Gaddi's (Hong Kong) 11/2011

Passing through the modern foyer of the Peninsula Hotel to the private lift to this renowned Kowloon restaurant, like Alice in wonderland, one is transported to a spacious palatial room, a throw back to colonial times, where the British aristocracy would have eaten and danced 150 years ago. Elegant tables,
gilded mirrors, huge chandeliers, silver candelabras and vases filled with dozens of roses set the tone. It's sophisticated old world, almost ostentatiously rich, a place for the upper echelons of society to meet for business , or to dine. One imagines it unchanged with eager waiters passing between elegantly set tables, taking orders from guests and hurrying to satisfy their every bidding. Coccooned here perhaps not all that much has change

Today the chef obliging allowed me to have the set dinner whilst Sandra ate from the a la carte menu which suited her better – we both got to taste everything anyway! The meal began with a small chef’s offering of two small quennelles one of delicate crab meet next to a vinegary broccoli with a little slice of oven crisped bread. The crab was lovely but suffered from juxtaposition with a vinegary partner. The menu is in French and English but I will just use the English version here although there were plenty of foreign words included in it!

There were a variety of breads served with salt and sweet butter. The crusty white bread was super but the beer bread fantastic. Oddly they also offered a bacon filled croissant and an olive and fruit bread. My first course was Tasmanian salmon poached in olive oil with a lemon coulis and Osietra caviar. The salmon was delicious but had been poached to the point where it could hardly be picked up without falling apart on the fork. The caviar and the rest of the dish did a lot for the presentation but did little for the flavour of it.Jerusalem artichoke custard ravioli with black truffles and sautéed scallop was not very successful. The black truffles might as well not have been there, The very large scallop was over sautéed and slightly stringy with strong scallop taste but lacking the subtle texture one expects. The custard ravioli was thin and overcooked.Unfortunately the flash failed for this pic. Sicillian red prawns (it should have read prawn) roasted with pike soufflé poached in tomato bisque was a fantastic dish with wonderful flavour. I felt like licking the dish. Definitely a rare treat.Slow cooked Bresse spring chicken with roasted leg, goose liver and cep mushrooms was another winner. The chicken breast was stuffed with the rich but ever so delicate goose liver creating a great combination.Poached pear in tonka bean aroma and crispy meringue ball, vanilla ice cream was rather pretty. It probably added an inch to my waistline. Nothing subtle about this dessert which was extremely sweet with a nice variety of textues and flavours.Mocha or Peninsula tea with petit fours, which were ,and only added to my caloric excesses. As well as the little sweets there were a couple of thin slices of chocolate with honeycomb served in a toast rack which I especially liked.This menu cost $1488 + 10% = about A$235 + wine which goes from about A$17 a glass upwards. Cocktails are about A$22. The same menu with matched wines adds about A$150 to the bill

Sandra had fine puff pastry with melted goose liver, caramelised onions, and smoked bacon (A$60). This was an outstanding entrée and whole roasted Boston lobster with a lightly whipped jus, semi dried tomatoes in Armagnac butter. (A$110) They also offer Brittany lobster which is a tougher meat and has a stronger flavour. For dessert she had 3 scoops of absolutely excellent ice cream, the mascapone, caramel being the best of them, and a plate of water melon and rock melon.

Just a little short of excellent for the food but outstanding in every other way
Score: 15/20

Yan Toh Heen (Hong Kong) 11/2011

Several well regarded food connoisseurs have told us that Michelin usually gets things right for French cuisine but they are unreliable judges of Japanese and Chinese cooking. After my last disappointing experience here at Yung Kee I could not agree more. Nevertheless we decided to try YTH which has achieved one star for 2010 and 2011 in the HK and Macau guide. In the Intercontinental Hotel, Kowloon, opposite the Star ferry the restaurant is in a pleasant low key room simply decorated with a scattering of Bonsai trees. Tables are initially set up with jade place trays, chop sticks and some cutlery. They offer a la carte or two tasting menus. We were happy to try the eight course 'Exquisite Delicate Menu' Before the first course the chef offered a small serve of a deep fried tofu with some tiny shallot stems and carrot. The menu began with fresh scallop with fresh fruit salad. Barely seared the scallops were in a fruit salad, tiny squares of apple, cantaloupe and thin slices of strawberry were covered in a light creamy mayonnaise. Attractive in appearance the dish worked well with its' varied textures and tastes. Imperial birds nest soup with minced chicken is a subtle tasting dish in a distinct rice like gluey porridge. The genuine article is made from the saliva that a particular small bird uses in constructing it's nest. It is thought, by practitioners of Chinese medicine, to have many health benefits. Who knows, there is very little research to support, or deny, this thesis. We then had crispy prawns in batter with a perfectly balanced sweet sour sauce. Steamed garouper filet with crab meat roe and egg white. Art on a plate each element on this plate was excellent in itself but magnificent as a combination. The garouper, just cooked through, held it's structure, the egg white only seconds from being raw, as light as a feather, all constructed in a colourful display of nuanced tastes. Meals for Emperors (www.china.org.cn/english/imperial/26112.htm ), states "According to the ancient Chinese classic, The National Language- The Language of the Zheng Satae' dishes should no be of a single ingredient or several monotonous ingredients but should be diverse. The diversification should not be a simple mixture but a reasonable blending. The precise term for this reasonable blending is "harmony", which meant scientific coordination." This was a fine example. Wok fried Wagyu beef with mixed mushrooms and garlic also filled the rules for Imperial cuisine, although it was much closer to a traditional western Chinese dish. It's really not necessary to say that the Wagyu was exceptionally tender and only lightly cooked. Mushrooms are always great with steak. Here they had a heavy sauce which we both felt could have been lighter. Stewed whole abalone with noodles came next. I've had very thin sliced abalone barbecued for seconds, which was tender, but anytime we have been served abalone in larger or thicker pieces it has always been very rubbery. Not tonight. The taste of the abalone had seeped into the noodles giving the whole dish a great flavour. Chilled mango cream with sago and pomelo had a small baked egg tartlet. Quite a simple dessert but made with a light touch. I was a bit disappointed that this tart, which would just about cover a 50 cent piece, was our last course. Lychee scented longjing tea was offered in a small bowl with a top.
As it drew we were instructed to pick up the bowl and, holding the lid slightly open, to pour the tea into the small tea cups. It looked easy but I soon spilt the tea down the side of the bowl onto the table cloth. With no handle, and being very hot this was harder than it looked. Some bean paste filled pastries and crispy biscuits completed the meal.
The couple at the neighbouring table must have been celebrating something as they got this fruit imbedded ice castle for their dessert!
They have a reasonably extensive but excessively expensive wine list with mark ups of several 100% in some cases. With the mandatory 10% service charge there was almost nothing under A$100/ bottle. This is not a cheap place to eat and the final bill came to just under A$600. They also offer a more extensive tasting menu for just under A$1000 for two, not counting drinks.The only thing that struck me as we ate this meal was the number of dishes in which asparagus were used, in all it was a quite excellent meal.
Score 17/20

Dimsumbar (Kowloon) 11/2011

Hong Kong is packed with hordes of people who all need to eat and there are restaurants of every variety to look after them. We tried this very modern efficient place across the road from The Prince Hotel at Shop G103 G/F, Gateway Arcade, Harbour City, on the recommendation of our Concierge. He thought it a little different from the standard yum cha restaurant and it was. There was a short queue when we arrived . We were given a numbered slip of paper When our turn came the queue was just as long as when we arrived. The small bare tables were closely set out with colourful paper place mats depicting some of their dishes. The place looks clean, almost new and quite contemporary with minimal decoration, mostly provided by a couple of large TV's depicting a slide show of their dishes. There is a menu with clearly numbered attractive colour photo's of their dishes and a small printed menu on which patrons mark the dishes they want. Service is sensible and efficient, dishes being presented two at a time. We started with the first thing on the menu 101 Prawn Dumpling, (HK$26). Sounds mundane but they were remarkable for the delicacy of the thin layer of pastry skin wrapping them. Two women were making sheets of this stuff. A ladle of pastry mix was poured onto a wet cloth that sat over a perforated tray over boiling water. After a couple of minutes the cloth is carefully lifted and turned over onto a slab. The cloth is then delicately separated from the pastry skin which may be rolled for future use or have ingredients put on it to be sealed into dumplings before being further steamed and served. Our next course was steamed cheong fun rolled with fresh chicken and shredded abalone served with a Chinese vinegar, sweetened by mirin with a nice soy sauce added, (HK$38). Unusual and pleasant this was less out standing than other dishes.This sauce, with fine strips of ginger, was also provided for a a plate of traditional nanxiang style steamed xiao long bao dumplings (6 for HK $54) in the shape of Shanghai dumpling. These were very moist with a superb flavour of some soup, though not as much as in a Shanghai dumpling. Steamed rice with spare ribs and chicken feet was matched with soy sauce. Another beaut dish, unusual in being very slightly sweet. Crispy sesame egg rolls were the most crisp we have ever had. They were almost empty but had small amount of some strong cheese like content. They were a bit too fatty for my taste.Steamed minced beef balls with bean curd sheets, (3 for HK$24) balls looked much as they always do but these were exceptionally light. If meat balls had pedigrees these would be in the top class! A lobster bisque was not as intense as we would have liked with a fairly bland king's dumpling was the last course before a very moorish dessert in the form of a baked almond cream buns (2 for HK$20) filled with almond paste.The bill at the end of all this came to less than A$45.
Score 15/20