Akita, Wanchai, Hong Kong

I met my wife after her Saturday shift had finished at Akita, a teppenyaki restaurant near her work place in Wanchai.

It was not busy and we shared the cooking station with a party of three, where our chef would cook and serve for us. We sat down and were given green tea, which was continuously topped up during the course of our meal, and a small bowl of salad with oriental type dressing.

Plate Setting

Both of us opted for one of their set lunches, which I have forgotten the name of the one I chose. It consisted of about six dishes that are cooked in front of you by the chef.

First dish was steamed egg & roe where the chef had eggs still in their shells but with the tops cut off, placed some water on the hot plate and covered them with the spherical lid to cook. After a few minutes he placed some roe and served. This was a nice and cute starter, with the egg light and the roe added flavour to the whole dish.

Steamed Egg & Roe

The next dish was King prawn. It was split into three pieces after it was cooked and tasted great with the right amount of seasoning and flavour. The head of prawn was actually set aside and served later.

Prawn

Following the prawns was my Beef dish where cubes of the meat were fried until medium rare and served with deep fried garlic. The meat was tender and flavoursome with the garlic giving the whole dish some crunch.

Beef Cubes with Garlic

My wife's equivalent dish was sliced beef roll with spring onion and garlic shown below, which I have to say tasted better.

Beef Roll with Garlic & Spring Onion

Miso soup was the most disappointing. There was nothing terrible about it, it just tasted as if there was too much flavouring. It contained the usual tofu and seaweed in it as well.

Miso Soup

The fried rice came after the soup, where the chef mixed the egg, rice and vegetables expertly.

Fried Rice in the making

Taste wise it was lovely, with all the ingredients mixed and fried well.

Fried Rice

The last hot dish was Stir fried Vegetables, which consisted of cabbage, carrot and onions and probably other ingredients. This was crunchy, had good flavour and a great dish to finish off with.

Stir Fry Vegetables

The great thing about this restaurant is watching your food being cooked in front of you by a skilled chef. Every dish he cooked in front of us did not disappoint. The chef would serve us the food after cooking and the service to clear our finished plates was efficient too. Price-wise, it is very competitive with the amount of food you get. Great restaurant and likely I will be returning.

Scores:
Food: 4/5
Presentation: 4/5
Service: 4/5
Setting: 3/5

Overall: 15/20

Total Bill: $325, about £14 a head.

I ate: All of the above.

I drank: Green Tea and a Coffee, which was part of the lunch set.

I wore: Standard weekend dress of jeans and tee shirt.

Classified, Happy Valley, Hong Kong

I was here with my wife the day after my cousin's wedding on a Sunday and the place was probably 60% full at time that we arrived. It is a licensed restaurant that serves western cuisine and has a few branches dotted around the city.

Unfortunately they did not offer an afternoon tea set during the weekend as I wanted something light after the indulgences of the previous night, I therefore chose a Greek salad. To accompany it I ordered an Iced Lemon Tea as my drink.

My wife went for a sweet option and chose the coffee cake with a watermelon juice.

The drinks arrived first and mine was refreshing and cool with a small pot of syrup to adjust the drink to your desired sweetness. There was a mis-communication with my wife's drink however as they said it was freshly squeezed when she asked but turned out it was only fresh from the supplier. I have to say it reads only "fresh" on the menu.

Iced Lemon Tea on left, Watermelon Juice on right

The salad had the usual ingredients of lettuce, feta cheese, onion and olives. It also had cherry tomatoes as well as sliced tomatoes. All of these ingredients were dressed with olive oil and presented in a nice white plate with the letter "C" printed on it to stand for the name of this restaurant. With all the ingredients combined together the salad was fresh, nice and light.

Greek Salad

I had a bite of my wife's Coffee Cake, which had a decent sponge, tasted sweet and a hint of coffee flavouring that was not too strong.

Coffee Cake

Classified is not a bad place; it is clean and fairly new and the food was of good quality and nicely presented. The waiters were helpful and our orders arrived quickly. As with most places serving non- traditional food on this area, it is a bit more expensive than other eateries serving local cuisine. It does seem to have a large selection of wine and cheese that I may try to sample next time I visit.

Scores
Food: 3/5
Presentation: 3/5
Service: 3/5
Setting: 3/5

Overall: 12/20

Bill: Approximately £7 a head

I ate: Greek Salad.

I drank: Iced Lemon Tea

U-Banquet, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong

This late lunch quest comes from my cousin's wedding reception dinner, which was a twelve course banquet held a week last Saturday. My wife and I were invited to go a restaurant called 'U-banquet' located in Causeway Bay, so not far from where we live. It was booked out with 20 tables of guests so over 200 people were attending this dinner.

'U-Banquet' caters for weddings and the restaurant hall has chandeliers and a large staircase for the happy couple to make their entrance. The hall even has fake stained class windows and church altar setting for a more European / Christian feel!

During the length of the meal, each dish was placed on the centre of the table and then spilt into the individual portions for everyone.

The first course was Roasted Suckling Pig, which is a traditional starter at these events. It was roasted well, with meat, fat and crispy skin in the right amounts. It was a bit kitschy placing the plastic hearts in the eyes, but it was a wedding after all.

Roasted Suckling Pig

Second course was sauteed prawns and scallop, where we received one of each as the photograph shows below, which can along with fried peas and pepper. Also nicely cooked but slightly small portioned dish.

Sauteed Prawns

Next we had a crab claw that was stuffed with shrimp paste and wrapped with almond flakes. It was a good finger food gimmick using the claw as the handle as demonstrated in the photograph. The shrimp paste filling was OK but the almond flake covering did not work for me.

Crispy Japanese Crab Claw

A braised Whole Conpoy (dried scallop) was served next, accompanied with Sea Moss. This was an enjoyable dish with a varied vegetable assortment and a flavoursome sauce to make it more moist.

Braised Conpoy stuffed with Marrow Vegetables and Sea Moss

We then were served with the Shark's Fin Soup. This was double boiled and had Chinese cabbage in it. The soup could have had more flavour and for double boiled, did not seem as thin as I expected. As usual the controversial fin slices did not add much to the dish apart from exclusivity.

Shark's Fin Soup

The abalone course is common in wedding banquet menus and this was a South African one, which was braised and came with a single pak choi. A very chewable dish, with the vegetable adding a bit of crunch to it.

Abalone

The last savoury dishes to arrive were fried rice and noodles, which you choose only one type after they are served (although counted as part of the twelve courses you receive). I chose the noodles hence the picture below. These egg noodles were well cooked with the flavour coming from the ginger and spring onion and topped off with abalone sauce.

Braised E-fu Noodles

The banquet was finished off with two sweet dishes shown below. Sweetened Walnut Soup had glutinous rice dumplings. It was warm, sweet and nutty and the dumplings were sweet too and chewy. The Petits Four were marshmallows, little pastries and gelatine type cakes and were a little disappointing and not as good as their European equivalents. They gave us oranges as well, which you can see in the background of the photo.

Sweetened Walnut Soup

Petits Four

There was two courses that I did not take pictures of and they were the Steamed Tiger Garoupa and Deep Fried Crispy Chicken, which to me were the best dishes of the night, unfortunately. The fish was deliciously steamed with ginger and spring onion, draped in a hot soya-oil sauce. The chicken meat was moist and skin was crispy and flavoursome.

Whilst it took long to get the first course on the table due to speeches and announcements, the service was very quick. In fact we probably received the first dish until 8.45pm and finished eating about 11.00pm so it was about 10 minutes a course. However, that is not uncommon for Chinese wedding banquets.

Anyhow, a good night was had and congratulations to my cousin and his new wife!

Scores:
Food: 3/5
Presentation: 3/5
Service: 3/5
Setting: 4/5

Overall: 13/20

Total bill: The cost of the wedding present to my cousin.

I ate: All of the above.

I drank: A beer before the meal, a few glasses of Australian Shiraz during and a few more glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon towards the end of and after the banquet.

I wore: Smart suit and shirt.

Moon Koon Restaurant, Happy Valley Racecourse, Hong Kong

It was Mother's Day in Hong Kong a couple of Sundays ago and I went for lunch with my wife's family, treating my mother-in-law for a dim sum lunch at Moon Koon restaurant that is situated in the racecourse.

There was a party of six of us and we booked a window seat that gives you excellent views of the racecourse. This is good if you are dining and want to watch the horseracing at the same time but there was no racing happening that day to distract us from our food.

The glazed facade on one side makes the restaurant very airy and whilst it was busy, it did not seem like a crowded place. Tables are smartly laid out and they have a nice cutlery holder for your chopsticks and spoon, with a little horseshoe shaped rest for your spoon as shown below.

The table setting

We ordered a lot of dishes and this is what we ate:

The first to arrive was a savoury item, being the Chicken and Mushroom rice shown below. Nicely steamed pieces of  chicken and Chinese mushroom in a pot of plain rice was a generous portion that everyone got to have a taste of.

Chicken & Mushroom Rice

The next dishes where the Taro Cake and the Turnip Cake. The Taro has a bland floury texture about it for its filling and edible enough but not something I would order personally. The fried Turnip Cake was really good. This one was an XO sauce variant so that gave the darker colour and spicier taste.

Taro Cake and Turnip Cake

We ordered he classic barbecued pork buns 'Char Siu Bao' and Egg Tartlets, shown below. The former had the usual fluffy dough and sweet pork filling. The latter was a delicious little tart, with light flaky pastry and warm, sweet egg filling. 

Clockwise from left: Char Siu Bao and Egg Tartlets

The picture below shows three traditional dishes in Lotus Rice, Siu Mai and Har Gow from left to right in the foreground. The rice was fine, it was the glutinous kind, steamed with mushrooms and other finely chopped ingredients. Siu Mai had a decent pork filling with prawn on top and Har Gow had a sizeable prawn filling wrapped in the translucent pastry.

From Left (in foreground): Lotus Rice, Siu Mai, Har Gow.

Below shows rice rolls and fried dumplings. The rice roll wrapped around the a deep fried 'doughstick' and when dipped in soy sauce, it gave it a better flavour to this light dish. The dumplings had a flavoursome mixture of pork and chive filling, with a slightly thicker pastry. Please note the turnip cake seems to be turning up on all the pictures; the dish was well received by us but because of the amount of food we took our time in finishing the whole plate.

From Left: Rice Roll, Turnip Cake (again); Fried Dumpling

One of the sweet dishes we had was Steamed Cake, which looked massive when it turned up on the table. It was cut perfectly into six portions enough for eveyone. Although big in portion size it was light and spongy and this one had a hint of coffee in its mixture, which was a nice change from the norm.

Steamed Cake

As with dim sum meals, some dishes are really tasty and some are so-so but that is the varied nature of this type of lunching. None were awful and all were nicely presented but they could have had a slightly bigger selection. My favourites were the Egg Tartlets and the Turnip Cake. The waiters were friendly and served us efficiently when giving us our food, refilling teapots and clearing dishes.

Scores:
Food: 3/5
Presentation: 4/5
Service: 3/5
Setting: 4/5

Overall: 14/20.

Total Bill: $580, about £8 a head.

I ate: All of the above.

I drank: Lung Jeng (Dragon's Well) tea.

I wore: Respectable enough clothes for Mothering Sunday.

My Flat, Happy Valley, Hong Kong

This entry is a break from the norm as the venue is my place, the chef and waitress was my wife and the meal was in the evening.

I was cooked a home made dinner last night prepared by the fair hands of my wife.

She cooked four dishes which are shown below.

My Dinner

Working from the top, that dish was Aubergine and Minced Pork. Traditionally this is cooked and served in a clay pot but we made do with a stainless steel pan. Also salted fish is usually added but there was not any in this. Instead there were chillies added instead to give it a spicy flavour. This was my favourite dish of the lot, with the mince and aubergine cooked to a lovely and soft texture.

Working clockwise is steamed crab. This was 'flower crab' (the literal translation) was cut into smaller pieces, which was then steamed with garlic and spring onion. This made a great finger food as you dip it in the red vinegar (centre of the picture).

At the bottom of the picture is a delicious Steamed Fish. Unfortunately I do not know the kind ('Chong Yu' is the phonetic translation from Cantonese) but it was a really meaty kind and covered in a lovely soy-oil dressing and garnished with plenty of spring onions.

Then on the left is stir fired Indian Lettuce, fried using garlic to give a lovely flavour and still crunchy.

This might be a biased review, but I think I am allowed to do this. Overall this was a perfect dinner and cannot fault it at all. Food was great and presented wonderfully. Service was brilliant and setting was top class too.

Scores:

Food: 5/5

Presentation: 5/5

Service: 5/5

Setting: 5/5

Total Bill: Nothing as my wife bought all the ingredients!

I ate: All of the above, accompanied with white rice.

I drank: Fruit Juice.

I wore: Office clothes still as I could not be bothered to get changed. 

Starbucks, Hong Kong Airport Express Station, Hong Kong

On Sunday I went to send my wife off on her business trip. She was taking a morning flight and so we were at the train station before seven so this is a really early lunchquest.

Although there were quite a few train users the cafe was not that busy at all this time in the morning. I am not much of a coffee person but they do sell teas and I opted for their Earl Grey, in a 'Tall' size. They had a decent selection of food on display from their counter but nothing really breakfasty. I did spot a croissant so chose that and decided to get something else so I ordered a scone. Both items were made hot by the assistant.

The tea was made first before the food. I was a bit disappointed it was not in a cup and saucer as I was dining in. My food came a few moments later after being warmed up and I proceeded to sit myself down in the many empty seats.

My Order

I was given a knife and fork with my food so decided to eat with these implements so save my hands getting dirty. The scone was of the blueberry variant and was a large one. There were no accompaniments such as cream or jam but it was tasty and moist enough not need them. The croissant was soft with flaky pastry and a hint of butter. I suspect both items are not baked on site but they were nice served warm.

The tea was hot at first, which is no bad thing, and flowery.

It was not the cheapest lunch (breakfast) quest for what I got but the food and drink are of decent quality. The decor is your standard Starbucks fit-out and I managed to get a comfortable leather seat due to the sparsity. The staff were amiable enough at this time of day.

Starbucks are fairly ubiquitous in this city and their numbers were probably growing the last time I was in my home town so I would expect a compare and contrast soon!

Scores
Food: 3/5
Presentation: 2/5
Service: 3/5
Setting: 3/5

Overall: 11/20

Total Bill: $50, just over 4GBP.

I ate: Blueberry Scone and Croissant.

I drank: Earl Grey Tea in a paper cup.

I wore: Trainers, with a rucksack containing another pair of trainers for the gym.

Red Ant, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong

We had a late lunch / afternoon tea at the Red Ant restaurant on Saturday just gone. It is local chain of eateries serving a mix of Hong Kong style cafe food to more elaborate dishes. 


The restaurant was busy but there was still room to fit my wife and I. There were enough staff and we gave our orders fairly quickly after seating.


They had set menus and I opted for their 'E' set, which was Curry Beef Brisket Noodles. When ordering there is a choice of about five different noodle and soup base types. I chose rice noodles as my starch selection and chicken broth for my stock. A drink was included so I chose Iced Milk Tea for a small supplement. Generally in Hong Kong cold drinks in a set menu carry an extra charge.

My wife in the other hand, went for a sweet option and chose the numerical choice of 13. This set comprised of three desserts: Hokkaido milk pudding, banana crepe and peanut & hazelnut sorbet.

My Iced Milk Tea on the left

The order arrived fairly quickly, with the drinks first (shown above). When waiting we were given cutlery but this was swiftly swapped for chopsticks  when my dish came as I was not going to eat my noodles with a knife and fork. The noodles were cooked well enough. The meat was soft and spicy but the chicken stock meant that it was not to hot and still good flavour. There were about two slices of Chinese leaf for the vegetable content. I had a few bites of the brisket, which initially looked like cooked turnip but it was the gelatinised collagen. It was chewy and edible but I could not finish all of it.

Beef brisket noodles

I did have a sample of my wife's order. The crepe did not taste that fresh and had a slight rubbery texture to it but the banana and cream filling was nice. The pudding (I am not sure if it was made in Hokkaido or just from that milk), although cutely presented in a small bottle was a little bland. The best of the three sweets was the sorbet, although that was more of an ice cream as it had a creamy texture but a really lovely nutty flavour.

Dessert Menu

My drink was cool, not too sugary and refreshing, given it was a hot day. However they tend to turn up the air conditioning when outside temperatures rise so this place got a bit nippy. Nevertheless it has modern decor, is fairly spacious for a cafe, efficient staff, decent food and not an ant in sight.


Scores:
Food: 3/5
Presentation: 3/5
Service: 3/5
Setting: 3/5 
Overall: 12/20


Total bill: $91, about £4 a head.


I ate: Curry Beef Brisket Noodles.


I drank: Iced Milk Tea.


I wore: Polo shirt and cargo shorts.