The other Italian

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It was supposed to be a casual business lunch, and with a big group of us I was kinda expecting Cantonese.  However the partner at my service provider kinda realized that I enjoy my food, and decided to take us to L'Altro - the Italian restaurant not far from my office which has earned themselves a little macaron last year.  Given that I'd never been here before, it was an unexpected chance to check it out.

Going to a new restaurant is always a challenge while I'm on my diet, and the problem gets worse when it's a limited menu.  My colleague and I took some time trying to pick out the "lighter" choices from the list, although I think he had an easier time… since he didn't need to make sure he got all the food groups in.

Burratina di andria con verdure grigliate e marinate - well I needed to get some veggies in, so I settled for the marinated grilled veggies.  I even tried to scrape off some of the excess olive oil so cut down on my oil take…  Of course the burrata was a complete no-no, but I was curious to check out the quality here.  In the end, it wasn't the best I've had in Hong Kong, but neither was it the worst.  The interior wasn't all solid and still had some of the buffalo milk, and the solids were still reasonably soft.

Spaghetti alla chitarra all' amatriciana - I needed some carbs, so chitarra it is.  Unfortunately they weren't about to offer me the simple pomodori spaghetti that I always get a few floors down, so I took the fattier version made with pecorino and guanciale…  Thankfully there wasn't a lot of guanciale, and I made sure to take out all the deep-fried onion rings that was used as garnish on top.  This was pretty good, as the pasta was certainly al dente.

Two courses was definitely enough for me, so I just took an espresso to help digestion.

The two-course set lunch here cost about twice of what I would pay a few floors below at Linguini Fini, but the pricing was certainly justified and offers very good value.  Given that this place was only about half full at lunch today, maybe I'll keep them in mind in the future.  I'd also be very curious to come back during dinner...