Mensa Organica     有机飯堂   (Closed)

Reservations advised for lunch.

Lured to Mensa Organica by the healthy and tasty-looking dinners. Sadly I cannot afford dinner here so I came for lunch with E instead. Mensa means 'round table'.

Environment:
A large portion of this space is sectioned off for organic produce, for sale. Veg, dry ingredients, drinks...didn't check them out in detail though. Bound to be costly. There are around 16 seats - are tight for lunch, therefore please make reservations.

Food:You cannot find a better deal in CWB. And the menu even has calorie content details....oh, you become ever-so-conscious. But decide to go for the more calorific items anyway. >)
How it works:
The basic lunch set is $48 only. You get a choice of pasta+sauce plus veg, and a drink. That is the basic set. You need to +$20/30 for a protein. And an upgrade from drink to soup will cost you another $10. It's an upgrade, so you lose your drink. But that is fine because the coffee wasn't so good anyway, according to E.

Pumpkin soupVery tasty. Thick, garlicky, hot, steaming, sweet. I'd definitely go for this again if it's the soup of the day! Organic?
Organic sausage linguine in truffle sauceGenerous portions. The linguine was slightly undercooked, retained a bit of bite, and the sauce was a bit thick. There was a moderate amount of sauce but it wasn't a lot - so not all the strands were coated in sauce. I think they need to reserve more pasta water to make the sauce. I prefer a silkier sauce yea. The sausage however, was delicious - crisp, thin skin, very juicy insides, and not too spicy although it had a mixture of herbs in the filling. More importantly - only 115 cal (how is that even possible)!! Substantial protein. Slightly smoky. Yummy. Mushroom sauce could be more fragrant - i think they didn't use the high-quality mushrooms for the sauce which is a pity. If the whole dish is bland and the sauce gives it life, more should be invested. My truffle cream sauce was also slightly disappointing because there wasn't enough sauce. And it didn't taste very different from the mushroom sauce - only difference being that it was creamier. The veggies were wholesome and healthy - I had steamed veg, E had italian pan fried veg. Both were yummy. Seldom do you get to pick steamed veg in a western resto. And they're organic!