Il Presidente opens on Duddell Street in Central

Il Presidente, a new Italian restaurant and cocktail bar, opens this September on Duddell Street in Central, seating 70 across a mezzanine above the street's granite steps.

Behind it is the team from Wan Chai's Trattoria Felino: chef Marcello Scognamiglio and restaurateur Félix de Arriaga Balanzat. Bar manager Simone Ciambrone, previously of Bvlgari Ginza in Tokyo, runs the drinks side.

Il Presidente's mezzanine dining room

Rosewood and velvet for an Italian menu confident enough to skip the trends.

Designed by Dix Design, the room runs rosewood wainscoting and Belgian velvet in sunset-orange tones, with high-pile carpets, white tablecloths and white-jacketed service. Scognamiglio and de Arriaga Balanzat describe the look as Italy's VHS-glamour era, the same old-school register they built Trattoria Felino on, scaled up for a bigger room.

The menu leans on tableside work and long-cooked regional dishes: egg tartufato, homemade agnolotti all'ossobuco, crispy porchetta carved at the table, and costoletta alla valdostana, a breaded veal chop with fontina and ham, at HK$588.

Starters run from HK$148 for seafood arancini to HK$248 for tagliolini with scampi and lemon. Dinner for two averages HK$1,200 to HK$1,400 before drinks, according to Afoodieworld's September review.

The cocktail list holds 12 drinks, each keyed to a moment in twentieth-century Italian history rather than a season or a fruit, a specificity that would sit comfortably on this year's Asia's 50 Best Bars list.

Hong Kong's crowded Italian bill

Early reaction has run warm. Afoodieworld's reviewer wrote that “the restaurant already seems very comfortable in its own skin.” Bloomberg's Hong Kong critic went further, headlining an August review “Il Presidente Is an Italian Restaurant Loved by Italians,” a rare compliment set against a wider complaint: the paper's critic finds Hong Kong's Italian kitchens usually overpriced and short on the simplicity the cuisine is meant to run on.

It lands in a busy month for Central and Sheung Wan openings, among them Hokkien House's Fujian dining room nearby. Trattoria Felino, the pair's Wan Chai original, set the template first: an Italian menu without the fuss, priced for repeat visits rather than one occasion.

Lunch service starts this month too, per the restaurant's own notes, a bet that Duddell Street's granite steps can pull midday trade to match a Central dinner crowd that already has plenty of Italian options to choose from.