Easy Italian

Lunch set starters: Caesar salad and Mortadella, and scarola panada salsa pomodori fresca.Photos by Donna Mah / For China Daily

A Linguini Fini signature pasta, fragrant grass goat cheese fonduta.

Pan-roasted cod panzanella.

Donna Mah experiences the organic food approach at Linguini Fini in Hong Kong.

It's not a fancy fine dining place, but Linguini Fini offers fresh pasta and organic ingredients that are good value for money in the typically high-priced Central area.

The kitchen serves food which is sustainable and tries not to waste any part of the animals served. Friendly and casual, the vibe is relaxed but also buzzing here.

The food is Italian infused with lots of local flavor. The organic produce and meat are sourced from local farms ensuring it is fresh and free of chemicals.

Chefs here make their own pasta fresh twice daily and include local flavor in dishes such as fragrant grass goat cheese fonduta, dried shrimp diavola, and salt-cured egg Genovese. They also serve house-cured salumi, so ask your server what's on offer on your visit.

Linguini Fini is a great place to have a casual meal with friends, or to hang out after work for a drink. They have recently expanded and now have a large bar area on the ground floor as well. With an additional 5,000 square feet (465 sq m) of space, it is a popular place for those who work in Central to relax and chill after office hours.

Lunch here won't break the bank and there are enough choices to satisfy everyone.

If you don't feel like having pasta, you can indulge in the eggplant parmigiana made with Pubblico mozzarella, crispy "quick smoked" salmon, Tuscan fried chicken with sage, lemon and braised greens, or rotisserie porchetta - pork belly with fennel sausage and chili mostarda.

Value lunch set menus are available for HK$68 ($9) and include half a sandwich, soup and salad. Other lunch set menus range HK$98 to HK$228 per person offering a choice of starter and main.

With the addition of the large bar area on the ground floor, the restaurant has added some new bar food items to their menu which includes tasty morsels such as Linguini Fini wings, fried pork brain, and mini meatball skewers.

Linguini Fini is also a great place for diners who love innards or uncommon cuts of meat. Not for everyone maybe, but if you're a fan, you might want to try one of these.

There is an eight-hour tripe dish made with pork and beef tripe with pancetta and tomato, sweetbread ravioli made with pork jowl and served with a roasted pork sauce.

A fried pork heart dish, titled "I love Milanese", is served with salad, chitarra made with pork liver, pancetta, brown butter, and 30-year balsamico vinegar, and the fazzoletti (pasta handkerchiefs) "nose to tail bolo" with pork testa (pork head which has been brined for six days and braised for six hours), veal and oxtail ragu.

On a previous visit, we noted that they did not accept reservations here and you need your entire party to be present to be seated, which we thought was off-putting. However, they have since changed their policy and take reservations.

Beyond the fresh pasta, the meat and vegetables are from local farms, and the meat and eggs are hormone free. Linguini Fini is part of the Integrated Hospitality Management that brought Posto Pubblico to Hong Kong.

Lunch at Linguini Fini is about $70-200 per person and dinner is about $200-400 per person.

Contact the writer at sundayed@chinadaily.com.cn.