Restaurant review: Pici in Wan Chai – delicious pasta, flavourful starters

My friends and I visited Pici on a miserable day, during a torrential downpour when the Hong Kong Observatory had declared an amber rainstorm warning. I told my friends to meet at 6pm sharp – the popular restaurant doesn’t take bookings and we didn’t want to queue for seats. But I had second thoughts and told them, “We can probably meet a bit later, because who's going to be out in this weather?”

It’s a good thing they didn’t listen to me; by the time I arrived – soon after 6pm, the restaurant was almost full, and there were still people waiting when we left two hours later.

Thankfully, my friends had already secured seats at the counter, although they did try for one of the few tables, only to be told that they were only given to groups of four. We were annoyed when they then gave the table to a group of three men.

The food was good enough to soothe any feelings of annoyance.

We decided to order several rounds because we worried that all the dishes would come at once and there wasn’t space at the counter for all the food we wanted to try.

Burrata (HK$95) was soft and moist, but could have used a few flakes of sea salt. The cherry tomatoes served with it were sweet but the rocket was a bit tough.

We liked the flavour and texture of the house-made meatballs (HK$85), although they would have been better served hot instead of warm.