epicure reviews: Bacchanalia

With restaurants as with romance, how does one move on from a grand affair? Like marrying a human rights lawyer after dating a string of celebrity girlfriends, perhaps, Bacchanalia’s brand new Hong Kong Street venue is such a divergence from its maiden venture in the Masonic Club that parallels are hard to draw.

While the latter was a 150-seat sprawl with velour banquettes, dim lights and an elevated DJ deck, the restaurant’s new light wood and sunlight-flushed space bears a calmer Nordic-Japanese aesthetic with just 36 seats and two wide open hot and cold kitchen counters. It is as inviting as dining in a friend’s designer shophouse home.

Excerpt from the November 2015 issue of epicure.