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2011-04-01
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Let me get this out straight away: I am neither an expert nor a novice when it comes to eating oysters. I know what I like and what I don’t.I had dinner with the wife here last week, and tried a variety of oysters, including the Namibian, Smokey Bay, Fin de Claire and Irish (2 of each). The Namibian oysters were rather large, larger than I prefer, and very creamy in texture and taste. This was my first time having them, and would have to say that creamy is not my style. I prefer briny. The
I had dinner with the wife here last week, and tried a variety of oysters, including the Namibian, Smokey Bay, Fin de Claire and Irish (2 of each). The Namibian oysters were rather large, larger than I prefer, and very creamy in texture and taste. This was my first time having them, and would have to say that creamy is not my style. I prefer briny. The Fin de Claire were probably my favorites. Two problems with the oysters: they were not completely detached from the shell and were only served with lemon.
Usually I like to have some of the vinegar and onion condiment (can’t remember the French name for this stuff right now) with my oysters. That’s why I always order 2 of each, so I can try one raw and the other with some sauce. On the whole, the oysters were good and clean tasting, and reasonably priced compared to other places in town ($58 for the Namibian and ca. $35 for the others).
Next up was a Caesar salad. The only things authentic about this compared to the Tijuana original were that they used romaine lettuce and added a few croutons. The tomatoes, thousand island dressing unnecessary touches, and water were superfluous. They should get a salad spinner to dry the lettuce!
After the Caesar salad we had some grilled food: Chicken wings stuffed with crab roe, onion and chicken soft bones. The chicken wings were okay, the onion was the best, and the chicken soft bones were devoid of salt.
We finished up with a shrimp and pesto pasta dish (linguini?). The shrimp were good, albeit rather small, and the pasta was well cooked. However, this was the first pesto that I ever had that wasn’t green or red! Where were the basil and pine nuts? The sauce was basically olive oil and garlic. Not bad, but not pesto...
A few other comments: Only one choice of wine by the glass (a white) and the toilets are outside around the corner (this place is basically in an old building on a side street in Mong Kong/Yau Ma Tei, so what do you expect?).
Overall, we spent $850 for the food mentioned above (8 oysters, salad, grilled food, pasta and 2 glasses of white wine). The oysters tasted good and the rest was mediocre. Maybe the grilled onion was the best item we had. Would I go back to this branch? Probably not. However, I would be willing to try their other branches. This one was small (place seats around 20) with a small staff, and presumably slow turnover. Maybe a busier version with quicker turnover and more staff would be better
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