Someone summed it up perfectly below: this restaurant is like a beautiful but vapid princess. With an attitude.
It reminds me a little of French Window, which is equally overpriced except French Window has marginally better food, and people there were much more gracious.
I tried to reserve a table for 7 for lunch, having phoned in 4 days in advance. However, apparently this place needs business so much that it requires a $500 deposit for lunch bookings of 6 people and above. I have never heard of such nonsense from any self-respecting restaurant in Central - if you are doing well, you would already have people waiting in line at lunch hour, and if not, then I suppose the restaurant is not worth a deposit anyway. 7 people is not a big party, and restaurants shouldn't trouble guests to walk over and hand them cash unless its Valentines or Christmas. Anyway, I decided I wouldn't have any of it, a booked 2 separate tables to be put adjacently.
So despite this little hitch, I was very much looking forward to lunch. Walking in, the restaurant was gorgeous, I'll give them that. However, it went downhill from there.
First for water. "Do you normally drink still or sparkling?" I drink ice water normally, thanks. Fine, that can be interpreted to mean still or sparkling with ice, but what it really means is "tap" as you would say in the UK or elsewhere, but nobody really does tap in Hong Kong. Anyway, what I ended up with was still with NO ice. This is a major pet peeve of mine. I do not like to be "still or sparklinged" and deceived into drinking water that I did not order. I understand this is what high end restaurants like to do, but all other places worth their salt, like Conrad, 8 ½, Amber, etc will not force water upon you once you've indicated your preference.
The menu was unimaginative and overpriced. 276 for a mushroom soup and a ham and salmon pasta. 328 for the same starter/soup and a filet. Starbucks does the mushroom soup better than they do. The steak, while perfectly tender and not overcooked, totally lacked juice and flavour. There was no dessert included. They also got my drink order wrong. To be fair I would give the food a 3/5, but it is definitely not worth the price. You could eat at H One next door for that price, and their food is much better. Another alternative is Steik in K11 – 228 or so for their much better dry-aged steak. Yum.
So the bill finally comes to $380 for mediocre food, poor service and incredible attitude in a beautiful environment. Worth it? Your call.
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