Fangs for the Memory

christina ko eats like a wolf at MARIO BATALI’s first Hong Kong outpost, the Roman trattoria Lupa

SO THE CLICHÉ goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And neither was chef Mario Batali’s Roman trattoria, Lupa. For one thing, it takes time to build – in the literal sense – a 5,500-square-foot venue, plus a 2,500-square-foot terrace, to exacting specifications. For another, though the restaurant is new to our shores, it’s been not-so-quietly building a reputation and following for more than a decade in New York, where the original and only other Lupa restaurant sits.

This is the first of a trio of Batali-helmed restaurant projects set to hit Hong Kong this year (the others are steak restaurant Carnevino, which will stake a space upstairs from Lupa, and a more mass-aimed Sicilian joint, which will open in Causeway Bay). And to be honest, as long as they don’t screw up the food that is destined to succeed on the basis of location alone.

The restaurant sits at a prime spot in the new LHT Tower, smack in the middle of Queen’s Road Central, opposite the giant Coach boutique and amid office-space central. Most of the expense-account venues in the immediate region – Sevva, Otto e Mezzo and the restaurants in the two neighbouring Mandarin Oriental hotels – are often fully booked, so the immediate district will benefit from another high-end eatery, especially one with a celebrity chef attached (and whose prices aren’t actually very heart-attack-inducing, anyway). And with that expansive terrace – separately named La Terrazza, because it serves a different menu – the happy-hour crowd is a shoo-in. The post-drinks gang will stay for the food, which, if you were wondering, they more than don’t screw up. If you’ve lived for any period of time in New York, too, you’ll know the hype that surrounds this younger sister of the Batali clan – the slutty younger sister, if you will, considering the number of patrons who shuffle in and out of the venue on a nightly basis.

The name Lupa derives from the female wolf who, in the myth of the foundation of Rome, nursed the orphaned Romulus and Remus after their abandonment. The twins were said to have founded Rome on the precise site at which the she-wolf discovered them.

Now, there are no wolves on the menu here, nor are patrons nursed by canines of any type, but plenty of the staples of Roman cuisine are present – peas and fava beans, cheeses and humble pastas. Plenty of modern liberties have also been taken as well, making the food more signature Batali than quintessential Rome, but that, arguably, is because, according to Executive Chef Zach Allen, the idea is to source ingredients locally as much as possible.

That, of course, is wherein lies Lupa’s greatest challenge. The recipes are there and, Allen hypothesises, need not be altered to local tastes: “We found out that if we stick to what we do, we have success.” But what works may not be readily available within easy distance.

The signature beets, celery and fine-herbs salad, for example, is a lovely experience for its consumer, though a bit of a pain in the ass for Allen. Beetroot, it turns out, doesn’t grow well in hometown soil. The version I try seems perfectly acceptable (or maybe, as a local, I just don’t know any better, but Allen says it’s been shipped from the mainland), paired as it is with a sharp-tongued celery, a rich and smooth pecorino brigante and a sprinkling of celery leaf, parsley leaf and chives. The resulting concoction is a colourful collection of elements, diverse in unusual textures and tastes, and a fair harbinger of the dishes to come.

If this salad is unusual, a corzetti with rabbit ragu is pleasantly surprising. A flat, coin-shaped pasta almost two inches in diameter, almost like one side of a ravioli, the corzetti is handmade and stamped in a wooden mould that debosses a coil pattern on one side, and a star emblem on the other. The traditional way, according to Allen, is to imprint a family crest onto the dough, with a tool usually passed down from generation to generation. He proposes getting one commissioned with a wolf motif – “maybe on Shanghai Street,” the area that he has, in 18 days since moving to our city, determined to be our version of New York’s Bowery, aka kitchen-supplies Mecca.

The indentations form more than just an aesthetic purpose, the ridges and dips serving as a conduit for sauces to adhere to and thus enhance the thick, al dente pasta. “In some restaurants, they give you a spoon to scoop up the rest of the sauce, but there should never be sauce at the bottom of the plate – if you’re doing it right,” he explains. Anyway, the ragu is perfectly proportioned without a drop to spare, and against so starchy a canvas the rabbit loses the gamey taste that plagues some other variations, while retaining the macho finish that distinguishes it from more ordinary meats.

Hong Kong’s humidity isn’t kind to pizza dough, but trial and error have helped Allen achieve the signature Batali consistency: crisp and chewy, with a rustic puffed-up crust, tie-dyed brown and beige by the apple-wood smoke (though almond wood is being sourced to replace it). It’s best appreciated as a simple Margherita: a smattering of crushed tomato with salt, pieces of buffalo cheese, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a handful of strategically placed basil leaves.

The star of the show, for me, is the braised pork shoulder with Averna and cucumber, so soft it could be cut with a chopstick, so multilayered in flavouring that it seems almost Asian-inspired (Allen likens it, actually, to Momofuko’s famed pork buns, which use belly rather than shoulder). For me, it brings to mind the cuisine of Gray Kunz, the culinary master of layered tastes, who’s renowned for his ability with oriental ingredients.

This dish thrills the tongue, excites the palate and, like all great cuisine, gets the brain moving as fast as the digestive juices, wondering: what is this taste, and this, and this? The Sicilian liqueur, Amaro Averna, is in this respect an exceedingly wise addition, its caramel tint providing a treacly texture and a sweetness that comes just short of cloying, instantly invigorated by the slices of cucumber poached with chilli, grated ginger and mint, which likely accounts for the Asian association. Wherever it’s from, it’s a meat divine.

As it well should be, for a restaurant with such lofty ambitions and pedigreed reputation, and that takes its name from so sacred an animal. I said earlier that it would be difficult for Lupa to fail, with so many ingredients working together – but on the basis of that one dish alone, removing all other elements, I’d even more vehemently suggest it’s destined to succeed.