After a while in Asia, we wanted to have real Italian cuisine just for one night. So we decided to go to the Opera Bombana in Beijing. It’s a new Concept by the Chef Umberto Bombana, who has two more restaurants in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The Beijing one is led by Marino D’Antonia a real Italian maestro in cuisine.

As we arrived we had the wonderful opportunity to come down by a wonderful glass of “Franciacorta”.

We started with two small amuse bouche firstly three small morsels, a mille-feuille with parmesan cream, a small cracker filled with caviar and a toast with Italian Ham. The second one was a small potato soup.

The first starter was a Carpaccio of an abalone – it’s a Japanese mussel – served with sweet pepper, sun dried tomatoes, and Calvisius Elite caviar. It is typical Italian caviar and comes from the province, Brescia. After this lovely and delicious dish, we had “Japanese Egg Confit” accompanied by white asparagus, morel purée, and purple potato. We really enjoyed the combination of the creamy egg and the sweetness of the asparagus and the morel.

A course which is really necessary for Italian cuisine is, of course, the “Primi Piatti” the Pasta dish. And Marino really knows how to make homemade Maccheroni ;-).
He did serve a wonderful tomato-based sauce to the Maccheroni with New Zealand scampi and Bottarga and sea urchin.
Bottarga is a Sardinian traditional dish it’s the roe of mullet salted, pressed and sun-dried.

My Main course was an Australian Blackmore short rib and beef Tenderloin served with red wine plum sauce, whipped potatoes and fresh vegetables. The beef was one of the softest I’ve ever tried and it had such a wonderful taste and matched perfectly with the lovely sauce. Definitely my favorite dish.

My colleague tried the Normandy blue lobster which was roasted in aromatic oil and was accompanied by pancetta potato cream and roasted seasonal vegetables. The lobster was super soft and the whole dish was just a pleasure to eat.

After this amazing dinner, we were ready for some dessert. We had a dessert called “Like a Gianduja”. Gianduja is a well-known Italian chocolate from Torino. It was a Hazelnut Cream with a chocolate tart, crispy hazelnut, and gelato.
To the dessert, we had a wonderful and super delicious sweet wine from Tuscany.

We were guests of Opera Bombana for editorial purposes, however all above written expresses our own opinion and has not been influenced.