Video
Read full review
2010-06-13
10 views
We only recently noticed this restaurant in a very odd corner of Admiralty and decided to try it for dinner as we love Singaporean/Malaysian food and it is so hard to find good Singaporean/malaysian restaurants in Hong Kong.Restaurant looked modern, although very purple, and the rubber chickens along one wall were a bit odd. Restaurant was clean and welcomed us with two children. The restaurant seemed to be half full when we arrived, however we discovered during the course of the meal that 90% o
Restaurant looked modern, although very purple, and the rubber chickens along one wall were a bit odd. Restaurant was clean and welcomed us with two children. The restaurant seemed to be half full when we arrived, however we discovered during the course of the meal that 90% of the 'diners' in the restaurant were friends of the owners who had come to visit.
The seating options were short stools, chairs or a booth. We were seated in a booth.
Menu was written in both english and chinese, along with numbering.
Surprisingly there were very few 'noodle' dishes on the menu other than the laksa. No Chow gwai dew, prawn noodles or hor faan (flat rice noodles) appeared to be offered.
We ended up deciding on a 1/2 Hainan Chicken, Seafood Laksa with mai faan (thin rice noodles), a malay vegetable (tong choi - chinese water spinach) dish and two bowls of Chicken rice.
Seafood Laksa: The visual presentation of this dish was amazing, however it lacked any aroma and the fluorescent green prawn sitting atop the dish was a little off-putting. The dish had lots of ingredients, a piece of crab, a clam, some small fish balls, a scallop, a few mussels, fried tofu, turnip, eggplant and an egg omelette atop the noodles and an assortment of green vegetables and mushrooms. The soup tasted ok, although lacked the spice and chilli I would expect of a laksa in Asia. The consistency was also very thin. The amount of noodles seemed less than the meat and mushrooms. The scallop was of a decent size, however it did not have a fresh taste. Similarly the prawn was overwhelmed by the green food colouring taste.
Hainan Chicken: The chicken was served on a painters palette plate with chilli and soy sauce dripped around the edges. The chicken was served boneless and topped with yellow petals from (I am hoping) an edible flower of some kind. It was served with three sauces - a black soy sauce, a chilli sauce and a ginger-red onion sauce.
The chilli sauce tasted like it had come out of a bottle and had no texture. The ginger red onion sauce was unusual. The red onion flavour dominated the sauce making the ginger almost indistinguishable in the sauce. As unusual as it was, it made an acceptable accompaniment to the chicken. The chicken was moist and tasted ok. The skin was well presented with a small amount of fat.
Chicken Rice: Good sized portions slightly larger than a normal rice bowl. The rice was subtly flavoured with chicken and garlic, not too hard or soft.
malay vegetable (tong choi - chinese water spinach) dish: The vegetables arrived on a long white dish. The dish diverged from what we have traditionally had in that it contained shredded carrot, sliced onion and sliced garlic. The large chunks of garlic were only half cooked. The vegetables were crunchy but had very little sambal or chilli, instead a burnt aftertaste was left in the mouth. The bottom of the dish was a dark brown watery sauce which was the source of the burnt taste. We found this dish inedible and struggled to eat almost 1/3 of it.
Service was below average as staff were inattentive. One of the dishes we ordered was 'forgotten' and had to be added later (although to the kitchen's credit they got it out to us quickly). When asking for a knife and fork to cut up our children's food, the request had to be made 3 times. It took over a minute for the various wait staff to acknowledge our raised hands waving for the bill.
When the change was returned from the bill we were given over $10 in small change ($1 and $2's) without explanation. I suppose in the expectation that we would leave it all as a tip even though there was small change on top of that. This arrogant attitude made us decide not to leave any tip, especially since service was bad, one dish was basically inedible and there was already a 10% surcharge on the bill.
This is an average restaurant, not quite as bad as a food court, slightly on the pricy side. I would go back for the hainan chicken if a friend wanted to try the restaurant but I would not go out of my way to recommend this restaurant.
Post
