Bene Ristorante, Living World Alam Sutera

Some days ago, we got opportunity to try an Italian restaurant, Bene Ristorante, thanks to Mr. Regan who kindly invited us there. I only went to Living World mall once before, but last time I was there, I was attracted to the promotion banner they put in front, about the 1 meter pizza. We ended up having dinner somewhere else, but I knew I would come back even to just try the pizza.

We were welcomed by the supervisor, Mr. Bayu, who kindly assisted us in selecting the menu and showed us the restaurant. The place is located on the ground floor of the mall, so you can reach it from the inside or directly from outside (parking area). It’s not too big, fits about 42 seating capacity indoor and outdoor, but looks very comfortable. We can choose booth type seatings or regular table seatings in the indoor area, and they also have really nice, bright outdoor area. The decorations are very pretty, too, many Italian-related figurines, not too many, but make the room looks sweeter.

It didn’t take long for our orders to start coming in, and I really appreciated that. Before the food were served though, we could enjoy our lovely drinks first.

Aside from its very beautiful presentation, the drink is also very sweet and delicious. The chocolate is very bold, thick and strong. With the additional piece of cookie, it is a perfect jar to be enjoyed anytime.

This was my preferred drink and I loved it. The orange was sweet and blended really nicely with the blue syrup, made perfect by the mint leave on top. It was nice, not exaggerated, and refreshing.

Caipiroska is a form of Caipirinha, a national cocktail of Brazil, which is made from sugar cane hard liquor, sugar, and lime. The difference is, caipiroska is prepared with vodka instead of the usual sugar cane hard liquor; and it’s popular in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. This drink has a very distinctive taste of strawberries (hence the name, duh), very light and refreshing. I added some liquid sugar and it tasted awesomely great.

The butterscotch was very nice, but the drink tasted a bit bland, like it’s missing something. 

This is non-alcoholic sangria and surprisingly it was so good! The blackcurrant really matches the taste of grapes and was a perfect substitute for wine. Love it.

The spaghetti was tossed with sauteed salmon, mushroom, garlic, onion, and their homemade cream sauce. It might look just like typical pasta dish, but I was surprised when I tried it. The cream sauce was really thick and creamy, the pasta was perfectly cooked al dente, and the herb and spices were great. Definitely recommended.

The pasta was tossed with homemade basil-cashewnut paste and mushroom, topped with sauteed jumbo size king prawn. Now I am telling you I love this restaurant’s food! The pesto was so tasty, savory, you name it, and it gave a very nice, blended taste to the plain pasta. And mind you, I haven’t even started with the prawn yet, and I can go on and on praising the pasta alone. Then the prawns, they were big, literally jumbo size, and very fresh! Mind you though, the pesto is probably not really everyone’s cup of tea, but worth to try if you are feeling adventurous during your visit! =)

This was the highlight of the day! The pizza was so long that we had to put that in another table and take the slices whenever we wanted to eat them XD. The nice thing is that you can choose up to 3 of pizza selections for the 1 meter long pizza. Currently this gigantic pizza is only available for dine-in only, though. For other options, you can choose other sizes such as Single Fighter (for 1-2 person) or Gossiper (for 3-4 person). But again, it depends on the eaters themselves because capacity for each person is different. They emphasize that all the pizza doughs are freshly made everyday from whole wheat flour mixed with regular bread flour resulting in healthy, nutritious pizza.

According to the supervisor, this is the best-selling pizza in Bene Ristorante. When I tried it though, I wasn’t really impressed. The pizza dough was decent, but it was baked until a bit too hard to chew. The toppings are grilled chicken breast, jalapeno pepper, pineapple, onion, mozarella cheese, drizzled with mayonnaise and garnished with chopped beef bacon. It also uses their homemade tomato sauce, which doesn’t really give any specific taste, and the mayonnaise just made it completely local taste. I think I can understand why this easily becomes best-selling pizza there, it’s simply because Indonesian people love mayonnaise on their food, period.

Again, the pizza bread didn’t impress me at all. But this one, I really love the topping! With their homemade garlic butter, fried dori fish, melted mozarella cheese, mixed green salad and cherry tomatoes, this pizza tastes original, refreshing and unique in the same time. I especially loved the dori fish, it was soft and savory, almost thought that it was some kind of chicken nuggets or something, but much better. The mixed green salad and cherry tomatoes complimented the taste of the pizza and made it colorful.

Homemade garlic butter, ground beef cooked with Italian seasoning, chopped spinach, melted mozarella and ricotta cheese as the topping, it was unpredictably good! Seriously, I felt a bit bad because I thought it didn’t look good judging from the not-so-beautiful appearance. One thing interested me before trying was the ground beef, but in reality, the combination between the beef and spinach were just perfect. The menu says that we can’t even taste the spinach, but we certainly did because it was a bit bitter, LOL! But well, the whole pizza itself was great, so it’s worth trying!

We ordered this later, and although I wasn’t really impressed by the price, but I have to say the fries were so fresh and they were delicious! We could tell clearly that they are homemade and freshly fried, definitely a plus point for restaurants which serve non-instant fries.

The brownies, unlike American brownies, is golden yellow in color, the texture is very soft, just like sponge. The brownies is very nice to eat with the ice cream because it balances the sweetness and made the combination tasted so delicious without being too much. I was glad that I selected strawberry for the ice cream 🙂

Pettole are fried dough balls, known as Christmas bread, tasted a bit salty, if not plain, and a very light snack to accompany a sweet scoop of Gelato. 

Currently Bene Ristorante only has one outlet in Living World Alam Sutera, and there are so many promotions going on this month:

• Value Package for 2 (1 Panne all’ Aglio, 1 Teriyaki Pasta, 1 Tom Yum Pasta, 1 Ice Strawberry Tea, 1 Ice Blueberry Tea) only for IDR 116K (excluding service charge & tax), dine-in only.
• Crazy Friday – 50% Discount every Friday (food & dine-in only)
• Student Promotion – show your student ID and get discount 20% Mon-Thu and 10% Fri-Sun and public holidays
• BNI 25% Discount for credit and debit card users (food only, min transaction IDR 200K)

Thanks Bene Ristorante for having us, see you again soon!

*All prices are subject to 6% service charge & 10% government tax

Bene Ristorante
Living World Mall Unit G-71
Jl. Alam Sutera Blvd Kav. 21
Tangerang Selatan 15325
Ph. +62 21 2923 9570 (delivery order around Serpong, BSD, Alam Sutera)
Wi-fi: Available
Opening Hours: Sun-Thu 10.00 – 22.00, Fri-Sat 10.00 – 24.00
Estimated Spending: IDR 80.000 – 150.000/person
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