Ristorante Pizzeria Da Vincenzo located at 10 Pok Man St, Tai Kok Tsui in Hong Kong

Ristorante Pizzeria Da Vincenzo has tremendously high reviews online, and so I thought we’d check it out for dinner.  This Italian restaurant is located on Pok Man Street in Tai Kok Tsui in Hong Kong, a street with other expat-friendly restaurants and bars.

When arriving inside the restaurant, I learned that it was a lot smaller than I expected.  The entire place was decorated warmly with Italian influences, bringing me back to memories of my own trip to Rome, Venice, and the like last year.

I found the female owner (I believe she was) a bit snobby and overbearing as she hovered around our table and listened in on our conversation as we browsed the menu and decided on what to order.  The restaurant was very small and our table was right next to the mini bar where the owner was standing all the time.  I felt uncomfortable to be “watched” like that all night long.

My view next to the mini bar

My advice to you if you dine at this restaurant is to try to sit at a table away from the mini bar (unless you like to have the owner in your sights at all times).  The tables are also quite close to each other, leaving not much room between you and the other guests.  There are only two tables in the entire restaurant that are set off separately near a wall, which allows for more privacy.

During our evening here, I noticed how a young couple who were clearly on a date switched from the adjoining tables to sit at one of the tables by the wall (once it was available) for more privacy.  That’s the only gripes I have about this place; it’s too cramped and allows for no privacy for a comfortable meal.

Anyway, onward to the food and menu.  The menu was separated into pizza, main dishes, and pasta categories.  Impressively, they also had antipasti starter section too.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see too much that I wanted to try in the antipasti sections.  I noticed on Google Maps a photo of a grilled piece of octopus, but that was nowhere to be found in the actual menu.

Complimentary bread

(Actually, when we first sat down and were served with the menus, the owner served us a basket of two breads with an olive oil and balsamic vinegar combination bottle.  We didn’t even order yet and already we were served bread, which I appreciated. The herbed bread was so soft and went so well with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar.)

I found that the dishes in the menu were all in authentic Italian (in addition to English and Chinese).  I wonder if the owner has ties to the language to be able to proficiently do this?

Menu

Menu

Drink menu

Drink menu

Highlighted dishes

We ordered a burrata cheese salad, and a half and half of funghi and carbonara pizza.  I loved that we were able to enjoy the pizza with two different toppings (to maximize the tasting in one sitting).  I also ordered an Italian craft beer from Baladin.

Burrata con Rucola e Pomodorini. 108 HKD
-burrata cheese with rocket and cherry tomatoes salad

The Burrata con Rucola e Pomodorini was a burrata cheese with rocket and cherry tomatoes salad.  This arrived so quickly after we had placed our order; loved it.  This was a humongous salad; the plate was the width of our table.

I loved the uber soft and creamy burrata cheese.  It was nicely chilled and SO fresh.  It reminded me almost of how fresh the food in Rome tasted.  The rocket salad and tomatoes were a good combination as well.  This was such a good salad to enjoy.

Look at that gem of burrata just sitting there in the centre

Isaac beer (330 mL). 55 HKD
-harmonious flavours with light body, easy to drink, vol 5%

The Italian craft beer I had was a Baladin Isaac beer.  It was served directly from the bottle into a fancy long-stemmed bell-shaped glass.  It was a “light bodied” beer that was “easy to drink”, and it definitely was the case.  My mom greatly enjoyed both the beer and the salad.

When our pizza arrived, we had to take part of the table next to us too in order to fit the pizza.  The pizza was definitely bigger than my face.   The pizza was actually so thin!  It was as thin as a piece of paper with a perfectly crispy crust that wasn’t too chewy.  It was a really impressive and tasty pizza.  Since it was thin, it didn’t taste heavy either.

Half and half pizza: Pizza Al Funghi + Pizza Carbonara. 158 + 20 HKD

The Pizza Al Funghi side of the pizza had a good amount of mushrooms scattered on the pizza with mozzarella and tomato.  The smell of the mushrooms was aromatic.

The Pizza Carbonara side of the pizza had tomato, mozzarella, bacon, pecorino cheese, black pepper, and an egg right in the centre of it.  The black pepper was very obvious in my first bite, and the egg was really good with the combination of the ingredients.  The bacon added a splash of saltiness and flavour to the entire pie.

Look at the slice of that pizza!

We didn’t end up finishing the entire pizza (it was so big) and had two and a half slices left on the wooden board.  Even when you look at the photo I took, the two and a half slices look humongous (as big as the wooden serving board).  We were provided a plastic microwave-friendly reheatable box to carry home the leftover slices in a paper bag.  If I wasn’t so full, I would have been so excited to try their desserts.

(When the female owner approached our table to ask if we were finished the food or not, she seemed appalled that we weren’t done with the remaining bits of the salad.  Her reaction seemed to imply that we were taking a long time.  This is part of the reason why I think the service was so snobbish here.)

Storefront

Another angle of storefront

All in all, the food here was very delicious and authentically Italian.  I would just advise to sit near the entrance of the restaurant rather than the innermost area to have some space away from the restaurant staff.  The space is small enough already.