The Parish Brings Southern Food With Soul to Hong Kong
This week's new and noted restaurants.
The Parish
Southern comfort food stalwart Restoration may have shuttered its doors last month, but before you start worrying about where to get your next jambalaya fix, here’s some good news: former co-founder and executive chef Jack Carson is launching his own Southern kitchen in SoHo, serving up the best of Cajun and Creole cooking in a beautiful vintage space with worn woods, leather furniture and hanging light bulbs. The Parish is your new home for New Orleans cuisine in Hong Kong, touting a menu jam-packed with Southern comfort dishes such as homemade corn bread, smoky tasso Louisiana ham and green onion mac ‘n’ cheese, crawfish pie, fried chicken, prawn and chicken jambalaya, BBQ ribs and pecan crusted catfish with creole meunière. If that doesn’t set your taste buds on fire, you can also expect standout soul food desserts from pecan pie to Mississippi mud pie and Key lime pie. We can’t wait to dig in to this authentic slice of The Big Easy.
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Giando
When it comes to Italian food, simplicity is usually the way to go—why ruin a juicy and sun-ripe tomato or a soft and creamy handmade burrata with a distraction of sauces and sides? Unfortunately, in Hong Kong, we too-often get served sub-prime ingredients that need all the little extras just to cover up the taste of old prosciutto or tinny tomatoes. That’s not the case at Giando, chef and restaurateur Gianni Caprioli’s Fenwick Pier restaurant which recently moved to a trendier location on Wan Chai’s Star Street (the old location still operates as the casual Gia Trattoria, serving up Gianni’s signature thin-crust pizzas). Under the direction of head chef David Tamburini, Giando is everything an Italian trattoria should be: casual and cozy, with premium imported ingredients shining through in the rustic, simplistic menu. Start off with a Mediterranean-style carpaccio of scallops, red shrimp and yellowtail ($238) or baked scamorza cheese with grilled radicchio and saba dressing ($198). Mains include meat and seafood, thin-crust pizzas, and fresh handmade pasta such as the aglio e olio with sea urchin and bottarga ($298). The weekday set lunch menu is affordably priced at $268 for three courses, but the brunch is the real steal with a semi-buffet, a main and a dessert for just $288. Add on free-flow Contadi Castaldi for $208, an Italian sparkling wine that’s just the ticket to a lazy afternoon.
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Mercato
One of our favorite restaurants from celebrated chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten has just opened in Hong Kong, and if it’s anything like its northern counterpart, we couldn’t be more excited. Taking up residence in California Tower alongside some of the other heavy-hitters of 2016 (Jinjuu, Porterhouse, Cé La Vi), Mercato is set to become one of the top Italian kitchens in Hong Kong, showing off a rustic menu of handmade pastas, fresh seafood salads and premium Italian ingredients such as rich and creamy burrata cheese and smoky pancetta. The star item at Mercato is undoubtedly the wood-fired pizzas—slightly charred with a crackling crust revealing a soft, doughy interior, set with a brilliant array of toppings from spicy pork sausage to house-made ricotta and organic farm eggs; if they can replicate the same pizza perfection in Hong Kong, we’ll be the first in line.
