Fairmont Singapore · Raffles City
A Comprehensive Dining Review
Est. 1986 · Italian Cuisine · February 2026
Opening: Four Decades and Still Standing
There is a certain gravity that settles over a restaurant when it has outlasted the careers of most of the chefs who have worked in it. Prego, ensconced within the Fairmont Singapore at Raffles City Shopping Centre, opened its doors in 1986 — a year before the Singapore Mass Rapid Transit made its inaugural run, a time when the city-state was still busy shedding its kampong skin. Four decades on, Prego continues to serve. That, in a dining landscape where flash-in-the-pan concepts routinely colonise shopfronts only to vanish within eighteen months, is no modest achievement.
This review does not attempt hagiography. Longevity is not synonymous with excellence, and a restaurant that has merely coasted on institutional memory deserves no special dispensation. What a recent weekday dinner visit revealed, however, was a kitchen operating with genuine craft, a service floor that understands the mechanics of hospitality, and a room that has been thoughtfully reimagined to accommodate contemporary sensibilities without jettisoning the warmth that presumably kept diners returning across the years.
What follows is an attempt to render that evening — its flavours, textures, spatial qualities, and underlying culinary philosophy — with the rigour and precision the experience merits.
Ambience & Interior Design
First Impressions: The Threshold
The transition from the commercial corridor of Raffles City into Prego is, quite deliberately, theatrical. The ambient noise of the shopping centre — the faint percussion of retail footfall, the ventilation hum — is replaced almost immediately by a low, warm murmur of conversation, the gentle clink of glassware, and a carefully curated Italian soundtrack that hovers at precisely the right volume: audible enough to fill silences, restrained enough never to compete with the table. The threshold itself signals intent.
The Curved Bar: Architectural Centrepiece
The eye is drawn first to the bar, a sweeping curved structure that dominates the room’s core with quiet authority. Its vertical dark-wood ribbing creates a rhythmic pattern reminiscent of mid-century Italian joinery — one imagines the design ateliers of 1960s Milan — while the glowing stone countertop diffuses light upward in a manner that is simultaneously functional and atmospheric. The bar is not mere furniture; it is the room’s spine, the point from which all sightlines radiate and around which the dining floor organises itself.
The teal-green herringbone-tiled pillar that rises nearby provides a chromatic counterpoint. Against the warm timber and amber glow of the bar, the cool mineral teal reads as a deliberate compositional choice — the kind of detail that signals a designer who understands colour theory rather than simply trend-following. The herringbone pattern itself, a motif with deep roots in Italian craft traditions (one finds it in the floors of Venetian palazzi, in the upholstery of Milanese furniture), feels entirely appropriate to the context.
The Fiat 500: Whimsy as Narrative Device
A pale blue Fiat 500, mounted as a decorative feature with a red leather suitcase strapped to its boot, occupies one corner with the cheerful insouciance of a prop from a Fellini film. One’s initial instinct might be to dismiss this as kitschy Italianate shorthand — the visual equivalent of a checkered tablecloth. On reflection, it earns its place. The Cinquecento is not merely an automobile; it is a cultural artefact, a postwar icon that symbolised Italian democratic aspiration, the idea that beauty and joy in design need not be the exclusive province of the wealthy. Displayed here with affection and a certain self-awareness, it functions as a sincere statement of identity rather than a cynical appeal to nostalgia.
Materiality and Palette
The broader material palette — rich burgundy leather banquettes, exposed brick walls dressed with retro Italian posters in vivid graphic colours, warm overhead lighting that falls at precisely the angle required to flatter both food and face — creates what interior designers sometimes call a ‘tactile richness.’ There is nothing spare about Prego’s aesthetic, yet it avoids the trap of clutter. Every surface has been considered. The brick reads as authentically aged rather than artificially distressed. The posters, reproductions of mid-century graphic design from Italian resorts and airlines, provide focal points that reward close inspection.
The overall effect is one of sophisticated warmth: a room that feels simultaneously dressed for occasion and entirely comfortable for a long, unhurried meal. It is the kind of interior that improves over the course of an evening, as the lighting shifts almost imperceptibly with the hour and the room fills to its natural density of conversation.
Acoustics and Atmosphere
A word on acoustics, often overlooked in restaurant criticism to the detriment of the diner. Prego manages the acoustic environment with some competence. The room, despite its animated Friday energy, never approaches the painful decibel levels that characterise so many contemporary ‘buzzy’ dining rooms, where conversation requires a form of competitive shouting that exhausts both speaker and listener. One could conduct a business discussion in a normal register. One could, equally, conduct the kind of intimate dinner conversation that requires confidentiality. This is a rarer achievement than it might appear.
The Meal: Course by Course
The Bread Service: Unsung Opening Act
Complimentary bread service is an undervalued diagnostic tool. A kitchen that dispatches stale rolls with indifferent accompaniments is signalling, however unconsciously, something about its fundamental standards of care. Prego’s bread service — warm, pillowy rolls served with a small pool of good olive oil and a measure of aged balsamic vinegar — communicates the opposite. The rolls arrive genuinely warm, their interiors soft and yielding, their crusts with just sufficient resistance to satisfying the hand before the mouth. The balsamic, with its characteristic syrupy density and complex sweet-acid balance, is of evident quality. This is not the kind of detail one notices until it is absent.
Calamari Fritti · $30
The Dish
Crispy deep-fried squid rings, presented in a metal basket with a simple dressed salad and a lemon wedge. The presentation is unfussy — intentionally so. The dish is designed to be eaten with the hands or with casual intent, and the metal basket signals exactly that register of informal pleasure.
Texture & Flavour Analysis
The critical question with calamari fritti is always the batter-to-squid ratio and the condition of the squid within. Many renditions sacrifice the cephalopod itself — reducing it to a vehicle for batter — or err in the opposite direction, allowing the squid to steam within a coating that softens before it reaches the table. Prego’s version achieves the necessary equilibrium. The exterior crust is dry, brittle, and shatters cleanly on first bite. The squid within is tender — cooked precisely to that brief window between raw and rubbery that requires both quality sourcing and attentive timing. A squeeze of lemon performs its usual clarifying function, cutting through the fat of the frying oil and brightening the flavour profile.
Approximate Recipe & Method
To replicate this dish at home, one requires fresh squid (frozen will yield inferior texture), cleaned and sliced into rings approximately 1cm in width. The rings are patted thoroughly dry — moisture is the enemy of crisp batter — before being dusted in seasoned flour (fine semolina mixed with plain flour in a ratio of 1:2, seasoned with salt, white pepper, and a touch of cayenne). A brief rest in the flour allows it to adhere. The rings are then shaken to remove excess coating and fried in clean, neutral oil at 180°C for approximately 90 seconds — no more. The oil temperature is non-negotiable; too low and the batter absorbs fat, too high and the exterior burns before the squid cooks. Season immediately upon removal from the oil.
Polpo e Fagioli · $38
The Dish
Charred octopus over a Tuscan cannellini bean stew. This is a dish with deep roots in the cucina povera tradition of central Italy, where the combination of legume and cephalopod represents a form of culinary intelligence: the beans provide starchy ballast and absorb the cooking liquor of the octopus, while the octopus lends the beans an oceanic depth they could not achieve independently.
Texture & Flavour Analysis
The octopus leg at Prego is first braised — a process that takes several hours and is responsible for the transformation of what is essentially muscle tissue into something yielding and gelatinous — before being finished on a hot grill or plancha to achieve the charred exterior that provides textural contrast and smoky flavour complexity. The result is a study in deliberate opposition: the outer surface presents as firm, slightly resistant, carrying char notes with a clean bitterness; the interior yields immediately, tender and almost creamy, releasing a concentrated oceanic sweetness.
The cannellini beans beneath form a stew of genuine depth. One detects the aromatics of the soffritto (onion, celery, carrot), the richness of what is likely a good fish or chicken stock, and the subtle presence of sage or rosemary — herbs traditional to Tuscan bean preparations. The texture of the beans is important: fully cooked but intact, neither chalky at the centre nor collapsed into uniform paste. The cumulative effect of the combination is one of those instinctively satisfying harmonies that Italians describe, with characteristic economy, as ‘buono’ — simply good.
Approximate Recipe & Method
For the octopus: a whole octopus (approximately 1.5kg) is placed in a covered pot with aromatics (bay leaf, peppercorns, a halved lemon, a cork — traditionally said to tenderise, though the science remains contested) and simmered, never boiled, for 45 to 90 minutes depending on size, until a skewer passes through the thickest part of the tentacle with no resistance. The octopus is cooled in its cooking liquid, then refrigerated, ideally overnight. For the char: individual tentacles are dressed with olive oil and grilled over very high heat for 2-3 minutes per side. For the beans: dried cannellini soaked overnight, simmered with a soffritto, whole garlic cloves, a sprig of rosemary, and good stock until tender, then finished with extra-virgin olive oil and seasoning.
Guancia (Beef Cheek) · $52
The Dish
Red wine-braised beef cheek, served with silky mashed potatoes and garnished with crispy potato chips. This was, without qualification, the most accomplished dish of the evening.
Why Beef Cheek?
The cheek muscle is among the most worked muscles in a bovine’s body — the animal spends its life chewing — and this constant activity produces a density of collagen that makes the cut entirely unsuitable for quick-cooking methods. Subject it to the prolonged moist heat of a braise, however, and that very collagen transforms: it dissolves into gelatin, enriching both the texture of the meat itself (which becomes almost silkily unctuous) and the braising liquid (which thickens to a glossy, clingy, deeply flavoured sauce). The result is a cut that rewards patience in a way that more expensive, supposedly premium, cuts cannot.
Texture & Flavour Analysis
Prego’s guancia arrives as a substantial portion, lacquered in its reduced braising liquid to a deep mahogany that suggests — correctly — hours of slow cooking. The meat yields to the gentlest pressure of a fork, separating into long, fibrous strands that are nevertheless bound together by their own gelatin. The flavour is profoundly savoury, with the structural complexity of a long braise: the tannins and fruit of the red wine (one infers Barolo or a robust Sicilian), the depth of the beef stock, the sweetness of caramelised onion and tomato. The mashed potatoes — fine, pale, visibly enriched with butter and possibly cream — provide both a textural foil (soft against soft, but the potato carries an airy lightness the meat does not) and a vehicle for the excess sauce, which one discovers it would be unthinkable to leave on the plate.
The crispy chips on top introduce a third textural register — light, brittle, neutral — that prevents the dish from becoming monotonous in its softness. This is precise, considered cookery.
Approximate Recipe & Method
Season beef cheeks generously with salt and pepper. Sear in a heavy-based pot (cast iron is ideal) in neutral oil over high heat until deeply browned on all surfaces — this Maillard reaction is not optional; it provides the flavour foundation for everything that follows. Remove and set aside. In the same pot, cook a mirepoix of diced onion, carrot, and celery until softened and lightly coloured. Add tomato paste and cook until it darkens and smells sweet. Deglaze with a full bottle of robust red wine, scraping up all browned bits, and reduce by half. Add beef or veal stock to cover, return the cheeks, add a bouquet garni of bay, thyme, and rosemary, and braise in a 150°C oven, covered, for 3 to 4 hours until completely yielding. Remove cheeks; strain and reduce the braising liquid over high heat until it coats the back of a spoon. Return cheeks to the sauce and rest. Serve with pomme purée: equal weights of potato and butter is the Robuchon standard; a more restrained hand yields a fine result at 200g butter per 1kg potato, passed through a fine sieve.
Tagliata di Manzo, Porcini e Tartufo (Wagyu Striploin) · $98
The Dish
Grilled Wagyu striploin, sliced tableside and served with seasonal Italian truffle and caramelised red onions. At $98, this is the evening’s most significant financial commitment, and one that requires some examination.
Wagyu: A Clarification
‘Wagyu’ has become a somewhat elastic marketing term in Singapore’s restaurant landscape, applied to cuts of varying grades and provenance with variable justification. Prego’s version reads as an Australian Wagyu — the intramuscular fat distribution (marbling) is visible but not at the hyper-marbled extreme of Japanese A5, suggesting a mid-grade product that prioritises flavour balance over sheer fat content. This is, for the purposes of a grilled preparation, arguably the correct choice: extremely high marbling can render a grilled cut cloying if not carefully handled.
Texture & Flavour Analysis
The striploin is grilled to a medium-rare that reveals a rosy interior when sliced, the fat channels having rendered sufficiently to baste the surrounding muscle from within. The texture carries the particular yielding quality of Wagyu — less fibrous resistance than standard beef, a quality sometimes described as ‘buttery’ — while retaining sufficient chew to be satisfying rather than merely soft. The truffle, shaved generously across the sliced meat, delivers its characteristic earthy, musky complexity. The caramelised red onions provide a gentle sweetness that grounds the more assertive flavours and prevents the dish from tipping into excess richness.
Whether the dish justifies its price point depends somewhat on expectation. Against the global benchmark for truffle-enhanced Wagyu, it represents fair value. Against the other dishes on the menu, it is the most expensive by some margin and, while accomplished, does not achieve the same transcendent quality as the guancia, which costs $46 less.
Approximate Method
For Wagyu striploin: bring to room temperature for at least 30 minutes before cooking. Season only with flaked sea salt — the beef itself provides sufficient flavour that pepper can be an intrusion. Grill over the highest possible heat for 2-3 minutes per side for medium-rare, depending on thickness. Rest for at least half the cooking time before slicing against the grain. The truffle should be freshly shaved using a mandoline directly over the warm sliced beef, allowing the heat to release the volatile aromatic compounds. Caramelised onions: thinly sliced red onion cooked in butter over very low heat for 40-60 minutes with a small amount of sugar and red wine vinegar, until jammy and sweet.
Pollo alla Diavola · $48 (half)
The Dish
Chilli-marinated spring chicken, spatchcocked (backbone removed, bird flattened), and grilled, served with Pommery mustard sauce. The name — ‘chicken in the style of the devil’ — refers to the aggressive heat of the chilli marinade and the fearsome high-heat cooking required.
Texture & Flavour Analysis
Spatchcocking is a technique that solves one of the fundamental problems of roasting or grilling whole poultry: the disparity in cooking time between breast meat (which overcooks to dryness at the same heat required to properly cook the thigh). With the bird flattened, heat penetrates evenly, and the entire surface is simultaneously exposed to the heat source. Prego’s version achieves the ideal: charred, crackling skin that delivers a satisfying crunch and concentrated savoury-smoky flavour, while the breast meat beneath remains moist and yielding. The chilli heat is present but disciplined — a warmth that builds over successive bites rather than an aggressive assault. The Pommery grain mustard sauce provides cooling relief and a textural element from the whole mustard seeds, which pop against the teeth.
Approximate Method
Spatchcock the chicken by removing the backbone with kitchen shears and pressing firmly on the breastbone to flatten. Marinate for a minimum of four hours (overnight preferred) in a mixture of olive oil, dried chilli flakes, fresh chilli, garlic, lemon zest, rosemary, and salt. Grill over medium-high heat, skin side down, using a heavy weight (a cast iron pan or foil-wrapped brick) pressed onto the bird to ensure full contact with the grill — this is essential for the even skin char. Cook 15-18 minutes skin side down, flip and cook 8-10 minutes on the flesh side, until the thigh joint runs clear. For the Pommery sauce: reduce shallots and white wine until almost dry, whisk in cold butter in stages to emulsify, add Pommery grain mustard and season. The sauce should be fluid, glossy, and balanced between richness and acidity.
Signature Prego Pizza · $42
The Dish
A mozzarella and tomato base pizza with cooked ham, Parmigiano Reggiano, and sun-dried tomatoes. The foundational pizza of the menu — the one that declares, in its simplicity, what the kitchen believes a pizza should be.
Crust Analysis
Pizza dough criticism requires vocabulary. Prego’s crust is what Neapolitan tradition calls ‘cornicione’ at its edges — the outer rim puffs during baking to a structure that is charred at its extremity, airy and open-crumbed within, and chewy in the hand but yielding in the mouth. It is not the ultra-thin Roman style, nor the thick, bread-like Sicilian. It occupies the Neapolitan idiom, though likely baked in a deck oven rather than the 450°C+ wood-fired furnaces of Naples. The char provides bitterness that counterbalances the sweetness of the tomato and the salt of the cured meats.
Flavour Architecture
The tomato base is simple and appropriate — a lightly seasoned crushed tomato, its moisture partially cooked off so that the dough beneath does not become sodden. The mozzarella melts to soft, creamy pools. The cooked ham provides a gentle, saline porcine note. The sun-dried tomatoes — concentrated, jammy, intensely sweet-acid — punctuate the flavour landscape with emphasis. The Parmigiano Reggiano, added either pre- or post-bake (both techniques are plausible), contributes its characteristic sharp, nutty, crystalline quality. The cumulative effect is a harmonious exercise in classical Italian flavour combination.
Approximate Dough Recipe
For Neapolitan-style dough: 1kg ’00’ flour, 700ml cold water, 3g fresh yeast (or 1g instant dried), 28g fine salt. Dissolve yeast in water. Combine with flour and mix until a shaggy dough forms. Knead for 10-15 minutes until smooth and elastic. Rest at room temperature for 2 hours, then refrigerate for 24-72 hours (cold fermentation develops flavour and improves texture significantly). Divide into 250g balls, allow to come to room temperature for 2 hours before shaping. Stretch by hand — never use a rolling pin, which degasses the dough. Bake at the highest possible temperature your oven permits (250°C+ for home ovens, on a preheated pizza stone or steel) for 6-8 minutes.
Ravioli di Granchio allo Zafferano · $48
The Dish
Crab-filled ravioli in a Sardinian saffron cream sauce with prawns. This is, texturally and conceptually, the most delicate preparation of the evening.
Pasta Analysis
Fresh egg pasta in the ravioli format demands precision at every stage. The pasta sheet must be rolled to a thinness — approximately 1-1.5mm — that allows the pasta to cook quickly (30-90 seconds in boiling water), remain delicate in the mouth, and allow the filling to be tasted through the pasta rather than obscured by it. Prego’s pasta achieves this: the sheets are silky, translucent, and offer almost no resistance, so that biting into a single raviolo yields simultaneously the pasta and filling in harmonious combination rather than in sequence.
Filling & Sauce Analysis
The crab filling — white crab meat, lightly seasoned and bound perhaps with a small amount of ricotta or cream cheese to provide cohesion — is gentle and sweet, the pure oceanic flavour of fresh crab unobscured by aggressive seasoning. The saffron cream sauce presents a vivid golden colour that is primarily visual pleasure before it becomes gustatory. The flavour of saffron is subtle and particular: a slightly metallic, floral, vaguely honeyed quality that pervades the cream without dominating it. The sauce clings to the pasta with sufficient body to coat each piece, and the prawns — cooked to that precise boundary between just-set and firm — provide both flavour reinforcement and textural variety.
Approximate Method
For the pasta: combine 300g ’00’ flour with 3 egg yolks and 1 whole egg, a pinch of salt, and enough water to bring together into a firm dough. Knead 10 minutes, rest 30 minutes wrapped, then roll to setting 5-6 on a pasta machine. For the filling: pick white crab meat, check for shell fragments, season lightly with lemon zest, salt, and a small amount of mascarpone for binding. For the saffron cream: steep a generous pinch of saffron in 2 tablespoons of warm white wine for 10 minutes. Sweat shallots in butter, add the saffron and its liquor, add 200ml double cream, reduce by one third. Season with salt and a squeeze of lemon.
Recipe Reference Summary
The following table provides a condensed reference for the key technical parameters discussed in this review.
Dish Key Technique Critical Temperature Rest / Timing
Calamari Fritti Semolina/flour dredge, dry squid Oil at 180°C 90 sec fry, serve immediately
Polpo e Fagioli Long braise, then high-heat char Simmer (not boil) octopus Cool in liquid overnight
Guancia Deep sear + slow braise Oven at 150°C 3-4 hrs, sauce reduce
Wagyu Striploin Rest + high-heat grill Grill: maximum heat Rest = half cook time
Pollo alla Diavola Spatchcock + weighted grill Medium-high grill 15-18 min skin down
Pizza Cold ferment dough Oven at 250°C+ 24-72 hr cold ferment
Ravioli Thin pasta + saffron infusion Boiling water, 60-90 sec Saffron steep 10 min
Service
The service team at Prego operates according to a model that has become somewhat rare in contemporary fine-casual dining: it is attentive without performing attentiveness. No member of the floor team appeared to monitor the table with the anxious vigilance that sometimes passes for hospitality but is experienced by the diner as surveillance. Water glasses were replenished at natural intervals. Questions about the menu were answered with specificity and evident product knowledge — the server describing the provenance of the Prosciutto di Parma and explaining the regional character of the saffron used in the ravioli. The pace of service was calibrated to the rhythm of the table rather than the efficiency requirements of the kitchen.
This is the kind of service that is frequently undervalued in the numerical ratings assigned to restaurants, because it does not call attention to itself. Its absence, however, is immediately felt.
Value Proposition
Prego is not inexpensive. The meal described in this review — seven dishes shared between two people, without wine — would approach $400 before service charge and GST. The Wagyu striploin at $98 and the octopus at $38 represent significant per-dish expenditure. The set menu options ($58 for three courses, $68 for four) offer a more considered entry point and represent the better value proposition for diners without the specific intent to explore the à la carte menu comprehensively.
Set against comparable Italian fine-casual establishments in Singapore’s competitive central business district — restaurants that offer similar ingredient quality and service standards at similar price points — Prego is competitively positioned. The ingredient quality is evident: the Prosciutto di Parma is demonstrably age-appropriate, the pasta is made in-house, the truffle is fresh rather than oil-preserved. The 3/5 value rating in the accompanying assessment reflects not poor value in absolute terms but rather the expectation that a four-decade institution might leverage its economies of scale more generously. It does not.
Assessment
Category Score Verdict
Food 4 / 5 ★★★★☆ Accomplished & Consistent
Service 4 / 5 ★★★★☆ Attentive, Unobtrusive
Value 3 / 5 ★★★☆☆ Premium Pricing
Atmosphere 4 / 5 ★★★★☆ Sophisticated & Warm
Overall 4 / 5 ★★★★☆ A Singapore Institution
Conclusion
Prego has achieved something difficult in Singapore’s dining landscape: it has remained relevant not by chasing trends but by deepening its commitment to the classical Italian culinary tradition. The kitchen executes the braised cheek with the confidence of long practice; the pasta section demonstrates genuine craft; the room has been updated with intelligence and aesthetic coherence. Against the horizon of forty years, these are not small accomplishments.
The restaurant is, by its nature, a conservative proposition. It will not surprise the diner who seeks novelty for its own sake, nor challenge the assumptions of anyone seeking the avant-garde Italian currents emerging from contemporary kitchens in Milan or London. What it will deliver, reliably and with evident care, is a well-executed Italian meal in a beautiful, comfortable room with service that understands its role. In a city and a dining moment characterised by relentless novelty and equally relentless closure, that proposition has its own compelling integrity.
Prego remains, after four decades, one of Singapore’s most dependable Italian restaurants — and in the restaurant trade, dependability is a form of distinction.
Practical Information
Address: Level 1, Fairmont Singapore, 80 Bras Basah Road, Singapore 189560
Telephone: +65 6431 6156
Opening Hours: 6.30 am to 10.30 pm daily
Nearest MRT: City Hall (NS25 | EW13)
Set Dinner: 3-course at SGD 58; 4-course at SGD 68
Dress Code: Smart casual