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Susan Jung

Cuisine: Spanish
Price: about HK$450 per person without drinks or the service charge.
Ambience: quiet. The restaurant was less than half full on the night we visited, and there were no customers in the ground floor bar area.
Pros: our waiter was friendly and very knowledgeable about the menu, and he also had a shy sense of humour.

Cons: we were disappointed to find they were out of the rubia gallega – the Spanish beef that the restaurant is named after, but it could not be helped, as flights from Spain were being cancelled because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Recommended dishes: the seasonal tomato salad with smoked sardines (HK$95) was a lovely, refreshing start to the meal. The tomato was a little hard, but the smoked sardines, pine nuts and herbs gave it plenty of flavour.

The huevos rotos (“broken eggs”), with a choice of morcilla (blood sausage) or chorizo (HK$73), was a rather heavy starter, but we loved it. There was plenty of crumbled blood sausage mixed in with the potatoes, and our waiter instructed us to break the sunny-side-up eggs and mix everything together. It wasn’t pretty, but it was delicious.
The skillet main courses (beef steaks, tuna steak and Iberico pork ribs) come with fried potatoes, confit red piquillo peppers and butter lettuce with mustard dressing, which make them reasonable deals. We had the acorn-fed Iberico pork short ribs (HK$380), which were coated with what our waiter described as “Spanish barbecue sauce”. They had been cooked sous-vide so were very tender, but not mushy.
The piquillo peppers seemed too sweet at first, but were delicious when eaten with the pork. The patatas bravas – cooked with whole garlic cloves and extra-virgin olive oil – were crunchy and sufficiently salty, while the salad, with crisp lettuce leaves and a tangy dressing, refreshed the palate.

From the “other mains” section, we had the black fideos with Spanish red king prawns and all i oli (HK$350). The short lengths of black squid ink pasta had a wonderful seafood flavour. Our waiter told us to put the prawns on our plates and mix the all i oli (also known as aioli) into the pasta, which muted the strong garlickiness of the sauce while also adding flavour to the pasta.
What else? We were too full for dessert, but there was a choice of three: warm cheesecake with whisky ice cream, baked hot chocolate cake with extra virgin olive oil, and ice cream.
Rubia, Wisdom Centre, 35-37 Hollywood Road, Central, tel: 2889 1199





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Food & Drink


The huevos rotos made for a substantial starter – not pretty, but delicious – and pork short ribs cooked sous vide with piquillo peppers were a good combination
Black squid ink pasta with red king prawns and all i oli was a flavour-packed dish, and the patatas bravas suitably crunchy and salty



Despite being out of the Spanish beef dish the restaurant is named after, there was plenty to like at Rubia in Central – in particular, the rather heavy but delicious huevos rotos starter.


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