Today, Hong Kong Restaurant Week 2012 (hosted by DiningCity.com) will start taking advance bookings on its website at 10am. If you want to get in on the action, check out our recent interview with organiser Synthia Liem to sleuth out the pre-booking code.
For now, we give you a sneak peek of one of our favourite menus from this year's Hong Kong restaurant week: Doppio Zero.
What it is: Doppio Zero takes its name from the finest flour available in Italy, the same type the restaurant uses to make their famed fresh pasta out of. Heading the kitchen is chef partner Jake Addeo, an Italian-American from New York who is the former executive chef of the BLT franchise in Hong Kong.
Atmosphere: Located in the trendy neighborhood of Sheung Wan, Doppio Zero is a casual yet elegant restaurant on the basement floor of the Pemberton building. A perfect date spot, we love the intimate table settings and cosy ambience, not to mention the free gallery space that the charming trattoria offers to artists at no charge at all.
Food and drinks: The restaurant week dinner menu at Doppio Zero is a three-course menu with two choices of appetisers, mains and dessert. While pasta is usually a secondi on a typical menu at the restaurant, it will be served as a main during restaurant week.
"We want to punch the pasta into people," said Addeo, who's hailed for making some of the best fresh, authentic pastas in Hong Kong. "At BLT, I taught people what a burger is, like, how it's not supposed to be grey. Now I'm doing the same thing with pastas." Things to note include: Spaghetti House is not pasta, fresh pastas are not meant to be al dente and the joy of pasta is the pasta itself, not so much the sauce.
We started with an antipasti of grilled beetroot salad with watercress, balsamic onions and creamy bottarga vinaigrette, a refreshing and balanced start to the meal. Next, the fresh baccala ravioli with creamy salt cod filling was a perfect ten, thanks to Tuscan beans that matched perfectly with the texture of the salt cod and sliced green olives sprinkled inside and outside of the ravioli (so that "people know what they're eating", said Addeo).
Dessert was the arancini dolci -- fried sweet risotto balls with currants, rum sauce and cinnamon gelato that brought us that Christmas feeling all over again.
Verdict: At just HK$328 per person, the Hong Kong restaurant week dinner menu at Doppio Zero is an incredible opportunity to discover what real pasta is supposed to look and taste like. And that, in Addeo's own words, is, "soft, fresh and elegant".
Doppio Zero, G/F, The Pemberton, 22 Bonham Strand, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, +852 2851 0682, www.doppiozero.com.hk
Hungry for more? Find out what other restaurants we recommend for this year's Hong Kong restaurant week!
