At Shane Osborn’s Cornerstone in Central almost everything on the short menu is good

Apart from an uninteresting sausage pasta dish, the food we tried was fantastic – simple, satisfying and made with high-quality ingredients

With six starters, six mains and three desserts, it shouldn’t take long to decide what to eat

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Cornerstone in Central is a casual dining spot opened by Australian chef Shane Osborn. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 4:30pm, 13 Sep 2019Updated: 4:30pm, 13 Sep 2019

“Don’t order the tagliatelle”, I said quietly to the stranger at the adjacent table. I had just overheard her ordering the dish at Cornerstone, the new casual dining spot by Shane Osborn (of Arcane), and although not sure if she wanted unsolicited advice, I gave it to her anyway. She looked a bit startled, but then called back the waiter, cancelled the pasta dish, and ordered the steak sandwich – which I was ready to recommend.

Fortunately, the tagliatelle was the only dish we disliked.

The Cornerstone menu is brief: six starters, six mains and three desserts, although it does have daily specials (on the day we visited, it was red prawns, which we would have ordered, except that we arrived too early, and the prawns weren’t ready; we only knew of them because we heard a waiter telling yet another table about them).

Our starters were great. Baby gem salad (HK$128) had grilled wedges of the small heads of lettuce, paired with mustard- seed-flecked tomatoes and ripe avocado, and small pieces of smoked sardine.

Broccolini with chicken oysters. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Spears of grilled broccolini (HK$148) came with tender chicken oysters (the small, succulent morsels of meat from the bird’s lower back), sunflower seeds and a creamy Caesar dressing.