PastaMania, Singapore’s largest Italian casual dining restaurant chain, opens today (30)in Colombo 3. The brand is well-known for its over-the-top pasta creations and exquisite thin-crust pizzaselections and is popular amongst white collar professionals, youths, students, expatriates and families’ groups.

Bringing a ‘piece of Italy’ to Sri Lanka

Committed to creating the authentic experience of PastaMania in Sri Lanka, it took more than 12 months of detailed planning in terms of sourcing for the flagship location, the outlet design planning and construction.

“Our architect and contractors work with the PastaMania international design team from external façade to interior space planning. PastaMania’s brand elements from the Italian grocery shop ‘Alimentari’, open-kitchen ‘Pasta Al Dente’, newspaper stand ‘Edicola’to details like the mural wall and signageare all carefully designed and fabricated,” said Azeez Brothers Ltd. Managing Director (Food & Beverage Business) Hilme Azeez.

Azeez enthused: “This flagship outlet design is based on Italy’s Piazza concept to create the ambience of the day-to-day public life of Italian ‘City Square’.The timing is right as we see a lot potential for casual dining in Sri Lanka making it to the top.We want to bring in a ‘piece of Italy’ and the pleasure of ‘living like an Italian’ to the local and expatriates’ communities in Sri Lanka.”

Authentic Italian ingredients

One can expect authentic Italian ingredients when dining at PastaMania. Wilson Lim, Executive Director, International Business, Singapore’s Commonwealth Capital Group shared that by “farming and producing our own tomatoes in Italy, one can relish the Parma-harvested preservative-free tomato sauces used in pasta and pizza choices that have passed through stringent sweetness and viscosity test. We also used other top grade ingredients from Italy such as high-protein durum wheat pasta, extra virgin olive oil and even our coffee and gelato ingredients are Italian-made.”

Signature creations and menu

PastaMania offers an extensive menu of more than 130 choices and with many items labelled with calories count. With the most extensive pasta menu in town, consumers get to customise their meal by choosing the type of pasta they want from a selection of spaghetti, linguine, penne, fusilli or wholemeal.

“Customers will love the signature classic pasta creations, ranging from original carbonara, chunky minced beef Bolognese, flavourful seafood marinara, delightful corn chicken slice cheese crumble, colourful Mediterranean and our unique dessert pizzas such as banana and strawberry pizzas, top-up with a scoop of gelato,” said Azeez.

For those who wanted to sample the premium pasta offerings, try the ‘Salmon Creamy Tomato Pasta’, where salmon is grilled to perfection, topped with granola and orange dressing and served with proprietary tomato sauce.

Kids’engagement andenrichment

PastaMania in Sri Lankawill be rolling out the ‘Doughworkz’ program whereby young children will be taught how to make their own ‘pasta and pizza’ and to work within a community. They will also be taught on healthy eating habits and living through its series of ‘PastaMons’ characters and storybooks aimed at educating the young generation in a ‘Learn-as-You-Play’ mode.To-date, PastaMania has served more than 34 million plates of pasta in its Asia-Pacific and Middle East restaurants. It is currently available in 14 countries with more than 55 retail points and counting. Sri Lanka’s first-ever PastaMania flagship outlet in Colombo is located at 502 R.A. De Mal Mawatha, Colombo 3 (Duplication Road).

Source : http://www.ft.lk/dining/Singapore-s-largest-Italian-casual-dining-chain-PastaMania-opens-in-Colombo/39-652385