Pastamo bets on S$19.90 pasta set meals in Boat Quay. And nope, there’s no GST or service charge

The stretch along Boat Quay has always run on after-dark crowds: Bars first, dinner second, lunch as an afterthought. 

Newly opened Pastamo is betting there’s room for a fourth identity in there — an affordable pasta cafe that turns into a bar once the sun goes down.

Co-founder Peh Zhi Wei, 41, runs the nondescript spot along Circular Road. Pastamo resides where the now-shuttered New York-style pizza parlour Sonny’s Slice Shop used to be. 

He’s also the elder brother of Yumi Bai and Miko Bai, both 34 — the Singaporean twin-sister duo By2, who built their music careers across Taiwan and China.

We sat down with him to find out how a pasta bar in the Central Business District came together.

From an army regular, to beauty salon owner, and now, pasta bar co-founder

Before opening the restaurant in Boat Quay, Zhi Wei was running (and still does) three beauty businesses with his wife in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Prior to that, it was a sales company moving printers and photocopiers. And even before that, he was a regular in the Singapore Army. 

According to the millennial, he signed on not long after his father passed away from cancer in 2007, the year before his sisters were scouted by music and talent agency Ocean Butterflies’ Music. 

Someone had to hold things steady at home, he says, while his mother was around and his sisters were training overseas. He left the Singapore Armed Forces at 30.

In his telling, entrepreneurship was mostly proximity; he was surrounded by friends who were already doing it. Having harboured an ambition to run his own business one day, the serial entrepreneur decided to take a leap of faith. That’s when he started his beauty business with his wife in 2022.  

Fast forward to today: He opened Pastamo, his first F&B venture in Singapore, in April. How he got to open the restaurant was serendipitous, too. “I have always wanted to start my own thing in Singapore but never really got to doing it,” he says. 

The idea behind the pasta restaurant and bar came to be after a random dinner, where a mutual friend introduced him to Kevin Teo, 31, the honcho behind cafe chain Tomo. Somewhere along the way, the two landed on collaborating on an F&B venture together. There is also another investor behind Pastamo: Eddie Kwok, 52, Zhi Wei’s best friend, who is based in Scotland and also owns several restaurants there.

By Zhi Wei’s own description, Pastamo is a sister brand to Tomo Cafe. The DNA is similar: Comforting pasta dishes that nod to Asian palates, as well as classic coffee and matcha. 

Both Eddie and Kevin advise Zhi Wei on both the food and the business. 

“If anything, entrepreneurship requires a lot of patience,” he adds.

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Why it’s in the Quay, and why it’s also a bar

Zhi Wei had originally wanted to be situated in a mall or somewhere with good footfall, such as the heartlands in Tampines or Toa Payoh. It didn’t quite pan out, Zhi Wei says, citing how some landlords offered basement units suited only for takeaway.

For the millennial, setting up a brick-and-mortar outlet in Boat Quay, where competition between restaurants and cafes can be cutthroat, seemed like a good compromise. It also made sense for him and his team to sell tipples after dark since many salarymen, office ladies and tourists may indulge in a pint or two after office hours.  

“Being right on Circular Road allows us to serve both the fast-paced CBD lunch crowd and those looking to unwind after hours,” he says, of the area.

“Running an F&B business is difficult,” he says, on what it’s like to be a cafe owner. When things get busy, he sometimes helps with making the occasional matcha — which he found laborious — and food prep. 

He adds: “But I can see it improving, week by week.”

At a time when F&B establishments are winding up due to rent and well, otherworldly market forces, Pastamo’s opening goes against the grain. Zhi Wei, ever the optimist, explains: “Shops may be closing, but we still need to feed people,” he says. “Hopefully, we can fill in this space.”

No GST, no service charge

Pastamo used to house the now-defunct Sonny’s Pizza, where a narrow but long counter and display case ran perpendicular to the entrance, leaving little room for anyone to actually sit. That’s since been removed. 

In its place: Tables, concrete accents, and an industrial minimalist look that trades the old parlour’s tight footprint for something more open. A small outdoor dining area facing the road has also been added, giving the cafe more seating options beyond the main floor. Comfy!

The food comes with a clear pitch too: Pasta at S$19.90, with no GST and no service charge.

Zhi Wei says the no-GST, no-service-charge model was a deliberate choice, made for CBD lunch crowds who don’t want to see the bill creep up past the menu price. He’s given the business a year to turn a profit, which he reckons is the standard runway before anyone’s allowed to call it a failure.

What we tried at Pastamo

The menu mirrors what’s on offer at Tomo, albeit more streamlined. Where Tomo runs a longer list built over years in business, Pastamo keeps to few speciality pastas and a small rotation of beverages, both alcoholic and not.

The food menu at Pastamo is simple, featuring 10 speciality pastas, two ochazuke dishes, and a hearty selection of sides. Zhi Wei is quick to add that the selection of food and bevvy will expand with time. The S$19.90 set covers either a pasta or ochazuke, and drink of your choice. 

I’ve ordered the mala cream beef (S$19.90) twice, hoping the second plate would change my mind. It didn’t. The ribbon pasta arrived glossy with an in-house mala sauce. The Sichuan peppercorns, I learnt, are toasted before being ground with dried chilli. The minced beef is stir-fried separately, with rosemary and thyme for flavour. 

My gripe is with the numbing, which can be overwhelming and no liquid (including the free beverage that comes together with the set meal) can cleanse it off my palate.

The tomato cream crab pasta (S$19.90) is unapologetically delish. Spaghetti arrives under a sauce of tomato paste, cream, and milk, reduced to a shade somewhere between marinara and bisque. The crab, though frozen and shredded like fine pulled pork, is sweet and mild. It’s a tangy and bright number with mild crustacean flavours.

Seven spice butter pasta (S$19.90) brings the heat the rest of the menu has been hinting at, an in-house compound butter made from creamery butter and shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven-spice), worked into something closer to paste than sauce. Three prawns arrive alongside it, frozen, and twice I found myself scraping flesh off shell rather than lifting it free. Fresher prawns would have solved this in one bite.

Duck ragu (S$19.90) features tagliatelle and rich, slow-cooked poultry, visibly torn apart and interspersed between the pasta. A sous-vide egg sits on top; pierce it and the yolk runs slow and golden over everything. The only gripe: You’ll want more duck than the dish has.

Light on the grease and light on seasoning, the tako karaage (S$12), which boasts small nuggets of springy octopus, is quite addictive. Perfect with a cold pint!

Ever the crowd-pleaser, the strawberry matcha (S$7) uses a Yabukita and Okumidori varietal blend, which is slightly sweeter than most, though the grassy backbone of the matcha is still present.

Ever the crowd-pleaser, the strawberry matcha (S$7) uses a Yabukita and Okumidori varietal blend, which is slightly sweeter than most, though the grassy backbone of the matcha is still present.

Japanese Long Island (S$20) swaps the usual spirits for shochu, lengthened with the house’s own brewed tea. It’s lighter than its namesake suggests, but still a potent concoction.

Zhi Wei tells me he is here almost every night, watching the room fill up the way he described it: like watching his own kid grow. On the evidence so far, we think it’s growing in the right direction.

This was a hosted tasting.

For more ideas on what to eat, read our stories on McDonald’s new collab with K-Pop legend G-Dragon and the newest viral  Japanese restaurant at Fortune Centre!