Mio - for Italian foodies

Yesterday night I finally had a chance to try out the new addition to the Italian restaurants in Beijing. Mio belongs to the upper end of the current offer and it's one of the restaurants inside the newly opened Four Seasons Hotel down Liangmaqiao South Road.
Their website maintains the attire should be smart-casual, but when you enter the premises of the restaurant you doubt you chose the wrong pair of jeans. Luckily, after a while you actually notice that no one is dressed better than you are - actually I was the smart, while the others were the casual ones.
The deco is a little bit over the top, all dark and with lame lights on the walls, mirrors on the ceiling - and the pink champagne on ice. The kitchen space is open and you can have a view over the sous chefs and the pizza ovens. After the cold feeling which welcomes you at the beginning the place actually warms up.
The service was attentive without being suffocating. I could actually place the napkin on my lap by myself!

The menu was not too long to read  but offered some challenges in terms of choice. Pricewise, I would never try out a mushroom-and-asparagus risotto priced at 450-some RMB per portion (little less than 50 euro) In the end, we opted for a pizzetta as appetizer, pasta dishes and desserts. Pizzetta is a small pizza (about 9 inches) baked in their own fire-wood oven. It was ok, without being impressive. Pasta was actually quite good: my homemade fusilli were just perfect, all green because of the rocket pesto which had the right touch of bitter, counterbalanced by the spicy of the fresh red pepper and the sweet of zucchini and cuttlefish.Chromatically, it was also quite appealing.
As dessert, they had "baba" and icecream made by the chef (from Florence, Italy) while the rest of the things on the menu came from their pastry shop. I tried their semifreddo which was ok without impressing me much.
While I was not the one to choose the wine, they had apparently a good selection of Italian wines from Antinori and my glass of Ornellaia did not disappoint me.

All in all, the place is good but overpriced - as any Italian restaurant in 5-star hotels. Apparently, Beijing is a tough market for Italian foodies and only the Italian restaurants managed by hotels have a chance to succeed: they have the right structure and of course they can rely on the customers from the hotel itself. No problem with the rent or with the service because they can afford to hire the best staff on the market and can offer proper training, also linguistically.
Even though I am not sure I will be back, I am certain Mio will continue to work quite successfully.