Amaroni's Little Italy  

Booked a table 3 weeks in advance prior to X'mas day by paying reservation fee. Upon arrival on the day, the receptionist actually made a mistake on my booking so waited not too long which finally got a nice cosy corner table for my girlfriend and myself. Visited this restaurant before with my family and decided to come here again as the atmosphere and environment is quite comfortable and romantic..especially for dating

Ordered A-La-Carte menu with Cream of Mushroom soup - big bowl Ceasar Salad, Beel Lasagne, and a Grilled Spring Chicken.

1) The soup was actually very rich, creamy and thick which we both couldn't stop having it to go with the nice Italian bread basket. Alot of mashed mushroom bits 'n' pieces were in the soup with some herbs were used in order to enhance the taste and smell of the appetizer (can't really figure out which herbs tho =/)

2) The ceasar salad was not bad with bits of croutons and parmesean cheese and ceasar dressing. Size of the portion was reasonably enough for 2 to share, so there are some more rooms remained for our hungry eating stomach The salad was nice and light to have before the mains arrived.

3) When the beef lasagne arrived we were speechless --> and didn't realised that the portion was quite large. The lasagne sheets were just a touch overcooked BUT the meat and sauce texture was quite nice. Nice in terms of tastes was rich in tomato with herbs and the whole dish was seasoned well enough.

4) Finally I didn't read the menu properly cause I was just hungry to order and spring chicken arrived as a whole, cut in quaters and it was so large that we both ate only a 1/4 of the dish. Took the rest home as we're not food wasters. The sping chicken was full of rosemary herbs which was very delicious and it was cooked to almost a perfect satisfaction where the texture of the chicken was so tender and juicy and not dry at all. I would definitely recommend to friends & family.

Overall, I would come back again in future

Total bill was at around..........better not say as my girlfriend could read my comments, haha just kidding

Well, i was looking for some american italian food and thats exactly what i got.
I do like such food occasionally for fun, large portions, very sweet ketchup tasting spaghetti, lasagne & cannelloni. All tasted more or less the same but like McDonald's burger, they bring me happiness and satisfaction once awhile.

Unfortunately staffs are very badly trained, everything i ordered i literately had to ask twice. None of them carried a smile on their face during my whole visit. The manager did not even thank us for eating there when we left, in fact not even a thank you after i signed my card receipt.

I though it would be a family friendly restaurant, what a disappointment to visit.

Haven't been to this restaurant for over a year. Had their President Set Lunch with my wife today. I ordered their 6oz rib eye with spaghetti and my wife chose their Italian seafood rice. I don't expect to have lots of meat from my 6 oz steak but this piece of "steak" is not only thin but with quite a lot of fat. Don't think it's rib eye. The disappointing part is that it's tasteless, like this piece of meat had been used to boil soup for several hours. After the meal, we ordered ice coffee and this coffee tastes terrible. I only had a sip and didn't want to finish.

I would never want to visit this restaurant again.

About 7pm, i had dinner with my fd in this restauant,
i was recommended by my fds who told me that restaurand is not expensive, also these dishes are quite nice.
i always take idea from my fds that night. we ordered one starter first, that was quite big seafood Then, we had mushroom rice and XXX Spaghetti ( i forgot what it's call><)
At last, Don't forget to try a superb yummy and excellent tiramisu !!! Perfect!!

PS; remember that you must reserve the table before you go. otherwise u need to be long waiting outside

I've been to this restaurant so many times not because of the food but because my wife likes the anti-pasto there. Each time I'm hoping that the food is better but simply put this place is nothing more than a glorified Cafe de Coral with an 'Italian' food badge slapped on it.

The pasta is here is really awful. I've tried virtually every pasta dish here and all are rather tasteless and greasy. If you like your pasta plastered with oil and grease that's fine, but for me it really was bad. The plus side is that the portions are generous.

The starter parma ham was another disaster. The ham was so difficult to chew that you could tell it was left open in the fridge for at least a week.

The roast chicken was way too dry. No taste.

The steaks here are typical of what you get in Fairwood or Cafe de Coral in HK... way too marinated and no real meat taste.

To top it off the Coffee they serve comes not with fresh milk but with condensed milk!

I come away thinking the food here is really on par with what you would get in Cafe de Coral. Nothing more. If you're looking for a decent Italian/European restaurant this is not the place.

If you like the nice decor and don't care about the food then this is the place for you. It certainly makes one feel like an upmarket restaurant. But if, like me, you go to a restaurant for good food, then this really is not the place. Good luck.

One of the best things to do for meeting up a friend is to have a nice decent meal together and sit down and chat. Barely would I come over to Festival Walk, but I'm meeting up with a close friend this time. I was asked to pick a restaurant over here, and after doing a bit of research, I've decided to have a try of this restaurant.
We didn't book a table that night, we assumed there won't be too many people on a monday evening, but i guess i was kind of wrong. When we asked for a table for two, we were told that the night's fully booked and will have to return the table by eight thirty. Seems that the restaurant's still having a busy night even on mondays. Anyway, we were okay with that so then we went in. I think the atmosphere and the decor of the restaurant's pretty nice, and it's quite comfy, but I would like to point out that the tables were set too close.
After we sat down, the bread basket was served and we were asked whether we want balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and were then given the menus. There were dinner sets available on the menu, but we chose to order from the a la carte menu and ordered an appetizer, pizza, and a pasta. The menu offered quite a lot of choices to make, and that's good.
Starting with the bread basket, I think the breads were quite authentic, but it was as well as a disappointment that the breads were all cold. It would have been a lot more better if it was at least warm. I'm sure the aroma of the spices would have totally come out if so.The food aren't served really fast, we have waited for some time for the appetizer to come actually. We ordered the mussels for the appetizer. I didn't remember the exact name of the dish, there were two mussels dishes on the menu and the one we ordered was the one with a recommendation mark. The dish indeed worth the recommendation. There's a great use of herbs and spices, the dish tasted great with the combination of the tomato sauce with the mussels. And of course the mussels tasted fresh to make this dish a satisfying one. The portion of it was kind of big too for an appetizer.Next was the pizza, the Margherita Pizzza. I have to say the pizza was pretty large, especially for just two girls. Guess it's better to come with a bunch of people and share the dishes. The pizza looked really nice and smelled great. It was not like the round-base pizza that we normally have, it's a rectangular one. However, when we started eating it, it didn't taste as stunning as it looked. The flavor's good, the crust was thin and of a pretty great chewing texture, however it just kind of lacked the authenticity.Lastly was the pasta, which was a Seafood Cannelloni. Both the pasta and the sauce gave a terrific texture, and the the sauce was flavorsome and rich, which i considered a plus to the dish. Nevertheless, the dish didn't entirely satisfy me. This was because it could be tasted that the seafood filling in the cannelloni pasta tube was merely frozen seafood. Honestly, the point of whether the seafood was frozen or fresh don't matter a lot, but what matters is to bring out the original authentic flavor of the food item, in which the seafood filling in this dish wasn't really able to achieve so. In overall, both me and my friend thought that the place was okay and nice, but it didn't blew us away with complete great satisfaction. I have to admit that the atmosphere is nice and the services are good, having the waiters speaking to you politely and patiently. But I just don't think it's of the best value as the dinner was not cheap at all.

It was just a random dinner gathering with my friends. I picked this italian restaurant because of the positive reviews. Honestly,
i enjoyed every moment there, the romantic atmosphere, oversized dishes of food! gotta love the tiramisu, it was so creamy and delicious .
I especially requested the seafood risotto.. It was good.but. i wouldnt say it was the best.

I quite liked the italian salad.. generally because i love cheese and black olives! yes black olives. seems like no one else is fond of black olives apart from me haha.. didnt wanna try the caesar salad as i could always have that in many places in hk. abit bored of it really.

The classic pizza was hugeee!!! nothing special about the pizza besides the size. it came last and we were nearly full so we had to take that away.
The rosemary chicken was average to be honest.. it's definitely something i can bake at home.

Overall it was a nice dinner, will definitely come back for a good italian salad and tiramisu!

I have never liked Amaroni's. I am partially biased becuase, being Italian, I resent anything American-Italian as overwrought and fake. This means that automatically I dislike the heavy decor (although the Italian lessons and phone books in the bathrooms are prettty cool, actually).

Onto the food: it's okay? I find a lot of the dishes just overdone: sauce too creamy, pizza too bready, dessert size too big. There is such a thing as restraint, you know! They have big prices but big sizes to match, so if you carefully choose a few dishes it ends up being okay.

I think Amaroni's is good in its own way - for cocktails with maraschino cherries, for good bread to dip into olive oil and balsamic vinegar, for sharing massive amounts of food with massive amounts of people.

Date and time of dining: 27th November 2010, evening
Rosemary chicken bites

The portion of the dishes are huge, but the service is not that great. Clearly, there isn't enough staff, we need to call the staff to take our order, to get us more water...

The white sauce clam spagehetti we ordered was tasteless. The regular cheesecake we got was salty. We talked to the Manager and she returned both dishes to the kitchen. Her explanation was the spaghetti dish tends to be 'unsalty' and the ingredients weren't mixed thoroughly when they made the cheesecake (really??). End up we weren't charged for those 2 dishes.

I don't think I'll return to this restaurant again.

Amaroni's has long been a reputed 'authentic' Italian restaurant in Festival Walk, and as much as I am a critic of 'authenticity' in Hong Kong dining, their reputation doesn't stray too far from the truth.

Naturally, as is all food in this day and age, Amaroni's food and dining experience is diluted by Americanized flavors. However, that is not to say that the food wasn't good.

It's been sometime since I visited, and so I only recall a three dishes, that is the Calamari, the Shrimp Penne and the table sized Classic Pizza. All three dishes fulfilled their roles as comfort food; they were comforting.

The ingredients were somewhat fresh (though some of the herbs were stale), execution was routine and textbook, and thus satisfying. It should be safe to say that if you were to order anything else on the menu, you'd be satisfied.

However, the ambiance of Amaroni's struck me, and I may come back just because of its setting. Along with the soft 'Italian' music swirled wafts of garlic and rosemary; the dimly lit room was plastered with movie posters and paintings... All in all, resonates stereotypical Italy to the common Hong Konger. Very, very enjoyable.

As an ending note, this is certainly I believe Amaroni's is certainly the restaurant for you if you're looking for an ambient setting that provides decent Italian food and a very comfortable setting.

Reserved a table two days before, that's great!
We had to celebrate my friend's bday at 7pm!
When we thought that we would be late for around 15 mins, I tried to call for deferring my table until 715pm, however, no one picked my call. I called twice, finally there was a lady picked up my call. I can deferred my table for 15 mins finally.

When we got a seat, the waiters and waitresses walked around and looked to be very busy!
Once we got a table but we didnt sit on the seats, the waitresses gave us some cold water. However, we would like to have some hot ones. She seemed to be very hurry to serve us with something first. Huh...

Then, we got a basket of bread with some vinegar and olive oil.
However, we were quite disappointed with the herbs bread since the bread was not warm enough, it was not re-baked. When I passed by the washrooms, I saw a big box of bread being put outside the washroom, and the waiters just got the bread from a plastic bag and poured them inside. OMG, it seemed to be very dirty to be put outside the washroom.

When we took an order, no one told us that the dishes are served with a huge portion!

Classic - sausage, peppers, onions & mushrooms--such a large one! There are totally 16 pcs. The bread at the bottom was not soft enough, also, the ingredients on the top are very salty. This JUMBO size pizza can serve for 8 ppl, however, we got 3 here only!

Rosemary chicken sticks - There are 12 pcs in total! WOW! Even each one is not large, but we could hardly finish all of them! Yes, it is yummy, but overbaked. The chicken meat is quite tasty with some herbs on the top. If the presentation of the dish is well-presented, it may be better!

Risotto with veggie and shrimp - It is quite creamy, sticky and good!
There are around 7 shrimps inside the rice, with some red peppers! The rice is not too wet and soft, it is very good! I love it! It is hot enough!

Bread pudding - at that moment, we cannot finish all of the dishes, we needed to ask for take-away for the leftovers. When I asked the Manager to bring the cake which is free of charge for our birthday star. We waited for 15 mins finally. When 3 of the waitresses came over to our table, they asked the bday star's name, I could hardly hear their song... also, they were really singing "HEA"-ly!!! No sincerity at all! If they dun wanna sing bday song, we dun mind. If you heard a aweful bday song, you will be very disappointed with the restaurant even the food is very good!

After watching a movie, we decided to come here. All of us hadn’t been to Amaroni’s since…ages! So I was quite curious to see whether it was how I remembered.

I remember portions here are pretty huge, so after our bread basket of focaccia and bread crisps, we decided on a rosemary roast chicken ($168) and table-long margherita pizza ($155).

Our two mains arrived together, and I first dove into the chicken – the skin wasn’t crispy so I didn’t care for it much, but the meat underneath was moist and yummy, full of natural chicken flavours and some sprinkling of the pepper on our table made it more wonderful. Not even the breast parts were dry – thumbs up!

The pizza was good, but not mind-blowing. The base is not the flat crisp types (like many restaurants in Soho), but a doughier flatbread. It could have used some more time in the oven as the pieces nearer the centre was quite soggy. There was a good amount of mozzarella too, and the pizza sauce was well-seasoned. Extra strips of fresh basil wouldn’t have hurt though!

The three of us didn’t manage to finish the chicken nor the pizza even though we were ravenous at the beginning…I blame the bread basket, but what we ordered could've fed four very hungry diners =).

The waiters were friendly, and the place is clearly better suited for large groups – in fact, there were several birthdays celebrated here this night so it got a bit noisy too.

For original post and pictures: http://gastronomerr.blogspot.com/2010/08/amaronis-italian-restaurant.html

Went for lunch, had the onion thingie, and wife had angel hair and me the pizza! also the potatoes (or potatos, depending on your political preference and education ;))!

All good, service was a bit "cold"

but the food goes down easy, and makes one smile!

hard to beat.

Mikey