Restaurant review: Arcane - delicious, light food and a casual vibe
Shane Osborn's cuisine at Central restaurant has reached another level
I ate chef Shane Osborn's food when he was at St Betty in the IFC and wasn't particularly impressed. But his food at Arcane is at another level entirely. My only complaint is that the tables are too close together — so close, in fact, that our friendly neighbours didn't have to lean over very far when they wanted to ask us what dish the waiter had just served us.
It was a comp'd dish. I don't think I was recognised, but they knew my guest as it was her third visit. Arcane is so casual that we didn't feel awkward about offering them a taste of the delicious potato gnocchi with black truffles, cep purée and morel ragout, and after a bit of hesitation, they accepted. We had a nice conversation about restaurants in Sydney after that.
The menu is short, with just six starters and six mains. There was one special appetiser, and when I heard it was sweetbreads, we ordered it immediately. It was a perfect dish for a cool evening: lightly seared, tender sweetbreads with Jerusalem artichoke purée, fried trumpet mushrooms and black truffles (HK$269).
Our other appetisers were just as delicious. One combined sweet, soft langoustines with pork belly and roasted garlic purée (HK$298). Much lighter were the lightly cured (they were basically raw) Hokkaido scallops with spanner crab and crunchy jicama, all flavoured with purple shiso, yuzu, sesame and ginger (HK$268).
For our main, we ordered the wagyu short rib (HK$438): two large, tender pieces of boneless meat that came with soft parmesan polenta, truffled sweet corn and diced celery, which gave a welcome crunch.
Desserts of yuzu and lemon posset with poached meringues, mandarin and yogurt ice cream, white chocolate and cardamom sugar (although we couldn't detect the cardamom, HK$128), and Japanese winter strawberries with lemon curd, hibiscus jelly, vanilla ice cream and cinnamon beignet (HK$128) were nice, light and refreshing.
