Lifestyle/ Food & Drink

Four Seasons Hong Kong welcomes new executive chef

Italian Andrea Accordi brings a wealth of international experience and has already starting updating the menus

Bernice Chan

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Published: 10:00am, 29 Jun, 2016

Updated: 2:00pm, 30 Jun, 2016

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Chef Andrea Accordi.

The Four Seasons Hong Kong has a new executive chef, Andrea Accordi hailing from Nogara in the province of Verona, Italy. It’s a homecoming of sorts for him – about 20 years ago he worked in Hong Kong, including a brief stint learning how to cook Chinese food at The Peninsula Hong Kong.

Accordi was previously in Prague, Florence, St Petersburg, St Moritz and London as well as Phuket and Bangkok.

Interior of The Lounge at the Four Seasons Hong Kong.

The amiable chef has begun revamping the menu at The Lounge, giving it a more Italian focus, and making it lighter on the stomach. There may be more fresh pasta items in the near future.

The Lounge currently has a promotion until mid-July featuring Australian black truffles and we were invited to try some dishes Accordi recommended.

For starters the crispy vegetable salad (HK$320) is an artistic presentation of avocado, asparagus, artichoke hearts, carrots and radish, accompanied with a small tomato that is filled with white tomato foam, and decorated with thin slices of Parmesan and aromatic black truffle in a shallow bowl of chilled tomato consommé.

The Lounge is currently running a black truffle promotion.

Another appetiser worth sampling is the grilled Hokkaido scallops (HK$450). The plate was again beautifully decorated, with the naturally sweet scallops and a thin slice of black truffle on top, accompanied with mushrooms, greens and buttermilk and lettuce sauce.

One of Accord’s signature dishes is his sweetbread ravioli (HK$480). Each house-made ravioli looked like a flower, stuffed with beef heart, and decorated with chunks of sweet langoustine, together with tomato and black truffle slices, and smoked eggplant purée.

For desserts, pastry chef Ringo Chan has some creative sundaes up his sleeve, and he doesn’t use alcohol to make them interesting.

He makes a sweet tribute to the Fragrant Harbour with Hong Kong Chill (HK$145) that has elements of local favourite treats, by making a sundae using egg waffle-flavoured ice cream, together with the pieces of the iconic snack, and condensed milk jelly cubes, and his own take on sesame cookies.

Another option is the very fruity Tropical Paradise (HK$145), perfect for summer, featuring lychee sorbet, nut coco ice cream and pineapple and verbena frozen yoghurt, with slices of peach, pineapple, lychee and mini coconuts dressed with passion fruit sauce.

The last one called Yame-licious (HK$145) features Fukuoka matcha ice cream, complemented with Asuki red bean jelly cubes, and crème caramel underneath.

Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong

8 Finance Street

Central

Tel: 3196 8888