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2014-07-10
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After finishing my latest watercolor portrait (which took me 50+ painful hours to do so), I decided visit the art galleries and the small streets in Soho on a Monday morning. Despite being a symbol of the swanky boisterous nightlife side of Central, Soho is actually a very quite and peaceful area in daytime. The sharp visual contrast between the exotic, extravagantly furnished bars and restaurants and the shabby historic neighborhood seems to be blurred under the same peacefulness. Simply seeing
The restaurant is pretty quiet and cozy. It was around 12:30 pm when I went in there and there were only around 3 to 4 tables of customer. Just like most of the western restaurants nearby, Cenacolo provides weekday 3-courses lunchsets including an appetizer, a main course, and a drink or dessert. I chose smoke salmon with mixed salad for the appetizer, mushroom risotto for the main, and iced coffee for the drink.
A bread basket was served after I ordered. It was one of the best bread baskets I have ever tried in Hong Kong! The bread was warm. It's crispy on the outside, and instead of having the usual soft or chewy bread texture on the inside, it had a moist and dense texture almost like that of a pound cake. The bread had a rich flavor of fresh herbs. It was a bit too salty alone but it tasted just right after dipping into the balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
The salad was fresh but it didn't made a strong impression. The smoke salmon was of average quality. The vinaigrette dressing wasn't enough.After finishing the salad, the risotto was served. The risotto was cooked in perfect timing which gave the rice a chewy uncooked texture. It was served with a generous amount of porcini mushrooms. However, the sauce wasn't rich and creamy enough (at least for me).
I only ordered my iced coffee after finishing my meal because I didn't want the ice in the coffee to be melting while I was eating. Yet to my disappointment, the coffee was diluted and watery even when it was freshly made. On top of that, the coffee was too sour. It was as bad as the iced coffee I had in Urban Bakery Works in Central Landmark. Overall, the food in Cenacolo is nice and reasonably priced.
p.s. I chose to write my dining experience in Cenacolo as my first review because I weren't used to "let the camera eat first" and it was the first time I remember to take photos of the food ;P Sorry for the poor picture quality. I will write more reviews on the food I tried before but unfortunately those will probably be without photos (I will try to describe as detailed as possible to compensate for that, haha)
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