Vivo American Pizza & Panini (KL Plaza)

It was a rainy afternoon when we reached KL. We had to cancel our original plan to go Pertaling Street and tackle the nearest shopping centre first which is KL plaza.

All of us were starving as we had only taken light breakfast, thus the first priority was to fix our stomach first. It so happened that someone passed us a pamphlet on Vivo, thus we almost immediately decided on that restaurant. Actually, there isn't much choice at KL plaza for food, I thought...


Actually I have heard of them before as they have an branches in JB as well, but I have never tried it.

First Impression

The restaurant looked very spacious and tastefully decorated. I think they were newly opened as I have not seen them the other time. As aptly as the name puts it, Vivo actually specialised in Pizza and Pasta, but they highlighted that they were American-influenced. However, a look of their menu revealed that some of their dishes are actually Asian-fusion food, not really that American. Then, they also put Panini (folded pizza) in their signboard which is uniquely Itallian. A bit of identity crisis if you asked me.

Ok enough say, let's move on to their food.

Three of us decided to order a few items for sharing. For appetitiser, we ordered Fried Calamari and Onion Rings (see above). It was a pretty common starter. Nothing impressive. In fact, the calamari was a bit rubbery, thus it is a bit disappointing.

Next, we ordered the Spicy Garlic Spaghetti, which is supposed to be their restaurant's chef recommendation dish. Pardon the photo as we almost immediately dived in once it was served. We were too hungry and I forgot to take a photo first. The taste is actually not bad and I like the fact that the chef was pretty generous with their prawns. The sauce was rather garlicky like it was named, savoury appetitising and rather oriental-based. My friend actually termed it as very zi char-ish. Looking good…

Next came our pizza - BBQ chicken pizza which was very good! The outer crust was crispy, but still has tender bread-like inner crust. Those who like pizza hut’s crust will love this as well. They were generous with toppings ingredients and I like that the chef only drenched enough sauce on the pizza instead of drowning it with too much and makes the pizza salty. The chicken ham as you can see was in huge pieces and there are enough cheese to string as you bite into it.Yum!

I especially love their BBQ sauce which is savoury-sweet with just enough tang to give an intense flavour for the whole pizza.

However, the ultimate was their dessert - Hot From Oven Chocolate Lava Cake accompanied with Ice-Cold Vanila Ice Cream! Just a note, this dessert will take 15 mins to prepare, thus do let the waiter know early when you want it.

Lava cake is similar to chocolate fondant cake, but the outer crust is crispier like cookies. I personally love this version more compared to Bakerzin as it wasn't as too sweet and the chocolate was heavenly. See how the sauce oozes out from the cake as we cut through... The 15 minutes wait definately worth your time. Do not missed this out.

Verdict:

Food was generally good (except calamari). The dessert - Lava cake was the best. I strongly recommend people to try it!

Disappointed:

KL plaza's service staff also needed more training. We were left waiting for the food for a little too long. Not that we are typical Singaporeans who like to complain about everything, but average waiting time per dish was like 15 to 20 minutes. We almost have to rush every one of our dishes. The lady boss was nice enough to apologise about the long waiting time. I mean a restaurant has to serve more customers in order to earn more money, thus food waiting time as to be shorten.