Sepa Bacaro Veneziano (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★☆☆

The dining scene of Hong Kong is one that embraces diversity and cultural differences. In Central and Soho alone, you can find a wide variety of establishments from the mainstream Japanese, Italian, French and Spanish to the emerging Peruvian, Lebanese, Nepalese and Moroccan. Now we can add traditional Venetian cuisine to that list too.

Situated on Caine Road across the street from the Sacred Heart Canossian School, Sepa ("Squid" in Venetian dialect) opened doors to customers back in August operating as a traditional Venetian bacaro. We are looking forward to experience their cicheti, the Venetian equivalent of tapas and a lot more from the traditional Venetian cuisine.



Like Bread Street Kitchen and Bar where we visited last week, the dining room here at Sepa has a trendy warehouse setting with a good mix of vintage and modern decorations. Unfortunately, we were not able to find traces of Venetian influence other than the chandeliers (more on this later).



Chef Enrico Bartolini has put together a well-balanced menu for diners to experience the culinary delights from Venice. That includes cicheti (Venetian small bites) and different types of focaccia, pasta and meat courses.

Beetroot tartare and tuna with Jerusalem artichoke sauce ($98), one of the signature cicheti here, was the perfect way to start our journey to the traditional Venetian cuisine. The balls of minced tuna, beetroot and capers were flavorful and refreshing. I thought even better was the presentation, with each of them resembling a cherry (7/10). 



Finishing up our trial with the cicheti was the Venetian chips with black truffle and mascarpone cheese sauce ($68). Our server explained that it's actually not made with potato but rather with something like corn. No wonder it tasted a little corny (4/10).



Moving onto our starter now, here's the namesake appetizer SEPA ($158), that simply should not be missed. Cuttlefish was nicely complemented with black cuttlefish ink, potato foam, olive oil and a little bit of spring onion. Perfect balance of flavors and silky smooth texture there (7/10).



We only had one main course to share - crispy veal cheek with rosemary potatoes and traditional sauce ($248). Thought they had a little too much seasoning on the veal cheek (4.5/10).




There were some interesting desserts available on the menu and we picked the homemade Italian ricotta cake with vanilla ice-cream ($88) based on our server's recommendation. It tasted a little weird though - a bit like quiche, a little savory but a little sweet too (3.5/10).



Back to the décor, I thought they could have added a little more Venetian flavors to the mix. For now, the Venetian masks on the chandeliers were the only thing they had going. 




Food Rating: 5/10
Price: $$$
Address: 61 Caine Road, Mid-Levels, Central, Hong Kong
Closest Metro Station: Central
Tel: +852 2521-9800
Website: www.sepa.com.hk