Cucina (Hong Kong)

I was looking out for a new restaurant over the easter break in Hong Kong when I discovered Cucina – a ,fancy, (primarily) Italian restaurant in Harbour City – Kowloon. Got an online booking which gave us a nice 15% discount and headed off the next day for one of the most deliciously prepared lunches of the holiday.

The restaurant seemed pretty empty when we got there, but the waiters were extremely friendly and the place looked spot on. Quiet music in the background, plenty of light and comfortable seating with plenty of space. We got seated at a table near the massive windows and got a beautiful harbour view out of it so I definitely won’t complain about the lack of other people.

Anyway, on to the food! They had a large all-you-can-eat 3 course chinese lunch set menu as well as an italian a la carte. My mum decided to go for the chinese and the rest of us went for the italian. I didn’t get pictures of everything, but here’re the items that I loved the most (took a few bites out of other peoples’ food as one always should.

We got these dumplings after the soup in the chinese menu. The soup was spot on, but these dumplings were good enough to be on another planet. They were just the right level of chewyness, and unlike most other “vegetarian” dumplings which are merely made with fake-meat a la tofu, these were a proper fresh take on the appetizer, with thinly sliced baby corn, mushrooms and I’m tempted to say bok choi. Really, really good.

I went for the pizza option – wild mushrooms and black truffle shavings. It didn’t look that appetizing to be honest – rather meaty, but I suppose it could appeal to some. There was also a really stingy amount of black truffle shavings in it, so if I had to choose again I would have gone for a simple Margherita instead. That said, it tasted thanks to a stunningly put together base.

The most beautiful course of the meal, by far, was this one. Aubergines with mozzarella. Lightly dressed with some tomato sauce, olive oil and bay leaves, it was an outstanding appetizer. The aubergines were perfectly cooked, all nice and red with a just-under crispy skin. The tomato sauce wasn’t too strong and there was the right amount to coat all the aubergines and altogether even though I had just a bite out of it, it made the whole meal feel wonderful.

Altogether, the meal was relatively expensive, around 250hk$/person, but considering the quality of the ingredients and creative dishes, I’d say it’s definitely worth trying. The menu has quite a decent range of dishes, but vegetarians like myself will find it limited. Nonetheless, the atmosphere, staff friendliness and taste of everything you’ll get should make up for this! Oh if only that menu had more veggie options… this place would make it to my hong kong favourite-eateries list.