The Grand Kempinski Hotel Shanghai's Acqua Italian Restaurant uses the shutdown period during the COVID-19 outbreak to enhance its look and feel to become more welcoming and casual. Since reopening on May 18, it added a Negroni-cocktail bar, upgraded its dinner menu and started to provide a quick weekday set lunch and weekend brunch all day. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Erba brought traditional dishes from his hometown to Acqua－yellow risotto with roasted bone marrow and gremolata, a green sauce made of chopped parsley, lemon zest and garlic.

Erba's other favorite Milanese dish is "chicken and grapes", which features red-wine stewed chicken thigh with grapes, herbs and roasted potatoes.

The restaurant also offers burrata-and-tomato salad on its new menu. Burrata is a fresh Italian cow-milk cheese with cream inside and mozzarella as its outer shell.

It looks like mochi, and the cheese tastes like refreshing milky ice cream－an ideal starter for an authentic Italian dinner on a summer night.

The Italian pasta is a perennial must-have.

For diners who can't differentiate among the different types of pasta, the servers will pull out a trolley displaying the seven varieties the restaurant serves－spaghetti, linguine, tagliatelle, macaroni, fusilli, penne and caserecce－for guests to choose from and to learn about Italian gastronomy.

Diners can also pick their favorite sauces, from the famous meat-based Bolognese to creamy garlic-and-herb pesto.

For those who can't decide, Erba is happy to help them choose the best pairings.

Contact the writer at xingyi@chinadaily.com.cn