The secret’s out about these off-the-menu dishes at three Hong Kong restaurants thanks to social media

An Italian chef who made a popular pasta dish for a friend now cooks it for others, and a fish burger made to cheer up a customer is now on the menu at a hotel

A Macau-born chef’s braised pomelo and sea cucumber dish is so well liked that he now cooks it for guests dining in private rooms two or three times a month

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Paolo Monti, chef at Gaia Ristorante in Hong Kong, and his off-the-menu pasta Amatriciana, served in an iron skillet. It is an example of a one-off dish cooked for a regular guest that others then request once word gets out through social media. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 12:15pm, 30 May 2021Updated: 12:15pm, 30 May 2021

When a chef gets to know a restaurant’s regular patrons, there is some leeway to cook them special, off-the-menu dishes made with seasonal ingredients or ones that have just been delivered, or to cater to their hankering for a favourite dish.

Sometimes, the dish – no matter if it’s a time-consuming one appreciated by connoisseurs or an elevated fast-food burger – becomes popular via word of mouth and photos posted on social media.

For chef Paolo Monti, that dish was a traditional pasta made with high-quality ingredients. As the executive chef of Italian fine-dining establishment Gaia Ristorante in Sheung Wan on Hong Kong Island, Monti often has guests who ask him to make them something on the spur of the moment.

“A lot of customers come and want to see me. They want to hear what is in my fridge because I get things different coming in,” Monti explains. “A lot of people have menus done in that moment: ‘there’s four of us, we want three courses, we have this much time, you do it’.”

Italian actor Alberto Sordi in a scene from An American in Rome. Paolo Monti at Gaia Ristorante chef inspired to cook pasta Amatriciana for a regular guest because his face reminded hthe cheft of a scene in the film where Sordi’s character eats spaghetti.

Gaia Ristorante recently celebrated its 20th anniversary – impressive in fast-paced Hong Kong and even more remarkable because it has been in the hands of the same chef and manager, Pino Piano, for two decades.

One day in late February, a friend and regular customer visited Gaia, asking for some pasta. “When I saw his face, he reminded me so much of Alberto Sordi in the movie An American in Rome where he eats spaghetti. So I said, ‘You look like the Amatricianist’, it sounds like the name of a movie,” Monti recalls.