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2009-07-31
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It has always been my belief that in order to judge the standard of a restaurant, one should go for the simple dishes rather than those "complex" or sophisticated ones; and a simple dinner was indeed what we had here, and we were quite impressed with the overall quality of the food. The first dish to arrive was the 大哥义燒, supposedly one of the signature items of West Villa. Despite its great reputation, actually we found it to be a bit disappointing, for the meat texture was unnaturally "tender",
The first dish to arrive was the 大哥义燒, supposedly one of the signature items of West Villa. Despite its great reputation, actually we found it to be a bit disappointing, for the meat texture was unnaturally "tender", almost to the point of "mushy", and lacked the usual firmness in texture like the char siu that we used to have elsewhere; moreover, the fat content was a bit too high, there wasn't too much evidence of char-grilling, and the sauce was also way too sweet Could it be that we arrived just a bit too late, and missed the better portions of the char siu which were already sold out on that particular night ? We don't really know for sure. But if I were to pick my favorite char siu, this would score way down on the list, and I would rather go for the product of restaurants like Fu Sing instead. So, quite surprisingly, it was the char siu here which turned out to be the most unimpressive dish for that evening. Fortunately, better stuff would soon follow.
Next to arrive was the 南乳齋煲, with lots of ingredients like mushrooms, dried tofu, 腐竹, vermicelli etc, all cooked in a tasty broth. Quite delicious in fact and or course the sauce was a near-perfect match with steamed rice. In retrospect, we felt that the taste of the dish was probably deliberately toned-down a bit to make it less salty, in order to suit the taste of the average customers. We certainly wouldn't mind a richer sauce, but this one was perfectly ok by usual standards. Not a bad dish to try, but of course no major surprises here as one would expect.
The next two items that came were very nicely executed. Both of them were quick fried with loads of ginger and onion, and arrived piping hot in casseroles. The 班腩煲 was made with large chunks of fresh, good-quality fish(? from groupers maybe), and the fish chunks were lightly fried to give it a slightly cripsy texture on the outside, while the meat inside remained tender. Best of all, the added peppers gave a spicy edge to the dish, making it really delicious and flavourful. Although seemingly a "simple" dish, this one certainly stood out as one of the best I had tried before, and really set a new standard for this classic comfort food. The 薑蔥美國石蠔煲 was another delightful dish to have, with the fish chunks being substituted this time with large pieces of juicy, tender oysters; there were at least 5-6 large pieces of oysters in the pot, all of which tasted fresh to us and cooked just right, and hence we finished the whole dish in no time at all. At the end we were all very full and had to skip the desserts. Overall speaking a most enjoyable dinner, which was really "simple but beautiful"; we looked forward to coming back again to try the more "complex" dishes later ... ...
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