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2015-03-18
3446 浏览
We'd made a reservation for 7pm, for my birthday dinner with my family after seeing the reviews and impressive score. Thought it would be a nice place to try some exciting food. The exterior was nicely designed, and carries into the interior decor which uses the same blue and white tiles paired with a sleek central kitchen and aged wooden tables. It's a pretty looking restaurant, but the seating in the place is quite cramped, in a way that you're practically rubbing shoulders with the next table
The exterior was nicely designed, and carries into the interior decor which uses the same blue and white tiles paired with a sleek central kitchen and aged wooden tables. It's a pretty looking restaurant, but the seating in the place is quite cramped, in a way that you're practically rubbing shoulders with the next table. The closed quarters and non-sound-absorbant decor meant that noise was a huge issue. I could barely talk to the person across the table...it was that bad.
The food menu is small, with maybe 2 dozen choices of tapas on one page and about 12 pages of wine. There are no "bigger dishes." Everything is tapas-sized and meant for sharing, as a warning note. It is not a easy menu to navigate unless you have decent knowledge of Spanish food terms. They'd run out of the Goat curd croquettes which we wanted to try, and replaced the menu's clams with razor clams (daily special). Despite this, all the food items we tried were quite good.
Items ordered for 3 people:
-Chicken & mushroom paella : rice seemed a little mushier than neccessary but flavourful
-Baked cheese with sweet crusted top, served with bread slices : Star of the night, a sweet and oily creamy stringy thing on bread. Needed more bread, as it went down really heavily with only 3 slices.
-Australian rib-eye with crushed tomatos : We ordered medium rare, it came blue. Nothing to sing home about. Needed a dash of salt and pepper.
-Seared scallops on a bed of dressed greens with bacon: Nice colour on scallops but tops had no texture, and was a bit rubbery inside. Needed lemon. Definitely had better. The salad under it was flavourful but the entire dish was really, really salty.
-Fried squid with squid ink aioli : Nicely done, especially the addition of zingy pepper slices and the creaminess of the squid ink sauce.
-Braised octopus with chorizo, served with bread slices : I expected octopus, not baby octopus, when you put octopus on the menu. Flavourful in tomato sauce, but nothing wow. Again, 3 tiny slices of bread with 6 pieces of octopi...not the correct ratio.
My biggest issue with the entire night was the poor service. Our waitress was a very pushy woman and was visibly displeased when we didn't order drinks. It wasn't as if we'd ordered the cheapest food on the menu or 2 plates between 3 people. All our food came within 5-10minutes after we ordered. We were quite shocked because most of it had to be eaten hot, and we had to scramble to eat it while warm. Of course most of it got cold before we got to it. We look over at the next table: their food came one plate at a time. It was obvious the kitchen was not timing our meal correctly, or the restaurant just wanted us to finish and get out. That is really the worst feeling ever, and really ruined the meal for us. We finished all the food in 20 minutes. My mother was still sawing through her last few bites of steak when the waitress came and started cleaning everything off our table. It was 7:45 at this time. Ridiculous. I don't care if there are people lining up outside. This isn't a fast-food restaurant, and I think a decent hour and half should be allowed for each table. The waitress then started pushing the dessert menu on us a few times, signalling that if we weren't getting any, we should probably get out soon. I persisted in staying with a water refill for another 15min as we were in the middle of a family conversation.
Bill came to around $800 in total. Service is not included, and at this level, I'm fairly tempted to leave a very, very low tip for ruining my birthday dinner. It is ridiculous: if the establishment had any respect for food, it wouldn't be served like this.
Honestly, the meal was tasty enough for the price, but like so many places in Hong Kong, the service really failed to impress. Will not come again as no food tastes good cold, crammed down our throats, and when the customer has to deal with annoying staff.
张贴