Acqua e Farina: The beloved neighbourhood Italian restaurant at The Rail Mall, going strong after 20 years

Italian restaurants in Singapore are a bit of a tricky thing. Too fancy and they can feel inauthentic; too casual and the quality of the ingredients is compromised.

Acqua e Farina, which has its beginnings at The Rail Mall, is one restaurant that has hit the sweet spot for the last two decades, earning such a loyal following that they’ve not only managed to celebrate 20 years in the business, but also open a second outlet at Keong Saik Road last year.

Chef-owners Roberto Galbiati and Antonio Manetto were motivated to expand during the pandemic, when they noticed that many delivery orders were coming from the east side, as far away as Changi.

Many of their regulars are grown-up children of guests who used to live in the Rail Mall neighbourhood, where there was a tuition centre a few doors down from the restaurant. “Kids would come for a cake or a Coke, and their parents would come for dinner,” Galbiati, 55, recalled.

“They are still coming after 20 years. Some of those kids are now getting married. Some are overseas, but whenever they come back, they have to come to our restaurant.”

What’s the secret formula to having survived and thrived for 20 years in Singapore’s notoriously cutthroat restaurant industry?

It’s just “hard work”, the chefs shrugged. And, maybe, a little bit extra?

THE BEGINNING: GALBIATI

Acqua e Farina wasn’t always a full-fledged restaurant.

In 2004, Galbiati decided to open an Italian takeaway concept at outdoor complex The Rail Mall, and christened it with his own family name.

Born in Milan and trained in strict Italian kitchens, his butcher father encouraged him to open his own restaurant there, but the young Galbiati was more interested in travelling the world, so he took to the seas, working as a chef on cruise ships and yachts. While sailing around Asia, he met his Singaporean wife and they settled down here to raise their son.

While working at Da Paolo restaurant, he met Manetto, also a chef there, who would become his future business partner.

His dream, though, was to open something of his own in a shophouse. “When I came to Singapore, I saw the beautiful shophouses, and I was always thinking of them,” he said.  

When the time came to start his first solo venture, he chose The Rail Mall “because it was a little bit out of the way, so rental wasn’t that expensive.” Although it was a takeaway shop, “I always kept some little tables for people to dine in. Then, I noticed that people preferred that. So, I added an extra table; I removed one takeaway fridge; I added three more tables – until I realised that I had transformed my takeaway shop into a restaurant.”

Eight years ago, he decided it should morph into a different, full-fledged restaurant with higher quality ingredients and better service. “The mentality of a takeaway shop is ‘good and cheap’. We wanted to do something more premium,” he said.

He roped in Manetto, who had previously been running Bella Pasta and Bella Pizza at Robertson Quay, and the two transformed the establishment into Acqua e Farina, Italian for “water and flour”.

And, in 2024, his shophouse dream came true when Acqua e Farina opened its second outlet at Keong Saik Road.

UNFUSSY FINESSE

At Keong Saik Road, you'll find Manetto in both the kitchen and the dining room. While Galbiati is from the north of Italy, Manetto is from the south, near Naples. “We are like hot and cold – we complement each other,” Galbiati opined.

“Twelve years ago, for example, I was looking more for the best value for a mozzarella cheese. Antonio came and said, ‘No, you have to get the best, the original, from the specific Italian town.’”

Manetto insists on hunting down suppliers who can bring ingredients directly in from Italy, “because we believe in fresh products,” said the 51-year-old who is also married to a Singaporean.

And, “we cook in a traditional way.” When making pizza, for instance, “We rest the dough for 36 hours.”

“We are a little bit old-school,” Galbiati agreed.

Their combination of being from different parts of Italy – the north is mountainous, while the south is coastal – on top of living in Singapore for many years, has enabled them to create unique dishes you won’t find elsewhere.

Take, for example, a luscious uni and bottarga risotto (S$36), a plate of savoury, umami goodness. “Traditionally, uni is served with linguini, and it’s a dish from southern Italy. In the north, they use more rice. So, we came up with the idea of using rice instead of pasta,” Manetto said.

While the dish may buck tradition, the cooking methods adhere to it strictly. They use a special Italian rice, cooked for 20 minutes in a broth made with uni and uni shells. “I was happy to find this rice that not a lot of people use,” Galbiati said.
 
Then, there’s a cacao tagliatelle with prawn, mushroom and nduja (S$36): The handmade pasta combines fresh eggs and Italian flour with cocoa powder for a beautiful chocolate colour and a flavour that deepens that of the savoury nduja, a pork and pepper sausage from Calabria in southern Italy.

“My mother used to buy different kinds of pasta – cocoa, red wine, sage, saffron pasta. She just put butter and sage on it, and was super nice. I still remember how beautiful it was,” Galbiati shared.

So, “with two ingredients from the south and two ingredients from north comes this very popular pasta that is unique here in Keong Saik Road.”

While there are many unmissable things on the menu, like the deep-fried Montanara pizza (S$34) or the Tegamino, a starter of caramelised onions, guanciale and asparagus (S$32), it’s the tiramisu that has perhaps the most interesting story – the recipe is Galbiati’s own, adapted from the Savini restaurant in Milan, frequented by the rich and famous.

He was so taken with the tiramisu there that, obsessed, he begged the chef to sell him the recipe, wearing him down until he finally allowed Galbiati to work in the kitchen for free, where he would have the chance to learn the recipe through observation. In two weeks, Galbiati got what he came for, through methods such as counting the number of eggshells discarded in the trash.

That top-secret recipe may be sacrosanct, but other things are not. 

Asking for chilli padi to top your pasta with, for example, won’t get you yelled at in Italian here (in fact, there’s an off-menu, extra-spicy aglio olio that exists because of Manetto’s wife’s penchant for spice).

“There was a guest who asked for 10 chilli padi. You couldn’t even see the pasta any more,” Manetto chortled.

And, “We have a pasta with eggplant and ricotta, which some people like spicy. It’s not the original recipe. But, if the guests ask for it, why not?”

“If you want your meat well done, and you’re paying for it, of course I’ll do it,” Galbiati shrugged. “The customer is happy, and I’m even happier because you pay the bill, at the end of the day.”

And that just makes good business sense.

“They feel comfortable coming here because we always try to accommodate them,” Manetto said. “It’s a family concept, a trattoria, that’s casual and relaxing.”

Acqua e Farina is at 35A Keong Saik Road and 400 Upper Bukit Timah Road.