Nice cosy restaurant @ La Dolce Italiana

This is probably the best restaurant in TKL, the decor is rather dreamy, it has a white tree with flashing blue LED lights, the interior is rather modern European.

This restaurant and the Design school opposite is quite surreal in the whole of TKL, the rest of the shops and eateries seem grey and gloomy.

Although it appears to be Italian, alot of the items are not authentically Italian, but serving steaks and fusion items.

I ordered two snack platters which was a choice of three items, a soup, and a drink for $48.

There were six choices to choose from, so for two snack platters, tried all the six dishes.

1) Ravioli in cheese sauce
2) Mussels in cream sauce
3) Dessert of the day
4) Portugese baked vegetables
5) Potato wedges in bolognaise
6) Napolean grilled ribs in vinegar

To soup was served first, a mushroom soup and a russian borst soup, I felt that the mushroom tasted better, it contained alot of finely chopped mushrooms.
Dessert of the day was one of those desserts from the range of desserts on their cabinet.

Basically the white sauce for Ravioli and the mussels were the same, the mussel were fresh and not the frozen ones.
The potato wedges were fried potato wedges topped with bolognaise sauce.
All the dishes tasted good, but I felt that 1 and 2 were the best.

 

 

 

 

P-a-s-t-a M-i-o will make my day any day @ Pasta Mio

I love gnocchi and ravioli so when I saw the reviews here I just had to try it out.
In the earlier reviews there were no seating but now there are tables outside the shop.

The last time I had lovely gnocchi and ravioli was at La Piazzetta in Wan Chai.
Review at La Piazzetta featuring gnocchi and tortellini:
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/commentdetail.htm?commentid=2149877

There is a similar joint like Pasta Mio called Deli Deli at Fortress Hill too which reminds me of New York, but Deli Deli seems more Japanese and Chinese because it serves sweet red bean pizza and oolong tea, adapted more for locals.

The pasta at this place was so tempting I couldn’t wait until winter because I love having a lovely box of hot pasta in the cold.
I prepared myself for the heat and sweat.
It was sweltering that day when I had the pasta.

I checked their website earlier and RETTANGOLI (Salmon-Dill ravioli) was the one I most wanted to try.
But when I got there, they had changed the menu and this one had been discontinued, but Gnocchi and other filled pastas were available. I wish I came here earlier because Salmon and dill as a filling in ravioli sounds yummy.

 

Pasta Mio is located near the long escalators on the corner. It is bright red, and the logo looks like an O sliced horizontally at the centre with the name in the middle, the sliced halves of the O is made of lines that represent pasta and the colour is dark corn.

The logo resembles Café O, but Café O has the name on top and the big O at the bottom.

It has big glass windows clearly displaying the different pastas available, each of them are labelled.
There is a glass display with cakes because they have a cake shop in Sheung Wan called Sprinkles, so I would expect their cakes to taste nice if they have a cake shop.

 

 

The walls of Pasta Mio are grey which matches nicely with their colour theme.

Anyway I sat down and had a look at their menu. At first it can be confusing, but basically you choose the type of pasta first, then the sauce, and then the size.

The pastas they have are:
Farfelle, Fusilli, Gnocchi, Penne (plain/wholewheat).
In the premium pastas range it includes filled pastas such as tortelloni, the choices are Spaghetti, Tagliatelle, Fiocchi (filled with smoked ham and fontana cheese), Tortelloni (spinach and ricotta cheese) and Tortellacci Toscani (filled with Casatella, Ricotta & Parmesan).

The sauces they had were:
Pomodoro (Tomato + Basil)
Arrabbiata (Tomato + Chilli)
Chicken (Tomato + Rosemary Chicken)
Bolognese (Tomato + Beef + Pork)
Melanzana (Tomato + Grilled Eggplant + Provolone Cheese)
Amatriciana (Tomato + Bacon)
Boscaiola (Tomato + Cream + Ham + Mushroom)
Carbonara (Cream + Egg + Bacon)
Four Cheese (Cream + Cheese)
J. Pesto (Basil + Pine Nuts + Olive Oil + Parmesan)

In the end I chose gnocchi with four cheese to compare it with La Piazzetta and Tortellacci Toscani with chicken and rosemary sauce and the size I chose was FIT (the smallest) so I could try both.
The pastas came fairly quickly.
Even though it was sweltering the pasta was so delicious the heat didn’t reduce my appetite.

 

 

 

Gnocchi with four cheeses sauce:
It looked similar to La Piazzetta, but the portion was slightly bigger.
The cheese sauce was quite runny and hot, but it was really nice and not sickly.
On top the gnocchi was powdered cheese too.
The gnocchi texture is similar to the chinese sweet dumplings and Shanghai new year cakes, but the texture of the gnocchi was not all consistent, some where harder or softer than others.
Although it wasn’t consistent it was nice having a variety of textures.
Gnocchi is made of potato and flour and its size and appearance is a bit like a chinese beard candy with ridges on the top.

 

Tortellaci Toscani with chicken and rosemary sauce:
The base of this sauce was tomato, and there were generous pieces of chicken. The chicken was really tender and fresh. Usually I do not eat the meat, but I ate all the chicken in this.
The Tortellaci was generous but some of it was stuck together.
The filling inside the tortellaci was ricotta, parmesan and casatella.
Casatella is a soft fresh rindless cows’ milk cheese from Lombardy
But anyway I loved it I could have had more, the cheese filling was really strong, I am glad I had this instead of the spinach and cheese filling.

To finish it off I had a tiny cupcake, which came with the set. It was really cute especially the box because the size of the box is about half the height of a coke can.

 

 

It was expected to taste good, because their cake range looked professional.
The pricing may be pricey, but its really good, and I cant wait till the summer goes and I really hope the RETTANGOLI (Salmon-Dill ravioli) will be back one day!
Next time, I will be back for the baked Macaroni and cheese.
I am so fed up with the fake macaroni and cheese inspired dishes that are just made with cream.

For health conscious people, they have a calories table on their menu, so you can see how much calories your pasta is because they have given an estimate for different pastas they do paired with the sauces.