Spasso Italian Bar & Restaurant, Mody Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

From the DiVino Group to TripAdvisor to the South China Morning Post, I hear about the stunning view of the Victoria harbour at Spasso (Empire Centre, 68 Mody Rd, Hong Kong, tel : +852 2730 8027). It's a view I'm sure, but I really don't know about stunning. And it's far too close to the busy road that I'd be inhaling vehicle exhaust along with my olive oil. I know because we were almost as close as it could get to the outdoor terrace without actually being outdoors.

That aside, food was pretty good and service was rather good. But the latter is likely to be because of a particular wait staff that attended to our table. I could tell we would not be getting the same type of service from simply anyone else. The restaurant is helmed by a Michele Senigaglia, Venetian born but the menu isn't from that part. I can't pin point exactly where, but it's probably southern Italian. One detects Sicilian and Sardinian. But to the food...

This was the sequence of the food based on the recommendation of the wait staff due to what we ordered. The recommendation made sense and we agreed with doing the seafood stuff first before the lamb. For the first time in a very long time, we skipped starters/antipasto.

The first dish that was served was simply called Sardinian sea bass fillet. With potato scales and a very delicious orange-rosemary sauce. This was sophisticated yet simple at the same time. The individual components were nicely done and it was all presented with some effort. I am curious as to how those potato scales were done.

Then came the Sicilian red prawn and blood orange risotto. Carnaroli rice. They took al dente really seriously and it was much more toothsome than we had expected out of the rice. A little more cooked would be nice. The flavours were a balance of some crustacean, I'm guessing stock from the prawns and blood oranges. The fruit left a light citrus element to the rice but the dish was on the overall savoury. I was hoping that it would be a little fruity, but I guess that's not how it was meant to be.

This was simply New Zealand lamb chops on the menu. It came with a black truffle crust and a fresh thyme jus reduction. This was really nicely done as you can see from the beautiful shade of pink.

So good that I just needed to put up another picture of the other side.

The black truffle crust was the damp kind, superbly balanced by virtue of quantity to match the lamb-y flavors of the meat where neither overpowered the other. The meat was tender, fat laced and....just very delicious. It came to the point where we had to cast the utensils aside for a more primeval method of removing the meat off the bones. Followed by wiping the plate down with bread so that none of the jus went to waste.

And this was the clean bone tribute paid in testimony to how much we enjoyed the lamb.