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2019-04-09
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Considering that Mott 32 became a quite successful project (from the surface at least), I believe the restaurant group is probably trying their luck to create another brand name that could offer cool and trendy Chinese food. Traditionally, Cantonese food is about history and technique rather than innovations and trendiness. Personally Mott 32 has done a great job in combining the two. I believe it is part of the mission statement of John Anthony to replicate the success. Located in the new Lee G
Located in the new Lee Garden 3, the entrance of the restaurant is actually really small as the main restaurant is located in the basement. Again you would not see or feel anything before you walk downstairs, just a small entrance almost impossible for pure walk-ins to go in. Here is what marketing and reputation comes into play.
The menu is available online and it was too long so I didn't bother taking a photo. Started off with a cold dish "Homemade Tofu, Black Truffle" which was quite lacking in flavor and not impressive.
And then went on to a their "Iberico Pork Presa Char Siu", as long as you use good ingredients from the right cut it's hard to go wrong on Char Siu. So as expected this tastes pretty good.
A bit more technique required for the next dish which was "Tea Smoked Crispy Free Range Yellow Chicken", came with some smoke (I assume it's from a smoking gun, common technique for adding the smoke flavor to meat and cocktails).
The portions were quite small as you can see this is it for half a chicken. Taste was fair, the smoke was there but I thought they could use a chicken of slightly higher quality.
Next is a seafood dish "Steam Australian Scallop, Egg White, Spinach Sauce", the name sounds more fancy than the taste unfortunately.
To finish the main meal off we also ordered a "Scallop, Egg White, Crispy Rice Fish Soup", I like the Chinese name much better, "Marshmellow Soup Rice". I personally didn't like the texture very much so did not find that very delicious.
And then finally to the dessert we ordered watermelon jelly. It was just too normal and there isn't much I can comment on except that it looks like a few slices of watermelon which was cute?
For me I thought it was kind of a disappointment as I was looking forward to something better than this, I guess I also didn't order the right stuff as I heard some of their other dishes were good. In conclusion:
1) this restaurant did not live up to its reputation and certainly has quite some distance to its big brother Mott 32
2) I think the team tried to use similar style as Mott, if I wanted to create a new brand out of this then I would want to create a quite different style. Similar things with a different brand name is not interesting.
3) I also thought the quality of the food could be a better
Therefore next time if I want a fancy Chinese meal with a westernized environment I would go back to Mott 32.
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