WINE ME DINE ME
Unless you grew up in Italy, Lucca is Italian — and is unquestionably fine dining.
Lucca
Italian & Mediterranean Mon-Sun, 11am-2:30pm, 6pm-11pm 108/4 Sukhumvit Soi 65 www.luccadining-bkk.com 098-273-2761, 02-714-2207
The set-up
The appeal of being a hidden restaurant is unmistakably exclusivity. No matter how much flair you pump into the menu, atmosphere or prices, accessibility never means “elite”. Clearly, this was the mantra observed by Natdanai Yuvaboon, the owner of Lucca, a new Italian-Mediterranean restaurant, when he chose the quiet residential backstreets of Sukhumvit Soi 65 as its location. Once you’ve successfully navigated through the labyrinth of narrow alleys (which never look promising), you won’t arrive at a loud and shiny new ristorante. Despite being only a few months old, Lucca appears years-aged, with pale creeping plants and weathered stone tiles. The interior, however, is completely renovated from the Vietnamese restaurant that it once was. Still, there’s an aged vibe to it, with dark wood, dim lighting, minimal decor and good, oldfashioned table settings.
The menu
For now, the menu at Lucca is fairly concise, which is an invitation to either love it or dismiss it as underdeveloped. You may be surprised that the restaurant isn’t offering pizza, the icon of Italian cuisine. But as a reviewer, a trade-off for rarer entrées is always a turn-on.
Dare to choose items with culinary jargon that aren’t as familiar to you as spaghetti or ravioli. You can think of the Warm terrine goat cheese and smoked salmon (B650) appetiser as a sort of a miniature meat pie, with potato slices substituting pastry. The dish is noticeably on salty side, but you might appreciate that the premium goat cheese is the culprit, not an overdose of salt.
The Ratatouille consomme with spiced chicken breast or lamb fillet (B320) will better suit a preference for the mild. It begins with a clear soup, to which you add either a medium-rare lamb steak and stewed vegetables, or vegetables with Moroccan-style spiced chicken. The chicken was nicely spiced, juicy and tasty, but we suggest you go for lamb.
Lucca proudly interrupts the typical spaghetti-risotto sequence on the pasta menu with the owner’s favourite, potato gnocchi. The Gnocchi Gorgonzola cheese (B300) is a vegetarian item containing almonds, while the gnocchi with sautéed Alaskan crabmeat (B480) is deliciously fragrant, with rich tomato cream sauce and pesto. For carb-less mains, there’s the beautiful Salmon and river prawn in crustacean sauce (B890). The salmon steak, nestled on a patty of sautéed spinach, is cooked “medium-rare” by fish standards — extremely juicy and lightly glistening in the centre. In terms of portion and ability to fill, you get what you pay for.
Always leave room for Italian dessert. At Lucca, you can find the classics: panna cotta, chocolate lava cake, affogato, gelato and tiramisu. The cool swivelling glass of the Tiramisu (B220) is hit or miss. I, for one, was thoroughly entertained by the added challenge of digging from a moving glass. However, the OCD part of me slightly wishes the cream and coffee liqueur-soaked ladyfingers were more evenly distributed.
Insider’s tip
Lucca may be partnering up with your credit card company to offer up to a 15% discount, so voice your curiosity when it’s time to pay.
Value & verdict
Lush prices are nothing less than expected when a white tablecloth is involved. But is Lucca authentic Italian? The owner himself enlightens us that it is not. Hardly any “authentic Italian” place in Bangkok is actually authentic for our benefit. Unless you grew up with Italians, Lucca is Italian and, unquestionably, fine dining.