" Good But Underwhelming "

Value for money		Suitable for...
The food		.. a date
The service		.. business dinner
The decor		.. with friends

Normally not excited by Italian foods, we visited Casanova hoping to be impressed especially with their famous pizza.

In general, we enjoyed the freshness and the clean taste of the dishes but were not wowed by the food. The carpaccio appetizer was far above the other dishes we ordered, so good we would of happily eat another 5 plates and forget the rest. The mixed organic and arugula salad was nicely done but unremarkable. Same with the ginocci which we had high hopes for. In fact, we found it to be a very boring dish. Finally, the ‘divola’ pizza was nicely done with a very crispy crust. However, whether it’s as amazing as people claims it to be, am not sure but that could be the fact that I grew up eating other types of pizza. For deserts, the crispy basket was ok while the sicillian cornets tasted beyond what we had imagined, in a good way.

Food aside, Casanova’s interior is warm and inviting. The service is good but a little too enthusiastic at times.

Casanova was a welcome change to the other cuisines we normally go for. The quality and freshness of the ingredients were the stand out points but we still left feeling underwhelmed by the food. That’s not to say Casanova is not good or authentic as the high number of Italians eating at the restaurant is testament to this.

" Scrumptious Pasta! "

Value for money		Suitable for...
The food		.. a date
The service		.. business dinner
The decor		.. with friends

One of those Shanghai paradoxes is why Italian restaurants serve mundane dried pasta when the heavenly fresh variety should be easily doable here. You can get fresh noodles in any Shanghai market for a few mao, and presumably training staff to create Italian noodles the same way shouldn't be too difficult. Casanova does - serve fresh pasta - and it is amazing.
I had their tagliatelle dish, with scallops, artichokes, mint and nice, crunchy pine nuts, and it was absolute heaven. The texture of freshly made pasta - ooh la la. Silken! My date had the ravioli (ravioli with an aprodisical stuffing of lobster and prawns) which was downright decadent.
It's a very romantic restaurant, Casanova - there are three rooms, which makes it feel intimate - and a very Euro sensibility. Could be the guests chattering loudly in Italian, or the maitresse's charming Italian-accented English. The only place where it fell down on our evening there was with dessert - they were all pretty standard (tira misu, panna cotta) and just didn't dazzle the way the rest of the meal did.