Vino Vino Bistro - Kota Kinabalu, Sabah

- October 19, 2015

Vino Vino Bistro is a wine lounge and restaurant located at KK Times Square, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. The restaurant is dimly lit, clean, cozy and classy ambience suitable for romantic dinner, private parties and functions. There's a beautiful chandelier hanging from the ceiling to add sparkle and charm to the dining room.

There's two menu available - Japanese menu (from Vino Vino Yakitori) and Western menu (from Vino Vino Bistro). We went through the menu and ordered a plate of tebasaki (Japanese style seasoned deep-fried chicken wings) from Vino Vino Yakitori, located just beside Vino Vino Bistro, two main course and a dessert from Vino Vino Bistro. After we have placed our order, the waitress served us a bowl of complimentary buns with butter. Buns were warm, soft and fluffy. Love it! However, I don't really enjoyed their chicken wings because the chicken taste was very strong.

I ordered today's special - Pan fried snapper with mesclun, potatoes and saffron cream. I have no idea what's a mesclun is, so the fastest way to find out is to Google. As quoted on Wikipedia, Mesclun is a salad mix of assorted small, young salad green leaves, that originated in Provence, France. My food was nicely presented, comes with a slice of perfectly pan fried snapper, asparagus, red leaf lettuce, green lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and cheesy potato lasagna. It was good. I like the cold cherry tomatoes as it was really refreshing but there's a slight bitter taste in the red leaf lettuce which I don't really enjoyed.

Another main course that we ordered was grilled salmon with herbs butter. This dish comes with a piece of grilled salmon, herbs butter, asparagus and mashed potatoes. I like the asparagus as it was cooked perfectly. Mashed potatoes was good too. However, salmon tasted so-so only.

Dessert is the perfect way to end the night. We ordered chocolate fondant with chocolate pistachio ice cream (most expensive dessert in the menu). It was delicious. I love both the chocolate fondant and chocolate pistachio ice cream. Not too sweet, smooth and creamy ice cream. There's few home made ice cream and sorbet available such as jack fruit, mango, coconut, chocolate pistachio, berry, passion fruit and lemon. We tried their mango sorbet before but turned out just so-so.

Update: This restaurant has been closed down.