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2016-08-27
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I saw supersupergirl's review of this place a little bit ago, and it said: "great pizzas... I love their pizzas." There was more, but that's about all the recommendation I need to try a pizza place in Hong Kong.Grappa's Cellar is an Italian-American restaurant, not an Italian restaurant. First tipoff is the menu. For example, on the entrees there's chicken parmesan, on the pasta menu there's spaghetti marinara and spaghetti and meatballs, and the pizzas include pepperoni. All of these are Italia
Grappa's Cellar is an Italian-American restaurant, not an Italian restaurant. First tipoff is the menu. For example, on the entrees there's chicken parmesan, on the pasta menu there's spaghetti marinara and spaghetti and meatballs, and the pizzas include pepperoni. All of these are Italian-American dishes, which you won't find in Italy. Second tipoff is the red checker tablecloths and Sinatra playing-- at that point, it's a little over-the-top.
OK... maybe that's not it though. I mean, there's bruschetta rather than garlic bread on the menu. What we really have here is a multinational restaurant group that's created a "pan-Italian" restaurant engineered to appeal to an international audience, not one bound to particular local customs or cooking styles. Let's go with that.
First to come was the complimentary bread. Now, I'm always pleased to see free bread at an Italian place, cuz even fancy places like NOM won't give you any. But two things: 1. I prefer to mix my own oil and vinegar, thank you and 2. the bread here is bad. It's free so the place doesn't lose points, but they could try a little harder.
I got the same pizza supersupergirl got, the pizza alla salsicca, "Our own homemade sausage combined with salami, tomatoes and cheese". Interestingly, that's what the online menu says. In-store, 'salami' is replaced with 'pepperoni.' Since it was covered in sausage, I couldn't exactly tell. Of further interest, I believe 'salsicca' is not the Italian word for 'sausage,' or at least not the correct spelling of it, which is 'salsiccia,' pronounced sal-SEE-tcheh. Neither I nor my server pronounced this word correctly-- do you see what I mean? None of us are in an Italian restaurant, but we're all pretending that we are. This is going to sound mean, but I don't mean it in a mean way: the pizza reminded me of Pizza Hut. Not HK Pizza Hut mind you, but the original. Y'see, Neapolitan pizza has a very thin crust (less than 3mm says Wikipedia), and even New York pizza is relatively thin and crisp. But as you move into the American midwest, the crust gets thicker and softer. A Buzzfeed article I was reading recently explains:
"Gradually, US pizzerias engineered the speed out of pizza — the fast-cooking thin crust had a slim margin for error, [pizza enthusiast Scott] Wiener says. Many chains adopted conveyor-belt ovens for consistency, but this extended the cooking time and degraded the texture of that all-important crust, [owner of Pieology, Carl] Chang says."
I'm not accusing Grappa's of using a conveyor-belt oven-- my pizza crust and the sausages on it had a nice char from the oven-- I'm just saying that in its softer, thicker crust, the pizza winds up being a lot like Pizza Hut or Domino's pizza. The similarity is also aided by the relatively sweet pizza sauce.
In retrospect, the choice of crust makes sense. Grappa's is run by El Grande, a restaurant group that also ran the now-closed restaurant Domani. Here's what I said about the pizza there, "Our crust was nowhere crispy. It was completely undercooked, soggy right up until the outer edges. It couldn't hold the toppings on and I had to eat it with a knife and fork." Grappa's thus avoids this problem by choosing the inferior crust-type with the larger margin for error.
As for the toppings, they were pretty good. The sausage was crumbly and as I say crisp on top from the oven-- a nice touch. The salami/ pepperoni was hidden beneath and didn't get as crisp. I'd have liked pepperoni by itself as a choice, but there was no build-your-own pizza, so I endured. On the whole I'd say the pizza was similar to, but better and classier than, (American) Pizza Hut pizza. It didn't wow me by any measure.
Finally, I got a glass of wine and some sparkling water. The wine was a syrah-cabernet and I liked it.For now, I continue my quest to find truly awesome pizza in HK. I guess right now Slices and Motorino are my favorites, but the former is imperfect in many ways and the latter is Neapolitan-- alas, inveterate American that I am, I really need a good ol' New York slice I can call my own. Someday, perhaps, but I doubt domani.
题外话/补充资料：
It is dead as a doornail here on weekends at lunch. When I came in, I asked whether they were open, that's how dead it was.
(以上食记乃用户个人意见 , 并不代表OpenRice之观点。)
张贴
