Crust Italian, a new multi-faceted restaurant and pasticceria in Wan Chai, brings the timeless culinary heritage of Campania to Hong Kong.
There’s little doubt that Italy is a nation of good eating. From Parma to Scicily, it’s hard to get a bad meal. However, there are hotspots scattered across the Italian boot like so many olives cast across a pizza, and that includes Campania, home to Naples’ famed pizza and the Amalfi Coast’s acclaimed seafood.
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You can enjoy the best of Campania at Crust Italian, a new eatery housed on the ground floor of Wan Chai’s iconic heritage Woo Cheong Pawn Shop. A new destination for hungry lads looking for good coffee, even better pastries, and a host of Italian street food favourites, Crust promises to be a culinary hotspot throughout the day.
Early risers will be able to snap up freshly-made Italian breads, inspired by those produced at Gran Caffè Gambrinus in Naples, one of the ten oldest bars and pasticcerias in Italy, and grab a caffe sospeso or ‘suspended coffee’, which should be drunk standing up at the bar, Napoli style.
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CRUST Italian will also offer an all-day takeaway counter known as Crust ‘Scuscia’ (pronounced shoo-sha), which means street food in the Neapolitan dialect. Inspired by the narrow winding streets of Naples, which are filled with shop fronts and counters serving take away dishes like calamari fritti wrapped casually in paper cones, Crust Scuscia will offer such Napoli street-food favourites as Pizza Fritta, for fried pizza; frittatine di pasta, irresistible pasta topped with bechamel sauce, ham and peas before being battered, breaded and fried with a double-coated golden casing; and scarpetta – literally meaning ‘shoe’ – where pizza dough is filled with a ragu sauce.
In the evening Crust Italian will showcase the ultimate in aperitivo culture with expertly-crafted cocktails, Amalfi gins, Campari and wines by the glass accompanied by the requisite complimentary buffet of dishes to graze on.
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Crust Italian will also offer elevated Napoli cuisine in its main dining room, named Sala Capri after the stunning island 30 miles offshore of Naples. At lunch and dinner, a la carte and set menus by Neapolitan chef Sergio Landi, formerly of Cova, feature dishes celebrating the stunning bounty of produce for which southern Italy and Campania in particular is so renowned. These include seafood scialatielli pasta; a sensational 14-hour ragu made with six different cuts of pork, beef and veal; cod baked in a clay crust and desserts like rhum au baba, a marriage of alcohol-soaked sponge and cream that originates from Naples.
A ppava’ e a mmuri’, quanno cchiù tarde è pussìbbele (There is always time to pay and die) – famous Neapolitan proverb
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