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2014-06-22
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I was invited by Eden Rose to come taste their new two person dinner menu and I could bring someone else along to share this experience. I, of course, brought the one other foodie I can rely on to laugh at me when I get all Gordon Ramsey a la “Kitchen Nightmares” whenever I eat out at fine dining establishments. Boyfriend.Eden Rose is located in Causeway Bay, next to Sogo, in a building well known for many well established higher end Japanese restaurants. But this place doesn’t serve Japanese fo
Eden Rose is located in Causeway Bay, next to Sogo, in a building well known for many well established higher end Japanese restaurants. But this place doesn’t serve Japanese food. It serves European. Entering the restaurant, the dated decor was dark. And when I say, dark, it was dark. Black walls, black chairs, black tables. A few dashes of burgundy and some chandeliers. A few lighted candles. It felt like I was back in Canada again and hung out at a gothic bar. It did have a great view of Causeway Bay below. It’s definitely a place for people who want a romantic night out or some celebrity who doesn’t want to be seen. I, personally, would have liked it a bit more bright.
We were greeted with the menu we were to try out that was displayed to us in an iPad. What you get is a starter of clams in fish broth and sous vide salmon with Hollandaise sauce, a choice of 2 soups (soup of the day, cream of black truffel or lobster bisque), a main of crab stuffed risotto with black truffle, roasted Iberico pork loin with a green apple salsa and choice of two desserts (crème brulee, chocolate parfait or strawberry napoleon). All for $898. Wine not included.And so we begin.
While we waited we were given two pieces of garlic bread. I noted real garlic was used but it was nothing too special. I do wish the bread was plain instead as I like to eat my bread the French way. Plain, no butter and used only to dip away the sauce. For the following starter could have worked great with plain baguette.
We started with the clams in fish broth. Boyfriend whispered to me that he was ready to hate this place when he saw the decor but was surprised how good this was. I agreed. The clams were fresh and cooked at the exact right moment as they were done but not rubbery. The broth was sweet from being cooked with the clams. There were also bits of shimeji mushrooms.
The next starter was sous vide salmon, topped with sea urchin and caviar and plated with hollandaise sauce. Sous vide is the latest gourmet restaurant fad and it’s become so common that even amature wannabe Masterchefs own one. My cousin and her fiancé bought a small one for the home recently and have been showing off their finished dinners on Facebook. For those that don’t watch endless episodes of Masterchef like me, sous vide is a technique of vacuum packing your food with any marinade you want and poaching it in a waterbath at a fixed low temperature. With all that technical babble that is supposed to oooo and awwww you, it was very good. The salmon was soft and perfectly poached. Absolutely melted away. The sea urchin was sweet and fresh. The cavier salty. All together it was a perfect combination. The hollandaise was creamy and had a slight lemony tang. The only odd thing was the slices of radishes were bland. No mustardy kick. I went home to search online on perhaps they used a different variety of radish that had no mustardy kick but couldn’t find one. So, in a way, I’m glad the radishes had no spicy kick otherwise it would have ruined this dish. Also, did not like the plating of this dish with the odd sprinkles of spices around the centerpiece. Useless extra that Gordon Ramsay would have shaked his head over.
We chose both cream of truffle and lobster bisque soup to try together.Cream of black truffle soup had a dollop of black truffle paste on top and a swirl of olive oil. It smelled mushroomy rather than truffles but oddly, didn’t taste much of anything. It was odd. So much mushroom but yet tasteless. I sit and wonder why my cream of mushroom soup is better and I don’t even use truffle paste. Just a good stock and some thyme. And that’s when it dawned on me. There was no thyme. Couldn’t taste it. Couldn’t smell it. A bit of thyme would have brought out the true essence of the mushrooms.
However, the lobster bisque was much better. It was sweet, rich and creamy. Plating, however, could have been a bit more refined as the cream was presented in a zig zag fashion. I think a small, yet minimalistic, circle of cream is all that is needed. If the chef wanted to get really cute, a string cream of perhaps three small hearts would have been sweet yet classy.
Their signature dish was next. A crab stuffed with crab meat risotto and black truffle paste. The crab was plated on top of a bed of rocks which was interesting. There was lot of risotto. Definitely enough for two people. The risotto was baked instead of the classic way of making it so it wasn’t as creamy as regular risotto. It was also not al dente as regular risotto. It was, however, well done and smelled fantastic. Probably from being baked in the crab shell. It was odd that they served the black truffle paste in a small dish next to the crab instead of incorporating it. I, also, am a follower of the Gordon Ramsey school of thought on black truffle paste and truffle oils and so I didn’t like the addition of truffle paste to the risotto and glad they did put it as a side dish. I did try a bit of it in the risotto just to see if I would change my mind and I didn’t. The truffle paste over powered the sweetness of the crab flavor infused in the risotto. Without the truffle paste, it was much better. I didn’t touch the rest of the truffle paste.
The roasted Iberico pork loin with green apple salsa was nicely plated. I think the entire night, this was best plated food with the rusticness on a chopping board, the colorful capsicons and the tiny dish of gravy. The pork loin, we were told, was cooked a medium rare and it was when I inspected it. So, this wasn’t a true slow roasted pork. No. This was one of the newer cooking trends lately to serve medium rare pork so it’s still juicy yet springy in texture instead of falling off the bone. It tasted quite good, though. However, the gravy needed a bit more seasoning. The capsicons would have been fantastic if they were roasted as well, but they weren’t so were crunchy instead of soft and sweet. The apple salsa was a nice complement to the pork.
We were presented with their signature dessert, the chocolate mousse with a hot chocolate whisky hazelnut sauce to pour. Once poured on top, it would melt the chocolate disc that covered a little well that had chopped hazelnuts inside. The entire mousse was laid on a bed of breadcrumbs. Yes, breadcrumbs. I don’t understand that, too. This was an extremely rich dessert, especially with the end of a meal that was already rich from start to finish. Therefore, I wasn’t much of a fan. It lacked balance somehow. At first, I thought perhaps a tart fruit sauce like raspberries but then it couldn’t be hot enough to melt the disc. Perhaps more fruit instead of the strange addition of breadcrumbs that were not only flavorless but clumped into one big mushy mess after addition of the sauce? Perhaps instead of the hazelnuts inside the mousse, they replace it with a tart fruit cream? It needed a bit of acidity to make this a better dish as the mousse is quite good.
They presented us with a new dessert they were trying. A kumquat sorbet quaintly plated inside half a mandarin orange. I loved this dessert. It was tart with a bit of the bitterness of the kumquat. Refreshing and cool. .A breath of fresh air from the richness of the entire meal. I felt this was a perfect dessert for the end of this meal. A great palate clenser.
I can’t really say Eden Rose is classical cooking in the true sense nor can I say it’s fusion. It’s neither of that. The only way I can describe it is that it serves higher end European dishes with larger portion size so you get more bang for your buck, than say “Joel Robechon”. But then Joel Robechon does do it better even though you leave not really feeling full. The chef cooks well enough. The food was delicious. It just needs fine tuning to make it even better and for them to truly call themselves fine dining. Things like plating needed some improvement. Perhaps watch a few episodes of Masterchef. If I wasn’t invited, I would not have heard of this place, nor thought to try it. But now that I have, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to bring a date here to impress with fancy dishes, dark romantic settings and a great view of Causeway Bay and yet still won’t break the bank as for $898, it’s quite a good deal.
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