Seems like it's kinda hard to get good food recently. Apologies for the run of bad restaurants I've reviewed.
We came here on the strength of the review in HK magazine (the one on the French May festival).
The store is easy enough to find, glitzy and modern looking compared to the drab cha chan tengs nearby. I got there early for lunch - about 1215 - and was waved in to a seat. As with most places in Central during lunch time, you're going to have to share unless your party can take up a whole table. Anyway, the service staff were nice enough not to sneer too nastily at me while I pretended to have a really deep interest in the menu before the wife arrived. Kudos to them, no snide remarks about me taking up two seats without ordering immediately. (Either that or my really horrible cantonese remains really horrible)
The menus all have English subtitles so no problems there and since I had the time, I pieced out a remarkable example of Chinese ellipsis. This used to drive me crazy in school, when parts of chinese phrases would be left out just to make sentences less unwieldy.
So:
There's this drink in Hong Kong - hot lemon coca cola with ginger.
Coke is 可樂, Lemon is 檸檬
And Lemon Coke with Ginger is 檸樂加姜 (First part of lemon, second part of Coke and 姜 is ginger)
The wife arrived and we ordered a "four treasures meats with rice" (that's BBQ pork, roasted pork, steamed chicken and roasted duck for HK35) and the "two roasted meat, soup and fried rice" lunch special (HK50), all the better to test the restaurant's repertoire.
We were sadly disappointed.
The pieces of chicken and duck were too small and full of bones, the only good part being the skin.
The Pork Chops were really tender and sweet. But lacked depth of flavour because of the absence of the balancing bitterness and crunchiness of a slightly burnt exterior.
The Spare Ribs (排骨) were the best. Just the right balance of tender meat and charred exterior.
There was one more pork dish - I think it was roasted pork brisket. Also unremarkable and similar to chinese sausage.
The Fried Rice was not very fried, not very eggy ... and cold.
About the only thing besides the Ribs that was passable was the soup.
If you like that kind of food, then go for it; down the road we did see another restaurant that also had bbq-ed pork in the front window with nary a bit of char on it, so it could be a local thing.
And in a way, that's what I've felt about the Chinese language in general when it starts leaving bits out. You keep the meat, but in the interests of quickly getting to the point, things get lost along the way. And sometimes, those things are actually integral to the taste experience.
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