Carbone

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Item: Carbone
Rating: 4
Author: eatwai

202 Reviews

Taste

Decor

Service

Hygiene

Value

47582

Central

$401-800

Italian

128

eatwai

Level4

183

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[ Carbone | 中環 ]

Straight from New York, Black Sheep has taken the challenge of bringing the people of Hong Kong to 19th-Century America with an Italian heart. The restaurant is much bigger than I thought with 2 more segments beyond the bar space.

They serve you a piece of cheese from their 18-month-aged Grana Padano cheese wheel. The taste is sharp and pungent but melts in your mouth nonetheless. A nice bite to get in between dishes.

I also want to take a moment to address the plates they use. Every single decorated plate is handmade out of ceramic. The designs are whimsical and Italian. The chips in them are NOT intentional but it adds to the characteristics. A kind waiter who goes by George also told me that every single Carbone restaurant uses these plates and the number behind them is the nth plate.

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Bread basket

I had to write about their bread basket. Served warm with free refills!! This is where we get our money’s worth 🤪 sadly they don’t offer any olive oil and balsamic or butter. Only a few pieces of salami.

Their famous garlic bread is the epitome of crunchy and buttery goodness. The garlic is very aromatic and the baguette is crunchy but chewy and soft on the inside. I wished there are more parsley on top not only for a nicer appearance but also to balance out the oil with some herbs.

My favourite however is their focaccia. Extremely soft and chewy and pillowy. This thick piece of bread is so freaking good. The marinara sauce on top makes it taste like pizza and I absolutely love that. You can tell the bread was well prodded because of all the air bubbles and the volume it grew into. Wow. I ate 5 pieces without shame.

Last but not least is their sesame bread. Simple. Sadly, this was on the bottom of the basket so got a bit too soft and also it isn’t as hot as the other two 😔 Nonetheless, it tasted like normal bread and used this for Scarpetta (the Italian act of wiping clean one’s plate or bowl of sauces with a piece of bread) because of its blank canvas and it absorbed flavour well.

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Caprese $308

The burrata has no flavour. The texture is very creamy and soft but lacks the milky taste of cream. The size is also quite small for the price. I’ve been to restaurants that serve a plumper one for much less.

However, the tomatoes are super delicious. A variety of red, yellow and green heirloom tomatoes as well as small plump ones. I love the salsa verde on top too. But, the sauce isn’t the spicy one we are familiar with, this is more like basil herb oil. Still, it was very refreshing to eat and it matched deliciously with the soft burrata.

I highly recommend making a toast (or sandwich) with their sesame bread. The bread also absorbs the basil oil and tomato juices so well so don’t forget to Scarpetta it!

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Carpaccio Piedmontese $298

Very disappointing. I don’t know what I was expecting from this but it was not as good as other people said it was.

The beef is sliced oh so thinly that there is virtually no bite and texture to it. Like baby food. The salt levels are good but it was weirdly acidic…. The raw button mushrooms on top were also weird to me and my family (perhaps because we never eat raw mushrooms) and the texture was just not ideal with the walnuts. I guess this is the ‘Piedmont’ way. They also had a black winter truffle dressing on it which was very incongruous and just pushing their prices.

Because the beef is so thin, you need to cut 1/3 of it just for a decent spoonful so definitely not worth this price.

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Spicy Rigatoni Vodka $278

The reason we came here and it did not disappoint!!! I was so excited to finally try the viral pasta all the way from New York.

There’s nothing special about this pasta, to be honest. Just tomato, cream and of course, vodka. But somehow these come together to form one of the best pasta I’ve ever had.

The texture is Al dente with just a tad bit under so it’s quite firm and chewy, my family even thought it was a bit undercooked but I (a lover of hard, chewy things) loved this. A few of the rigatoni also got sauce snuggled up into the hole which made for a delicious bite.

The taste is uncanny. It also has quite a strong spice to it from the Calabrian chillis and some people couldn’t really take it but I myself loved the heat. It pairs well with the creamy sauce. Speaking of the sauce, I don’t know if it was intentional or not but it was rather thick and lumpy. Delicious but not very smooth and vicious, nonetheless, I still wiped every last bit off the plate with some bread and enjoyed it happily.

I also enjoyed the sweet and caramelised tomato pieces, perhaps they were sun-dried?

I wish the portion was bigger because this is so good but also for the price but each of us got to try a small bite and I ate the rest which was like 2 forks.

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Steak Diane $688

Chef Jack said that every table orders this so we had to try it out. Sadly, it was pretty average.

The presentation is lovely with the ribeye and sauce, defiantly unlike rustic steakhouses. I asked for it to be medium-rare and impressionably, it was. The beef is very tender but a bit chewy in the centre (my bad for ordering too rare haha) but needs salt. So I ate this with a small piece of the Grana Padano cheese and it made it much better.

They say it is a cacciatore sauce but it lacks the vibrant red and tomatoes to be called that. Moreover, a Steak Diane is normally served with a sauce made from mustard, Worcestershire, cream, and cognac which this is. The cognac made it bitter and rich but balanced out with the salty and umami Worcestershire sauce and the sharp mustard.

The portion is quite big (finally well deserved for its price) and each person got 2-3 pieces.

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Carrot cake $258

We chose 2 desserts from their dessert trolley (ps. those are all styrofoam) and this was one of them.

The presentation is beautiful with the tall carrot cake surrounded by dollops of cream cheese frosting. However, this meant we had to place the frosting on the cake ourselves for the full experience.

Taste-wise, this is the best carrot cake I’ve ever had. It is not overly sweet with a strong aroma and the taste of warm spices. Perfect to welcome winter in. The cream cheese frosting is also not too sweet and very light and fluffy. I really enjoyed this but it did get too sweet after a few bites. Next to this is scoop ginger ice cream which is perhaps my favourite part of the whole dessert. So refreshing and spicy that it awakens your mouth. The cake did get a bit dry at some point but I simply used it to mop up the melted ice cream and it was the bomb.

The portion is very large and worth this price. We shared this amount with 4 people and each got a generous portion.

Also, they served the desserts without clearing our plates first which was very annoying as we were celebrating a birthday and wanted to take a video of the cake being served but the table was messy and they had to scramble to take away plates when another staff was singing. I will look pass this as they were quite busy that night but what else do they expect? They are busy every night.

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Ferraro Rocher Cake $258

I asked the chef which dessert was his favourite and this was it. Surprisingly, it may be even better than the carrot cake.

This cake is composed of a hazelnut mousse, chocolate cake and Nutella buttercream, all on top of a crunchy chocolate wafer. This may sound very sweet but it was well-balanced with the hazelnuts. The vanilla ice cream on top also becomes homogeneous with the cake and moistens everything and making it taste much better. I really enjoyed the crunchy wafer layer against the smooth buttercream and mousse. All in all, this dessert has very nice contrasting textures but is definitely heavier on the chocolate side. Whereas the carrot cake had very good flavours but one-dimensional textures.

A very hefty portion and definitely worth this price. The slice is about 2 inches tall and 5 inches wide so it can be shared with everyone. But this cake was so good I think I could have eaten the whole thing. Whereas the carrot cake got very sweet after a while even though it was spice oriented.

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Limoncello

We ended the night with a limoncello digestif and this is not for the weak-hearted. They say it is light on the alcohol but one sniff and you will already have headaches. I drank a whole gulp and I felt my pulse on my brain. The taste is not bad, it smells very tart and sour but the taste of vodka overpowers it by a ton. House-brewed and a nice Italian gesture by the staff.

However, they actually gave it to us at the doors of the elevator because they forgot to when we asked for the bill.

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推介 🙆🏻‍♀️

💬 Overall, I highly recommend this place for celebrations as every other table was celebrating a birthday and the staff would dim the lights and sing a deep-throated song. The restaurant though is very loud, especially because the tables are close together so I don’t recommend it if you are looking for a quiet night. Food-wise, they are either good or not good, if I do come back, it will only be for the bread basket, pasta and desserts. But I might not as the prices are still making me uncomfortable.

🗓 Revisit? ✅ ⭕️/ ❎