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2016-09-08
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I noticed MedOven a while ago and I've had a flier for it floating around my house for a few weeks. I needed a place for lunch today so I did a little research. It's not hard to find all the stuff available about this place, because there isn't really much of any. The co-founder is a woman named Sandra Pang, who also founded Pronto Communications, some other sort of public relations/ advertising firm. Her facebook is full of pictures from MedOven and some childhood-accessories company called Bib
"MedOven offers authentic, healthy Mediterranean flare, from the region's popular dishes to less-discovered treats."
That's all. The OpenRice reviews are a bit strange. Apparently in a 3 week period no fewer than eleven people were inspired to start new OpenRice accounts and review this restaurant and only this restaurant. Three of them were sad-faces, eight smileys, no OKs. The sad ones I can understand: sometimes things are just so bad you have to open an account and vent to strangers on the internet. But the positive ones are more than a tad fishy. Is any food really that good, that eight unrelated people are inspired to create accounts just to sing its praises? Keep in mind that in that same three week period, only two people with existing accounts reviewed the restaurant, so that's quite a newbie-convert-to-regular-patronage ratio, if you ask me.
Two other things strike me as off about the reviews. One is the current featured review, by "HK Blogger," a faceless social media presence that "is open for partnerships, advertisements, and affiliate programs" and also sells dodgy healthcare items. The other is hindsight. Now that I've been to the restaurant, I will admit that I don't trust any of the positive reviews. But read on and see if I can't convince you too.
So here's the front of the flyer I picked up. You can see a nice picture of a pidezza. Look at it closely: you can see what looks like fresh parsley sprinkled over it. It looks like there are some tomatoes cut into chunks on the top-- if you look in the background, there are tomatoes, so that makes sense. There appears to be cheese melted on top: you can see it kind of in a sticky criss-cross pattern with some browned on the crust. Then, if you squint a little you can see that under the tomato and cheese is what looks like ground beef-- ground beef, importantly, not beef paste or beef mush, but individual bits of cooked meat. You can't be sure it's beef, it's only a picture, it could be pork or chicken or something.
So maybe you wonder, what is this yummy-looking thing? You have only to open the menu. Right there at the very top in the middle is the same picture with a big blue ribbon over the top that says "signature." And right next to it is the name of the dish: LAHMACUN Beef Pidezza. OK, you say to yourself, this is the most expensive single item (i.e. not set) on the menu, but it's the restaurant's signature, and it looks soooo good. Surely it's worth the $86 HKD they're charging. Alright, alright... ready for it...
Yep. LAHMACUN Beef Pidezza. Well, there aren't any chopped tomatoes. No parsley, really. The meat isn't what one would call ground, and it's not quite like a meatball. More of a dry meat paste. Here's the view from the side.
Notice too how unlike a boat it now seems. The unappetizing greyish color isn't quite reminiscent of the pictures on the menu, to say the least. It tastes pretty much like it looks. Grey meat paste, cracking like mud in the hot sun. Kinda what I imagine dogfood is like, having never had dogfood. And it's not like this was some sort of error. When I ordered mine, they pulled out a tray of 4 or 5 pre-made ones in plastic wrap from under the counter. Somebody made this last night or this morning and said to themselves, "Ah yes, another excellent LAHMACUN Beef Pidezza."Do you kinda see now why I'm skeptical of the positive reviews on newly-created accounts? I mean, the food does not look like the pictures. And it is not very good. The signature dish, that costs the most, is awful. How were eight people so inspired-- in the space of three weeks, no less-- to create new accounts to sing its praises? Bizarre is all I can say. Oh and also: don't go here, it's not good.
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