There is nothing better than tucking into a basket of freshly baked bread before a meal with a slathering of butter – or, as they do in Italy, a warm stick of grissini, or breadsticks, dipped in olive oil with a touch of balsamic vinegar.
“Actually in Italy we only put olive oil on the table for the bread,” says chef Claudio Favero, who oversees the kitchen at Royal Garden Hong Kong’s fine dining restaurant Sabatini Ristorante Italiano.
“In Hong Kong and Macau, for more than 20 years, they have put olive oil and balsamic vinegar on the table to go with the bread in Italian restaurants, but you do not see this in Italy. Balsamic is used in salad dressing, not for dipping your bread.”
Chef de cuisine Claudio Favero, at Sabatini Ristorante Italiano in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.
Another difference between the way diners here like their Italian bread as opposed to how it’s eaten in Italy is the way grissini is consumed.
“Grissini is eaten crispy in Italy but here it is soft,” says Favero, who has lived in Asia for six years, first at the two-Michelin star Don Alfonso 1890 at Grand Lisboa in Macau, before helming the kitchens at Sabatini.
“I think there may be some misunderstanding – as I don’t know why people here like their grissini soft. It has become a signature at Sabatini, though, as well as other Italian restaurants in Hong Kong and Macau; soft grissini served hot with a little bit of a crispy top. In Italy I have never seen grissini made this way.”
Hong Kong’s Sabatini Ristorante Italiano, in Tsim Sha Tsui, has a warm, homely feel.
Italy has more than 350 types of bread, with 250 kinds easily accessible in the country. The most common is ciabatta, a flat loaf good for making sandwiches.
Then there is cornetto, which is similar to a croissant but sweeter; it is served at breakfast, often filled with cream or jam. And there is the dried hard bread we sometimes see in Italian restaurants here, called friselle.
“Italy produces its own flour and semolina to make bread, while other countries import it,” says Favero, who worked as sous chef de cuisine at El Racó de Can Fabes restaurant, a three-Michelin star restaurant in Barcelona, Spain before coming to Asia.
Sabatini Ristorante Italiano in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, serves four different types of bread.