September 8, 2021
You ate at Babacio in April this year and loved their pizza, rating it the best you’ve had in Hong Kong. The crust was ideal: flavorful, blistered, chewy, with just the heft for the New York Fold which allows you to hold a slice one-handed, folded the long way with no droop. By your lights, this quality is vital to pizza excellence. You thought their salads and pastas were worthy supporting dishes, standards done well. Their Tiramisu could have been lighter. Cocktails were pleasant but not memorable. Servers moseyed more than bustled. The floor of their outdoor deck was spongy, like walking on a mattress, which made you uneasy.
Soon to post a new menu, Babacio invited you back for a fresh look. They’ve replaced the old outdoor wood decking and the floor is completely solid now which is your strong preference for all floors. The manager, Raul Cabrera, personally served you, so you really can’t comment on standard service.
Seated at their handsome tasting table by the kitchen (overlooking their Moretti oven, so heavy and large it had to be lifted in by crane) you began with a Calzoncino Caprese. You didn’t quite grasp what this was from the menu and was delighted when it arrived: a hand-sized cone of deep-fried pizza dough filled with buffalo mozzarella, basil, and tomato sauce, basically a Caprese salad in a cone. Inhaling its scent, you were pleasurably jolted by a tonic of fresh basil and fresh dough. Its taste was no less pleasurable. In fact, it was so good you wonder if they might not create variations on it with different fillings as an appetizer suite.
Pizzas. First, a Margherita, the purist’s pizza: just sauce, cheese, and basil. You loved its flavor, particularly the sauce which was just pureed San Marzano tomatoes. Sadly, the crust wouldn’t hold a New York Fold which is your baseline requirement for excellence. When you lifted a slice, the triangular end flopped downward, sauce and cheese sliding off. You had to eat it with a fork. This completely surprised you since at your last visit you did not encounter this problem.
The Gorgonzola E Pere was gorgonzola and mozzarella with sweet, firm slices of pear. (It’s a pizza that could stand a drop or two of honey, maybe even truffle honey.) The crust was pliable yet sturdy, fetchingly blistered, the taste très sophistiqué. You loved it. You would classify it as a dessert pizza though. After all, pastry-gorgonzola-pear, that’s classic dessert. It would have gone well with a glass of port or perhaps Frangelico.
Finally, you tried their flagship pizza, a Babacio, with San Marzano tomato sauce, Parma ham, dried tomato, dots of pesto, and an entire burrata. It was ravishingly good eaten off the plate with a fork, reminding you of the burrata pizza you ate in Turin, Italy some years back which has haunted your memory. However, when you attempted to lift a slice, the crust mimicked the Margherita’s. You were not only surprised but perplexed. What happened?
You think there has been some kind of subtle change in the dough (or perhaps its volume or its dough-to-topping-ratio) between visits. At your first visit there was no droop. Now two out of three there is. This should be addressed. Your memory could be wrong, but you feel the crust was slightly thicker before towards the center and perhaps baked a moment longer. Previously, you think the toppings had less liquid.
You had two pastas, each based on imported fresh Italian pasta. The first, Taglitelle Boscaiola: al dente tagliatelle in a cream sauce with porcini mushroom, fresh peas, and salsiccia sausage. Not fireworks, but simple, outstanding.
Then, classic Spaghetti Cacio E Pepe, al dente spaghetti with pecorino and pepper. The same: simple, outstanding. They generously sliced the last of their French truffles over it. While the pasta was delicious, alas, the truffles, those fickle gobbets from God, were flavorless. You encountered this exact problem at another spiff restaurant two days before. They looked exactly the same and were almost certainly from the same shipment by the same supplier.
You had Tiramisu Classico E Nutella for dessert, Nutella tiramisu, and they’ve upped their game. It was lighter than before and better balanced with the pastry within. You’re no tiramisu fanatic, but you ate this with real pleasure.
Willing to martyr yourself for the cause, you had two cocktails. The first was a Frutti Di Bosco Tonic: Tabar gin, mixed Berries Syrup, lemon juice, tonic water, mixed berries air. It was a fruity, tart drink that you liked moderately. You were impressed by the garnish of fruit leather made from the same berry mix as those in the drink. Smart barkeep. Elegant touch!
Tabar gin is from Italy, and you had a drop by itself. It’s delightful with great herbal intensity. Just a shot of this by itself would be an excellent digestif.
You loved their Pisco Uva Spina. Macchu Pisco, lemon juice, simple syrup, gooseberry, aromatic bitters, licorice powder, egg white. This drink had two heady perfumes: fresh nutmeg grated on moments before serving and aromatic bitters. Their garnish of what they call gooseberry (and you call ground cherry) was drama itself. Outside China, these are rare and expensive. They’re virtually unknown in the United States. Gobble them while ye may.
You feel that Babacio has sharpened its game by moving ahead three steps and back two. The central mission of this restaurant is pizza. The Gorgonzola E Pere was classy superlative. The toppings on the other two pizzas were luscious but their crusts were unexpectedly flawed. Yet the tiramisu was discernibly improved, the pastas were excellent as before, the appetizer was a splendid addition, and one of the cocktails a star.
Fix the crust issue and Babacio will stick a moon landing.
Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)
Food overall: 3.5
Ambience: 4
Service: -
Overall greatness: 3. 5
Overall Pizza Greatness: 3.5
Restaurants are intuitively rated within their particular realms. So Michelin restaurants, pizza places and stand-up sandwich joints are judged against like restaurants, not each other. A 5 for a high-end restaurant is not meant to be the same as a 5 for street food.
From my website, here’s how I rate food: “I believe the quality of a restaurant’s food is vastly more important than any other factor. Even if I love a restaurant’s food, I’m very conservative about giving out 4’s or 5’s. I reserve 4’s for food that is uniformly excellent. Preponderantly excellent tends to get a lower score. 5’s are for food that is uniformly stunning.”
This meal was comped.
Babacio
5/F, Carfield Commercial Building, 77 Wyndham St, Central, Hong Kong