Thursday, December 18, 2008

La Piazzetta, Hong Kong

We met SF and Anthony for dinner at La Piazzetta, a place Anthony recommended for best italian food at Central area. That coming from a half italian, I guess La Piazzetta's food should be delicious. La Piazetta is a cozy little restaurant tucked away at a quite lane off the Mid Level Escalator at Soho. Lovely place for quite dinners, catching up with friends or having some romantic time with a special someone. Oh, and obviously, with such cosy ambiance comes bad lighting(you know, candles and dim lights), hence my bad pictures (excuses SC, excuses! tsk tsk tsk!) :p
Amy and I were late, SF and Anthony already had their share of bruschetta and were sipping wine.
After getting myself all comfortable, I took the remaining bruschetta. As the bruschetta has been served a while ago, I was worried of soft, soggy bruschetta. But La Piazetta did a great job, after toasting the bread and topping it with ingredients, it was baked again. The result? Moist chopped tomatoes, basil and anchovies with crisp, still crunchy base of bread. Tasty indeed.

Just after I've finished munching on the bruschetta, we got the Napolitana served..
Smells wonderful, this was smashing piece of pizza. Thin crust, the ingredients were so fresh and so very basic, you can actually taste the flavours of each ingredients (of cheese, tomatoes, anchovies and basil). Really reminds me of the pizzas I had in Italy, back to basics, just stressing on the freshness of each ingredients and how it complements the rest.
After the carbs, came the meat...
The Scaloppine al chianti
Well, the name was longer, but I cant recall.. sorry! Anyways, it's melt-in-mouth beef, cooked to perfection with pinkish center, topped with red wine sauce, porcini, bacon and tomatoes. Absolutely mouth watering!
The the pollo something something..
Oh well. I know my italian sucks. It's actually very tender grilled chicken breast with white wine cream sauce and velvety mash. Another gorgeous dish, La Piazzetta did right by serving the rich sauce with chicken breast; it mops up the sauce nicely. Delectable.
Before I could even rest my fork and knife, the highlight of the night was serve...
The Super Marinara..
Super alright. Super, freaking huge. It's a serving for 2 people, but man oh man, it seems more than that after all that other food we have eaten. Anthony, being the only man at the table, aherm, got that tiny bit of 'stuff' in the super huge clam shell (that shell was so huge, could almost cover amy's face). We tucked into the over abundance serving of seafood, and had to dig for the pasta. Same as the pizza, the pasta sauce was very basic, again stressing on the freshness of the tomatoes and herbs. Lip smacking pasta indeed.
I knew we had to stop, but how to without at least a bit of Tiramisu?
The waitress came over with a plate of Tiramisu and a bottle of alcohol.
All of it? she ask Anthony. And hence the base of our Tiramisu was soaked with Marsala. Though slightly intoxicating, it a velvety smooth tiramisu nonetheless.

We had a fantastic dinner and entertainment by a tiny uncle tucked in a corner of the restaurant added more fun to our merry night too :). Bill was HKD270 per person.
5, Tsun Wing Lane, Central, Hong Kong (at a tiny lane between the Mid-levels Escalator and Graham Street in the heart of Soho)

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14 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Who needs the HK Michelin Guide when we have SC, eh? ;-) A year ago, you were the online Vietnamese food guide; this year, you get the award for HK! :-D

19 December, 2008  
Blogger Selba said...

Is it expensive to dine there?

19 December, 2008  
Blogger J2Kfm said...

bet your repeated trips to HK had you going for all sorts of cuisine, instead of Chinese food. :)

but what company and food you had ...

19 December, 2008  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey i cant see any traces of pasta in the seafd marinara! all drowned beneath ..amazing!

19 December, 2008  
Blogger Allie said...

The Super Marinara looks superb with all those clams, mantis prawns.. drooling already..

19 December, 2008  
Blogger Tummythoz said...

Youe were really not joking when you say it was an eating trip. *swoon*

19 December, 2008  
Blogger "Joe" who is constantly craving said...

omg..we r still not done with ur hk trip?? hahaha this is good..

now wondering how to fit everything in 4 days..bcoz im only goin that long u know..haha

19 December, 2008  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yay!! You were not disappointed with the promised seafood pasta huh? After I made that comment earlier this year about the best seafood pasta I've ever had, I was worried thinking "what if SC doesn't feel that way?". hahaha...

19 December, 2008  
Blogger sc said...

lyrical lemongrass: aww, so sweet of you to say that :). but i must say, J2kfm did a way better coverage of HK compared to mine..mine's too focused on central.

selba: we paid about RM130 per person...

j2kfm: this is my repeated trip already, and yes, hence have the luxury to try other cuisine :).. oh yeah, the company's excellent!

kampungboycitygal: hahaha, just so much seafood!

allie: yes, the mantis prawns were small though, looks like bugs actually :p

tummythoz: eating for brekkie, lunch and dinner..for 9 days, so quite a lot to cover ma :)

joe: soon, soon..i'm wrapping it up ;). yes, u did mentioned 4 days..just choose what you feel like trying lor :p

SF: of course i'm not disappointed! i like freshness of the ingredients. reminds me of those i had in italy. basic, but tasty. thanks gal for recommending!

20 December, 2008  
Blogger choi yen said...

I wonder will they re-use the seashell? :P

20 December, 2008  
Blogger backStreetGluttons said...

our best all-time memorable Italiano Dinneria ( errr so-called la ) was a small piece of crusty pizza each and 1 bottle ( each ) of Italian red wine ( dunno from where nor name )served by a sweet Malay girl ( forgot name also )

beautiful red high heaven !

last time near Sunway Hotel, Sunway opposite Suchi Canai beside the African Elephants , now where have they all gone ah ?

21 December, 2008  
Blogger sc said...

mimid3vils: i'm sure they do..it's like a deep bowl dish, very solid actually.

backstreetGluttons: alas, i am lost at your direction of this long ago place. when canai & such was around, i was still a college kid, italian was considered a luxury then.. so never tried :(

24 December, 2008  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is THE worst italian in Hong Kong. The mid-levels has one or 2 good ones but most are horrendously bad. I wondered if I had a bad experience but I see from your 'bruschetta' pic that it comprised the same stale piece of supermarket bread that I had.

Any italian rest that does not produce a selection of fresh warm breads as you sit down is a failure.

Goes to show though that these places survivev because guys like you treat the food as a photographic subject, not a work of culinary art and you'd rather have quantity than quality.

25 February, 2009  
Blogger sc said...

anon: thanks for popping by. actually, fyi, the bruschetta was not stale but i was late and my friends ordered it for themselves. obviously it was cold when i ate it (it was never planned for me to eat it). please read my post properly. also, my bad photos dont do the food justice. i am keeping this blog as my food diary, obviously all my food is a photographic subject. if you took time to read my other posts, i write on all my good and very bad food experiences.
quantity is never something that swayed my opinion, i write based on my own food experience. i've travelled extensively in italy before and i can safely say that the food here greatly tastes like what i had in italy (esp the pastas). and the person who brought us to this restaurant is an italian, he said the food here reminds him of those he had back in italy. i'm not sure why you sound so bitter about this restaurant, maybe you had a very bad experience there. oh well, guess all of us have different tastes and likes. nonetheless, thanks for your comments. have a good day ahead!

25 February, 2009  

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