Opened several years ago as part of Anantara Bangkok Riverside, this offshoot of an old Italian restaurant in London has since relocated to the ground floor of Siam Paragon.

 

The new Signor Sassi looks like a darker, scaled-down version of its partner Bangkok restaurant, Cicchetti (G/F, Groove at CentralWorld), with a big, marble-clad kitchen in the middle and plenty of cookware on show. But unlike Cicchetti’s Venice-inspired small-plates, this is region-hopping Italian dining of the old-school.

 

The menu reads like a list of Italy’s greatest food hits, from the fruittura di pesce (mixed fried fish, B520) to the spaghetti carbonara (B280) and various veal scaloppine (B750), while there’s also a short list of pizzas from B490. Our meal starts with baked eggplant in parmesan, mozzarella and tomato sauce (B380), which comes in a generous, undainty portion that alone would do for a quick, affordable refuel mid-shopping trip. The same goes for the pasta carbonara (B280), which is heavy, comforting and probably better than the same dish anywhere else in Paragon. The scaloppine “Joselina” (sliced veal in a cream, brandy, mustard seeds and mushroom sauce, B750) also lacks any great depth but the meat is certainly tender.

 

Things get more elaborate at dessert, where they’ve pushed the boat out with an iPad picture menu of intensely vivid creations but forgotten to add any price tags. (We tried asking the waitress. She didn’t know.) The panna cotta (B240) comes heaped with caramel-crusted strawberries that are very picturesque but don’t provide enough sharpness to cut through the huge, creamy panna cotta itself. Desserts are one of Signor Sassi’s few nods to modernity, and we reckon we prefer the traditional airs and graces.

 

It’s nowhere near the most showstopping Italian food in town, but there’s charm. It’s also a big step up from the usual shopping mall Italians, more in line with what you might find in an inoffensive fivestar hotel. Less enjoyable is the seating situation, with nearly all diners placed right up against the huge, goldfish-bowl windows in what feels like the busiest part of the mall.

 

It’s a very different atmosphere to Signor Sassi’s former location, where we also recall being greeted by a delightfully welcoming, Italian front-of-house team who are now missing. And though it may have the best Italian food in Paragon, we still reckon the similarly priced menu and more comfortable dining room of Cicchetti are worth the short walk.