Buko Nero

Our favourite modern Italian food. Fantastic place, great ambiance, great service. Food is consistently good — absolutely fantastic

Euro style restaurant with very interesting menu. It seems like they change their menu and specials so hopefully the below items still apply:
1) Food
— cold cut plate: nice assortment of meats and good quality
— pasta with uni — this was a special and the pasta was cooked perfectly with a very good amount if uni. Honestly any dish with uni will be awesome.
— beef tamarind — this is melt in your mouth beef… I don’t know how they can cook it like that. The tamarind is not that strong but I think that’s good. The mashed potatoes were cooked very well for mashed potatoes.
— raspberry panna cotta — I usually don’t like raspberry but this was so light and flavorful I couldn’t stop picking at it while sharing.
My sister and her husband got the set menu (tomato orange sesame salad, crab bisque with tomato and broccoli, Mojito cleanser, ragu, espresso ice cream with cake) and they enjoyed that too but I think what I ordered was better but double the price…
2) Service: Amazing, so helpful and very knowledgable about the food.
3) BYOB: Singapore alcohol is very expensive so bringing wine with corkage fee of $ 25 is worth it.

We all have our favorite restaurants that we *almost* don’t want to tell other people about — Buko Nero is one of those places.
This tiny, family run restaurant seats at most about 23 and the intimate space and small staff (only the chef, wife as hostess, mother in law as hostess) add to the cozy ambiance. The hostesses may not crack a smile, but they are informative and quick. The food is modern Italian and is worth the wait (you can only get a table with luck or by planning a few weeks in advance!)
The food:
The small, but tasty menu has a few regular items encompassing cod, a few meat dishes, mushroom soup with truffle oil, pastas, and starters (the prosciutto and mozzarella is a refined ham and cheese!) But keep your ears open for the specials which may include anything from a charcoal crusted cod (no it doesn’t taste like dust!) to a seafood ragu. I’m simply amazed that the chef is able to create so many dishes by himself!
We’ve had everything from the set menu (which isn’t priced above S$ 55) to fish and pastas. The fish always has a crispy skin while the meat remains tender (I love the crispy cod with SE seasonings!) and the pasta is cooked al dente with a variety of tomato based sauced. The food is comforting and well executed. The sticky date pudding is reliably gooey and delicious as well.
I’ll keep coming back to this restaurant for its great food and hope not too many more people find out about my secret place!

Gorgeous food, excellent service and nice ambience. The chef is creative, thoughtful and detail to attention. The set dinner is great value for money and the daily special is fantastic. Excellent for date night or group dinner. Will be back!

Buko Nero has a casual upscale vibe which bodes well for good, honest Italian food. And I heard that the chef/​owner is Italian so I got my hopes up. Unfortunately I found the experience to be underwhelming. They had a hamachi carpaccio as a special appetizer that sounded interesting. None of the other specials grabbed me so I ordered the risotto entre off the main menu. I really liked the concept of the hamachi, but the delivery was stunted by the hamachi itself. There was more than a bit of a funk to it; definitely not sashimi-​grade so it should not have been served raw. And the risotto was flat. I’m a sucker for a good risotto, but this one failed on every level. The rice was chewy, almost crunchy and there was no umami. Overall just bland a chalky. I’ve heard good things about Buko Nero so perhaps I just order the wrong things. Maybe I should have asked for more guidance from the nice hostess, but I don’t think I’ll be back to find out.

Deron and I just went there yesterday, after making a reservation a month in advance. Of course, our expectations were high considering the reviews on Unilocal.The décor of the place was simple and almost casual, but it was nice and quiet. The service was great, very attentive staff, and the food is always served with a smile. They did not allow any pictures of the food, so unfortunately I can’t contribute anything on that front, but I can tell you about the food! We were first served with a amuse bouche of cherry tomatoes, minced beef tartare and a pepper, and the one-​bite dish was pretty good. The sweetness of the tomato complemented the saltiness of the beef. Next, we had a hamachi tartare with citrus, which was decent as well. The chopped hamachi was buttery, albeit a slight fishy taste, but the flavors were good. I had the basil, broccoli and crabmeat soup. The crabmeat was sweet, but the soup just lacks the umami flavor, just slightly salty and fell flat. I had the charcoal-​infused home-​made pasta with salt cod. The pasta had a good texture, obviously home made, although I could not taste the charcoal. Again, the sauce was just salty, with no other notes, and not much of a flavor profile. It wasn’t bad, just wasn’t very impressive. Deron had the smoked ricotta and beet risotto. The texture of the risotto was good, and the smoked cheese flavor was very good, but it was served luke warm and was a tad too sweet (not sure if it was due to the beet), but at the end of it, it just tasted a little like cranberry. Again, I have to emphasize that nothing was bad about the meal, and perhaps we were just expecting a little more and it did not satisfy.

One of the best kept secrets in Singapore, except it won’t be much of a secret if Unilocal has its way:)
Italian-​Asian fusion, cooked with love from the husband of the partnership while his wife serves the guests. They don’t do it for the glamour or the money, its food and drink with passion. I would challenge to someone to pick something off the menu that wasn’t below par excellence… the set menu changes constantly, which is why I suspect regulars are happy to keep going back and being entertained.
The Barolo was excellent and wasn’t too expensive given the region. Tracy will happily guide you around the wines.
Book weeks in advance and be flexible with times, its worth planning an evening around this one.

I heard about Buko Nero before I heard of Buko Nero. There’s a hole in the wall with a months-​long the wait list. It’s somewhere in Singapore.
Wasn’t until a new colleague and fellow foodie talked about how excited he was to be working in the proximity of the restaurant that I committed the restaurant to memory. Didn’t even know it’s Italian.
For all the hype, Buko Nero is surprisingly affordable. A four-​course dinner with amuse bouche and a palate cleanser is priced at $ 55++, you’re only allowed to make adjustments to the main course for a slight price increase.
And it’s good food for the price. Italian home-​cooked fare, strongly seasoned with Singapore and Japanese flavours.
The star of the evening that I was there, was the Oven-​baked cod with spicy crust, specifically the spicy crust. It’s a product of intense love. The wife of this husband and wife restaurant team let on that they experiment frequently on the crust frequently. So what we had that night may not be the same as what we’ll have the next time we order it.
p. s.: There’s no months-​long wait list. Reservations are taken up to one month in advance.

This is probably my favorite restaurant in Singapore right now. It’s a very small operation, with just one chef in the kitchen and his wife and mother-​in-​law serving and running the front of the house. It’s a small space with just 22 – 24 seats, so it has a very cozy and intimate meal. Similarly, the menu is fairly short, but it changes regularly and there’s always a special set menu of the day.
The food is modern Italian with a light fusion-​y touch. Some recent favorites were a pan-​seared tenderloin wrapped in grilled eggplant, and a handmade linguini infused with charcoal and tossed with ridiculously sweet crabmeat from some kind of Australian crab I’d never heard of before. The desserts are always excellent, as well.
Because it’s so small, reservations are a must, often up to a month in advance. It’s worth the wait.

The one thing that greatly differentiates Buko Nero from most other restaurants is that one really feels at home. Literally. We felt like we were guests in a very warm and cosy apartment with great unpretentious food and wine, complete with soothing jazz playing softly in the background and lovely photographs on the walls.
Food: Excellent! We had a complimentary amuse bouche of duck with plum crostini which was a nice teaser for the dishes to come. The Buko Nero tau kwa tower is deceptively simple, but is in fact a delicious complex blend of flavours. My main of cod with seafood bisque reduction (not on menu, one of three mains of the day) was marvellous, while my dessert of dark chocolate and peanut butter with strawberry ice cream was simply amazing. The peanut butter tastes somewhat like pureed min jiang kueh filling instead of the regular synthetic tasting variety one conventionally finds in supermarkets. Absolutely wonderful! Friend had wagyu beef carpaccio and Australian tenderloin and clearly enjoyed it.
Service: Tracy was a good hostess, very attentive.
Ambience: Warm, cosy and laidback. We felt totally at home.
Buko Nero is definitely worth a visit, and several revisits. In fact, we both made our reservations for the next available date. I can’t wait to go back to try everything else on the menu, including the pumpkin basil crabmeat soup, the salmon with nori, the cod with squid ink crust, the tiramisu panna cotta, etc. Buko Nero has a five course set meal for SGD 48 and they’re quite flexible in that one can order the items off the set ala-​carte or take the set meal and replace the main with any of one’s preferred choice.

One of the secret addresses in Singapore — although I’m not sure why: is it because of its size or its interesting fusion cuisine? It certainly is tiny (can only accommodate 20 people at the same time) and has an interesting fusion menu that combines South Asian and Italian cuisine. Impossible to get a table without reservation before 9 PM. The interior is modern — white being the primary color, and the service very personal (all in the family).Some combinations are interesting.