Avanti Pizzeria    意廊    

This place used to be one of my favorites in Shatin area. Recently had the chance to dine here again with a few friends, only to find that the quality of the place had slipped considerably. The menu had been changed, and so I had reason to believe that maybe the chef was also gone. Many of the items were now boring and unimaginative, and we had quite a hard time in making our choices. Finally we all settled for the 3-course dinner sets. For starters, the pan-fried goose liver was still good, albeit a bit small in size The salmon with mixed grilled vegetables was ok, but again it was a relatively "easy" dish to make, for they simply grilled a few veggies like eggplant and asparagus and then added pieces of ready-to-eat smoked salmon into the plate at the end; unfortunately the salmon was rather bland in taste and did not manage to tickle our taste buds. For main dishes, we tried the 9oz chargrilled steak, the beef tenderloin and the pan-fried pork with apple sauce. The steak was extremely thin-cut and, despite we ordered medium rare, was clearly overdone; there was also hardly any evidence of "chargrilling". Likewise, the beef tenderloin was also overdone, with a coarsed texture, and was not juicy at all; food portion was also on the small side.The pork tasted fine, and was perhaps the only satisfying dish of the night, although I must say that it could hardly be called impressive or memorable in our opinion. One thing worth mentioning was the potato mash which was actually quite good, with a very rich buttery flavour and soft in texture. Desserts (chocolate mousse cake and blueberry panna cotta) were fine, but we personally did not like the coffee as it was too acidic and bitter in taste . The only nice surprise of the evening was the special discount offer that they were now offering, which interestingly equaled the maximum ambient temperature of the day; for us, we got a 31% discount to the bill as a result. But still, the price was not cheap at all. In summary, we were saddened to report that the overall quality of the place had deteriorated; and the lyrics of a famous song came to mind as I was writing these lines: " ... You've lost that loving feeling, oh that loving feeling"... ... Anyway, we sincerely hoped that this was just a lapse in their service, but given the less than satisfying dining experience, it would probably be a long time before we would consider coming back to this place again.