control. His earlier Singapore kitchens gave him a progression through il-Lido group of restaurants, Osteria Art, Braci and Zafferano Restaurant, each post adding pressure at the pass before this rooftop room took its present shape. The lineage matters because it is not ornamental. De Paola’s cooking has moved through chef, Head Chef, Co-Head Chef and Head Chef roles, a sequence built on timing, repetition and the discipline of sending familiar Italian forms without letting them go slack. At Altro Zafferano, that means pasta, premium beef, fresh seafood and a pork tomahawk held inside a modern Italian frame. The restaurant opened in 2012, and the kitchen still works with the proposition that Italian hospitality can sit high above the financial district without losing the handwork of the bench.

A modern Italian program with a measured hand

The menu gives the kitchen two tempos: à la carte for the room, set menu for a more composed pass. Freshly made pasta anchors the work, with appetizers, pasta, main courses and desserts arranged in the familiar Italian order rather than forced into novelty. Roasted Mediterranean Vegetable Caponata and Cold Tomatoes Soup show the Southern Italian pull in the cooking, while the larger courses move toward premium beef and fresh seafood. De Paola’s wider kitchen language, visible in dishes such as Tuna Chutoro Carpaccio, Beef Brisket Cannelloncino and Veire Irish Wagyu Chateaubriand, favors contrast over decoration. At Altro Zafferano, that discipline sits beside a curated wine program and cocktails, with the restaurant holding a Wine Spectator tier 2 award. The point is not abundance for its own sake. It is pace, temperature, seasoning and the sequence in which the guest meets the table.

The room on the 43rd floor

The room sits on the 43rd floor of Ocean Financial Centre, with Marina Bay and the CBD held in the glass around it. Service keeps the room relaxed rather than hushed; conversation can stay at the table while the pass does its work. The counter and dining room carry the modern rooftop character of the place, but the kitchen’s craft stays closer to the bench than to the view. An alfresco terrace lounge and rooftop bar extend the evening outward, especially when the light moves across the bay, yet the restaurant’s strongest register remains the movement between pasta, seafood, beef and wine. It is a large room, but it does not need to behave like one.

The other Zafferano, kept distinct

Altro means the other in Italian, and the name gives the restaurant its working position: connected to the Zafferano line, but not simply a repetition of it. That distinction matters in a city where dining rooms often borrow memory from their predecessors. Here, the craft has to earn its own rhythm above Collyer Quay. De Paola’s task is to keep the modern brief legible without sanding down the Italian roots; the dish that can carry that argument on any given service may be as direct as freshly made pasta at Altro Zafferano.