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2011-07-12
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After visiting the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, we went to the New Town Plaza for lunch.When I first knew about this restaurant, I thought it will be like an alternate for Spaghetti House. Maybe it's because I somehow have some degree of expectation to it, I felt slightly disappointed after dining in here.We two people ordered two set lunches, including a pizza and a risotto, and ordered a "Big Mama" Trio dish as well.The set lunches include an appetizer / soup, garlic toast, main dish, and drinks
When I first knew about this restaurant, I thought it will be like an alternate for Spaghetti House. Maybe it's because I somehow have some degree of expectation to it, I felt slightly disappointed after dining in here.
We two people ordered two set lunches, including a pizza and a risotto, and ordered a "Big Mama" Trio dish as well.
The set lunches include an appetizer / soup, garlic toast, main dish, and drinks.
We chose one with appetizer and the other with soup.
One of the appetizers was the Shakey's Famous Mojo and chicken wings, each with two pieces, and the piece of garlic toast was served along as well. In my opinion, both were pretty oily. Both were flavorful but my problem with them was that they were indeed a bit too oily.The garlic toast had garlic paste over both sides of the bread. I think that this made the toast a bit too heavy in the garlic taste. I prefer to be able to taste the aromatic wheat from the bread as well.
The soup was really a disappointment. Firstly, the soup was spilled over the plate when it was served. It's not that the waiter bumped the soup accidentally when serving us, it was spilled over already when it came out from the kitchen. The soup was kind of watery. There is no rich texture in it at all.A corner of this garlic toast served along was wet. Now this was a bit unacceptable.
The Shakey's Special - $70 (lunch set)The pizza in overall was not too bad. But I do have to say there wasn't as much toppings as I've expected, and the toppings weren't distributed evenly on the pizza. The pizza includes minced beef, pepperoni, ham, onions, mushrooms, bell peppers, pineapple, olives, tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. My first slice of pizza only includes onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, hams, pepperoni and cheese. Then, at my first bite for the second slice, I can taste rich tomato sauce. I could barely taste the tomato sauce at the first slice but yet the second slice was full of it. I could finally taste the minced beef and olives on the third slice i had. Also, I think we might have made a wrong choice of picking the thin crust. Yes the crust was indeed thin, but then we couldn't really taste the pizza base then. I would try the hand-tossed next time if I ever have the chance to eat here again. In overall, the taste was not bad, the cheese was even actually pretty nice.
Mushroom Risotto with Smoked Salmon - $78 (lunch set)I liked the sauce of the risotto. It was creamy and rich in texture. The smoked salmon tasted good as well. However, I think the rice in the risotto ain't chewy enough, and that it somehow tasteless. I think the risotto was just not well-seasoned enough, and the texture of the rice was not cooked well enough to give a creamy chewy texture.
"Big Mama" Trio - $132This dish includes three types of pasta cooked in three different types of sauce - Spaghetti Bolognese, Penne Alla Carbonara & Angel Hair Pesto. The dish was moderate. The pasta was not overcooked, yet it still hasn't reached an al dente texture. The sauces were pretty okay. In overall I quite liked it.
In the end, was about the drinks. We had coffee and iced lemon tea. The coffee was moderate to me, not too bad, but not particularly good at all.Not that this meal ain't satisfying, but I think the price was somehow not really worth it. And it's just not as good as I've expected. I don't think I'll return here on my own if I get to pick the place for dining. There were just better options to me than this.
p.s. all the plates, bowls and cups were printed with the word 'Shakeys' on them. That was pretty cute.
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