Second Draft (已搬遷) 新店位置

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多國菜咖啡店酒吧

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Like the concept and the flavor. But the wontons were broken and lacked in presentation. Coffee was just ok... the fries were great! Worth a try but really disappointed with the broken wonton.

(以上食評乃用戶個人意見 , 並不代表OpenRice之觀點。)

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Opened lately at Little Tai Hang, Second Draft is occupying the ground floor of this service apartment with a horseshoe-shaped bar, tables set against large window, sage green and white walls. The gastropub focuses on a full list of locally imported bottle beers and brews from The Ale Project, while also serving a creative collection of coffee such as cold drips and mocktails. We are offered tasting shots before deciding our orders. Coming to the menu, it is designed by Little Bao‘s May Chow. Fr

Coming to the menu, it is designed by Little Bao‘s May Chow. From bar snacks to sharing courses, they all capture an obvious local flavors meeting some Western features, such as a signature HK French Toast topped with thick foie butter, flower crab pasta made with thick Shanghainese noodles.

The Tai Hang fries arrives with a generous sprinkle of cumin, pickled mustard greens and dried chili. It is fairly-spiced, hot, crispy and is simply addictive.

Burrata, Pork “Mapo” Ragout, Baby Spinach

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Favourites are the fried chicken, coated with cumin and served with a dyingly delicious fermented tofu and roasted garlic dip; mapo burrata, combining Chinese chili minced pork with this soft, creamy, and mild Italian fresh cheese.

There are also sandos and burgers, whilst the best is still the Shanghai Dip ciabatta!

All in all, this place is indeed perfect to enjoy some craft beers, cocktails and these amazing food options.

(以上食評乃用戶個人意見 , 並不代表OpenRice之觀點。)

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2016-11-27

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[Note to reader: this is one part of my 8-part review series on the Ultimate Sandwich Competition. Here’s a description of the contest: “Crave Magazine is partnering with The Forks & Spoons and online dining platform in search of Hong Kong’s best gourmet sandwiches. Eight of the city’s beloved delis and restaurants will battle it out to show us what they’ve got with their prized carby goodness, from classic Reubens to the reimagined Banh Mi.” I decided to hold my own (completely unofficial) contest, eating all the sandwiches and ranking them.

Rules: I just made up these rules, but I abided by them throughout the contest. Rule #1: Only one sandwich can be crowned The Ultimate Sandwich, and it must be one of the eight entrants. While Crave magazine is giving the award based on sales, my award is completely subjective, based on my own opinion. Rule #2: I must eat the sandwich exactly the way the restaurant serves it, with no additions or subtractions (unless they’re explicitly offered as a choice point): no sauces from the table, no salt, no pepper, nothing. Rule #3: Only The Ultimate Sandwich deserves a smiley-face review. If a restaurant pretends it has The Ultimate Sandwich, but then just has a regular old sandwich, then that restaurant is ipso facto only OK at best, and perhaps frowny-face at worst.]

Shanghai Dip

24-hour braised pork leg, Stonecutter Scottish ale pork jus, cucumber pickles, Ciabatta

HK$98

This was my first time to Second Draft. According to the South China Morning Post, the restaurant “is a collaboration between Young Master Ales and May Chow, chef and founder of Little Bao.” I’ve also read that the same “team” does TAP The Ale Project in Mong Kok, which I have never been to. I’m a little bit skeptical of Young Master, just because the first time I had their beer (at Beef and Liberty), I didn’t like it (I said, I think, that it tasted like grass clippings). Little Bao has good food in my opinion, though perhaps a little aggressively sauced.

This place is very not like the rest of Tai Hang. It’s large, for one thing, and very bright. They could fit more tables in than they have, so there’s a real spaciousness to it. The chairs are nice. The servers and bartenders are very hipster-y. The music is eclectic. There are lots and lots of white people. It’s the kind of thing I’d think you’d move to Tai Hang to get away from. But it’s not a criticism, if that’s what you’re into.

It was a Saturday and public holiday to boot (National Day), so I was not able to obtain reservations the day before. They only do partial bookings though, so we planned to come early as walk-ins, and arrived at 6:30. We obtained four seats at the bar (for five people, so not terrible) and were seated after maybe thirty minutes, perhaps a little less. As a condition of obtaining the table we did, one of us had to sit on a backless stool, so that the waitstaff could move freely behind that person. The task fell to me, but I traded halfway through. The stool is uncomfortable, and that’s probably why I noticed the chairs are so nice.

I was with some relatively large eaters (in that they eat large portions, not that they themselves are large), so we ordered three appetizers. The first was the Edamole: “Edamame dip, dumpling chips, furikake.” According to Wikipedia, furikake “consists of a mixture of dried and ground fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt, and monosodium glutamate.” The dip is thick and grainy like some hummus. It was fine, not offensively bean-y or anything, but definitely not great. Somebody at the table said, “It would be nice if it had some avocado in it. And some cilantro and lime juice.” That is, it’s trying to be a substitute to guacamole, but it’s wholly inferior to the real thing. The dumpling wrapper chips were very good though, and you get at least one refill complimentary.

As of this writing, Second Draft doesn’t have a website, so I only know the names of the soft-opening menu items that are posted here, not the other stuff. (For the millenials out there, no, a Facebook page with no menu is not a website.) Hence this is just “Squiddy Things.” People seemed to like them. I thought they weren’t super tough, but you can get much better squiddy things at, for example, Le Tambour. OK.

Here’s the soft-opening description of the Tai Hang Fries: “cumin dust, takana, dried chilli.” The dried chilli was just two dried chillies literally just tossed on top, exerting no influence on the flavor—this is a garnish, not an ingredient. The cumin dust was very noticeable smell-wise, but thankfully subdued flavor-wise. The yellow gloopy stuff is some sort of mayonnaise. For the obscure Japanese ingredient, I’ll let the Japan Times tell us, “Takana, or more accurately, takana-zuke, is made from pickled mustard leaf, and is mildly spicy and crunchy.” So, ya cai, but Japanese somehow. The fries were good and the table ate both baskets of them, but the construction was a little odd, because the thinness of the fries didn’t really let them pick up the takana, so most of the non-fry ingredients were there just to make it look nice, not to actually be ingredients.

Shanghai Dip (Interior)

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Finally we get to the star of the review, the Shanghai Dip. I’ll repeat the description: “24-hour braised pork leg, Stonecutter Scottish ale pork jus, cucumber pickles, Ciabatta.” Some things are missing from the description. First, obviously, there’s cheese on it. I don’t know why you don’t advertise that. Second, if you look at my head on picture here:

Shanghai Dip (Cross Section)

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You can see something distinctly cabbage-y hanging down, and there was definitely some sort of soggy cabbage thing on there. Thus far, missing ingredients had been a theme of my Ultimate Sandwich Competition experience, now I was getting extra ingredients.

Let’s talk about the good things. It was on a ciabatta, and I don’t know precisely what makes a thing a ciabatta, but this was different from the more crunchy ciabatta at Bread and Beast. That isn’t a complaint, however, because a good dip sandwich needs to be the sort of thing that will get really soggy in the jus. The pork was very tender, as you’d imagine from 24 hour braising. You also got a fair bit of it.

Where the sandwich fell apart, in my opinion, is all its attempts at funky improvement on the classic French dip. First, while I like vinegary things on sandwiches, they’re questionable on a dip. And these were sweet cucumber pickles, which really is just ruining a good cucumber and fouling up the sandwich to boot. The mystery cabbage-y substance had a strange flavor to it too. My local friend who was there with me said, “It tastes like the Chinese [expletive] my mom would make,” and she didn’t mean that as a compliment. Finally, and the worst offender, was that the jus was very thick and sweet. I want lots of brothy beef consommé that I can dunk the sandwich in until it’s soaking, not some sweet paste.

Like the Edamole, the sandwich just left me wanting the real thing, not the thing I’d been given. If you want to improve on a classic, the first thing to do is improve it, not make it worse.

For illustration, here’s what some other people at the table got. Two of us got the Shanghai dip. Two of us got the Reuben:

Steak and Chimichurri

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And one friend of mine got the steak. I had a piece of the steak with the garlicky chimichurri sauce and it was good. In fact, the sandwich currently winning this competition [at the time I wrote this—the final results are below] is a steak and chimichurri sandwich from Knead, so I know Second Draft can produce good stuff, it’s just their entrant in the contest will not be winning it.

Note on service: I was really impressed by the service at this restaurant. The servers were always around, they noticed when your glass was empty, they were knowledgeable about the menu and made recommendations. A really top-notch team.

(Highly Unofficial) Ultimate Sandwich Competition Results:

1. ***WINNER*** Bulgogi Roast Beef Sandwich – Jinjuu

2. Steak in Knead – Knead

3. Ultimate Smoked Pastrami & Cheese – Morty’s Delicatessen

4. Beef Bourguignon Banh Mi - Mrs. Pound

5. The Gentleman’s Sandwich – Beef & Liberty

6. Shanghai Dip – Second Draft

7. [Did not show] – Posto Pubblico

8. HA HA Piss Off! – Bread & Beast

(以上食評乃用戶個人意見 , 並不代表OpenRice之觀點。)

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After not setting foot in Tai Hang for almost the entire 2016, I was hoping to make it two in a roll following a pretty successful outing at Warren last week. This time around, my destination is Second Draft, a neighborhood gastropub just recently opened on the ground floor of a modern condo building in Tai Hang and I have recruited my buddy V as my partner in crime for this one.I told myself I already had enough of East-meets-West cuisine this year but Second Draft was a little difficult to pas

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I told myself I already had enough of East-meets-West cuisine this year but Second Draft was a little difficult to pass up because it's the brainchild of two of the rising stars in the local culinary scene - May Chow of Little Bao fame and James Ling from The Ale Project.

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Just about everybody in the city (including myself) is very much into the good old Hong Kong theme these days so unsurprisingly, Second Draft also went with this approach of a crossover between a colonial style beer pub and local cha chaan teng.

I must admit, I like this decor a lot. The nostalgic vibe has added something a little extra for the overall dining experience.

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This is my first taste of the locally brewed "Young Master" craft beer (少爺麥啤) and I have to say, I'm pretty amazed with the wide variety of flavors they have to offer. V and I had a long discussion on which one to pick and these ones all came across our mind.

- In The Mood for Spring / 花釀年華

- Flavor: Earthy

- What's special about it: Jasmine, Chrysanthemum and Osmanthus

- Mo’ Mo’ Wit / 夏日麼麼啤

- Flavor: Spicy

- What's special about it: Chen Pei (陳皮), Housemade 5 spice blend

- Fussy Peachkin Man

- Flavor: Fruity

- What's special about it: Pumpkins, Peaches, 5 spices, Condensed Milk

But soon I realized that I wasn't really all that adventurous when it comes to beer so I ended up taking one of their most popular one which is the Young Master Classic.

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Second Draft's food menu mainly focuses on East-meets-west dishes that are meant to be shared but before we got into that, we decided to kick things off with some snacks first.

Inked croquettes with squid ink and dried oysters ($28/pc) was their modern take on the Spanish croquettes but with a local twist.

It was finished with a chimichurri sauce on top. Pretty nice.

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Next up was Mapo Burrata ($138), a dish that was often seen on magazines and social media whenever they talked about this gastropub.

I was mighty impressed with the burrata that was soft, rich and buttery at the same time. But I had no idea how well it would work with pork "mapo" ragout until I had the very first bite. That was almost like a marriage made in heaven. The only knock was the slightly over-seasoned pork ragout which was tasty but a bit too spicy.

Unfortunately, our main dishes didn't follow up strong like the appetizers. I like the Chinese spin on the braised octopus and pork belly ($148) with the nam-yu sauce (南乳醬) and pickled garlic but the combination of flavors fell a little short of our expectation.

Octopus and pork belly

Flower crab pasta ($198) was supposed to be the highlight of the night. The gastropub's own version of carbonara was inspired by the Shanghainese imitation crab (賽螃蟹), featuring flower crab meat, egg white, egg yolk, thick Shanghainese noodles and a creamy butter sauce.

Like the actual Shanghainese imitation crab dish, a raw egg yolk was placed on top and we were instructed to mix everything together well, including the special black vinegar that was provided on the side.

I thought the acidity from the black vinegar was a fine touch to the dish, contrasting well with the rich and creamy pasta but there's just not enough flower crab meat in there to make it fully work (Not enough texture in the mix).

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There were no desserts available on the menu except for chocolate, vanilla and milk-tea ice-creams which we gladly declined. So we quickly settled the bill and took a short walk to Fortress Hill for our favorite Chinese desserts.

It was another fine East-meets-West experience but this theme (MIC Kitchen, Kasa, The Drunken Pot, Sohofama just to name a few here) is beginning to get a little overused (and boring) these days. Like I said during the start of this post, I think I had enough of this by now. It's time to start another trend.

(以上食評乃用戶個人意見 , 並不代表OpenRice之觀點。)

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2016-09-28

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最近吹什麼風？說的並非秋風冬風，而是食物風潮。香港最常見的現象就是一窩蜂，一窩蜂去旅行，一窩蜂去吃喝，一窩蜂去購物。總而言之，近來時興的就要去趁熱鬧，雖然其他國家也會有如此情況。但是香港人反應就似乎是較為熱切及即時，也許要數香港媒體電訊的普及吧。　　在灣仔小巷之中，靜靜起革命，這晚以後，又要掀起一股新風潮。選址Bread & Beast，Crave Magazine、網上外賣平台及The Forks & Spoons主辦。讓我們投票選出Ultimate Sandwich的一個活動正如火如荼地進行中。八家精選餐廳呈現獨特新意，將由小吃到大的三文治改頭換面，到底又可以得出什麼花樣？（參賽餐廳將於九月十二至十月十日期間供應各款特色三文治）Second Draft - Shanghai Dip　$98　　伴有啤酒及特色法式醬汁同食的三文治，是晚唯一的豬肉選擇。花上24小時燉煮而成的豬腳肉軟腍細滑，肥脂膠質嫩香得很，引人入勝。輕灼至溶化的芝士與豬肉相扣，吃起來更為順潤豐腴。醬汁帶點苦香，只是本來已經濕潤得很的三文治要另外再加醬汁，食時有點狼狽了。這回重口味的肥膩感贏得歡呼喝采，榮登最出色的三文治

Second Draft - Shanghai Dip　$98
　　伴有啤酒及特色法式醬汁同食的三文治，是晚唯一的豬肉選擇。花上24小時燉煮而成的豬腳肉軟腍細滑，肥脂膠質嫩香得很，引人入勝。輕灼至溶化的芝士與豬肉相扣，吃起來更為順潤豐腴。醬汁帶點苦香，只是本來已經濕潤得很的三文治要另外再加醬汁，食時有點狼狽了。這回重口味的肥膩感贏得歡呼喝采，榮登最出色的三文治寶座。

(以上食評乃用戶個人意見 , 並不代表OpenRice之觀點。)

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