I have to write this review after reading some rather substandard reviews denigrating the place unnecessarily. With all due respect, the slights on the food in some of the reviews go no further than whether a dish was being salty or not, or whether abalone on a dish was enough in quantity, speak volume about the dubious quality of the reviewers themselves - a rather sad disposition of Hong Kong food eaters. It is not that I am a professional judge or anything, but I do believe we ought to delve further into the details of the food before making hasty judgments on dishes that are beyond our everyday staple food like McD. And in case those people are thoroughly conversant in English, I am happy to append the Chinese translations of some points I made herein:
某些比"負皮"的所謂"食評"只在食物咸淡或鮑魚份量的多少著墨,或多或少反映其淺薄的質素。這可能是香港人的卑哀。幸而OpenRice懂得將一些標為"非食評"。
Ever since moving to the area in February, my experience with this place, of the 6 times being there, was excellent throughout. And therefore I brought some friends over to the place for dinner on Sunday, and we had just as fine an experience there.
We pre-ordered the BBQ-pork for dinner, as it is almost always sold out if we walked-in for it.
Though portion was a bit small for a crowd of 8, we managed to taste a fine dish of BBQ-pork, which was fine and tender. Unlike an abundance of cheap BBQ-pork elsewhere, the redness on the skin of the meat felt natural and well-marinated. The only knock was that the pork itself was a bit less juicy than the last time we tried, but that should be an anomaly. All other tries of BBQ-pork before this time were excellent.
Other dishes we ordered consisted of pork loin chop (16oz), clams in cream sauce with bread, fried rice with eel and crab roe, risotto-style rice with black truffles, crispy chicken in soy sauce and fried soft-shell crab with pepper.
Didn't try the seafood dishes (allergies) but my friends were all very satisfied.
The crispy chicken in soy sauce is one of my favourites. The chicken meat was made perfectly tender, and the sauce tastes very special with a fine balance between the saltiness and chicken taste. The pork loin was fine as well. As an occasional cook I always find dealing with pork loin to cook it perfectly was very difficult, but they managed to serve another perfectly tender, juicy and well-marinated pork loin.
I am a big fan of risotto, and while the rice with black truffles is not exactly made of risotto, it was very good nonetheless. The pleasant scent of black truffles was consistent throughout the dish, which distinguishes itself from similar dishes from other dineries which sprayed truffles/truffled-favours onto a dish, which created unevenness. The truffle scent was also not taking over the dish, retaining a finely balanced character in it. The rice was perfectly cooked for it as well.
Also, the manager, Alan, was heck of a friendly guy and gave us a couple of freebies in soup du jour (MSG-free and finely boiled)! A very hearty experience with him.
Although I am not a fan of the dinery's big boss (and his dissing of 細蓉), I am hoping this review would serve as a more useful note for those who want to try unorthodox fusion food with a Chinese leitmotif that is more exciting than the daily boredom of HK-style food.