It only took 88 days for La Volta to earn their place on the MICHELIN Guide Hong Kong after opening in mid-August 2025.
With much fanfare growing about the Italian restaurant prior to its inauguration in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong was gripped from the off. An already tested and tried cuisine in the local restaurant scene, opening a pasta bar was the key to becoming viral, serving warm, simple plates of fresh pasta.
For co-founders of La Volta, serial restaurateur Jeffrey Mui and chef Roland Schuler, the story of La Volta’s birth began 16 years ago, when the pair first came together to open The Drawing Room, a former one-Michelin-starred Italian restaurant in Causeway Bay.
“We made history [at The Drawing Room] to become the first Italian restaurant to get a Michelin star within seven months of opening,” Jeffrey shares. “We were also the first restaurant in Hong Kong that had a four-month-long reservation list,” he contends.
Dishing out tasting menus presenting contemporary Italian gastronomy, “this restaurant became very important to my relationship with Roland.” Prior to and following the restaurant’s closure in 2012, Jeffrey had been involved in opening many restaurants from casual mass market to fine-dining, but nothing felt as emotional as his partnership with Roland at The Drawing Room. He was seeking a reunion.
“We wanted to return to Causeway Bay to open La Volta, in the neighbourhood where The Drawing Room first opened. Here, the focus is on pasta dishes with a mix of handmade fresh pasta and dried pasta.”
La Volta’s dinner menu is kept concise for quality control, whilst their lunch menu rotates every two weeks, keeping flavours fresh. More than 20 types of fresh and dried pasta are found on rotation on the menu.
“What we offer is tremendous food at great value. This is no-frills food, kept simple and affordable. Our average check is HKD350 to HKD400 per person for food. There’s no point in me charging a high price for our food, I would rather people come back regularly.”
As soon as doors opened and word spread online, Jeffrey and Roland faced daily queues with up to 70 people waiting for tables outside. “We are fully booked daily with two seatings for lunch and two seatings for dinner,” Jeffrey states.
To ensure all guests had an equal chance to dine at La Volta began accepting online reservations, partnering with restaurant operations platform inline to deliver a seamless guest experience.
“We can only seat 35 customers at a time at La Volta, so working with inline has allowed us to ensure seats we reserve for walk-ins and guests with reservations can be handled effectively.”
For walk-in guests, La Volta began using inline’s platform to queuing system via a self-service kiosk to allow guests to manage their time and the restaurant team to manage the queue in real time using inline’s host app and notify guests via WhatsApp automated confirmation. This has effectively eliminated queues wrapping around the block.
“Everyone in Hong Kong uses WhatsApp, so this streamlines the entire reservation process. Reserving a table [at La Volta] is a part of the whole dining experience, so the focus can now be placed on the food.”
Arguably the most important feature benefiting La Volta has been inline’s credit-card guarantee allowing guests to book table up to 14 days in advance through their online reservations portal.
“This prevents no shows and lets us know who will confirm to dine here. We want to allow everyone to have an equal opportunity to eat at La Volta.”
Within the partnership between La Volta and inline, facilitating online bookings, waitlists, credit-card guarantees, and WhatsApp confirmation has allowed the restaurant to increase show-up rates and bring happier and more seamless dining experiences to guests.
As La Volta continues to bathe in their 2025 success joining the MICHELIN Guide, Jeffrey is pleased with the acknowledgement.
“[Our entry] is a recognition of our team’s hard work, even more so for the people who have supported the restaurant from day one. None of this would have been possible without our guests.”
“La Volta is something I am extremely proud of because this is my passion project to reconnect with chef Roland and build a space together where we can serve honest, tasty, and unpretentious food.”
Book a table at La Volta today through inline’s online reservations platform.
This feature was brought to Foodie in partnership with inline.
