why yuk ho is broke for the month: Part 1

'Yo! come out and eat, we are waiting for you on the island side already'
'Ummm, my friend actually booked a place already.....its somwhere in Hotel LKF'
'.......wtf? are you serial..?'

The phone call itself was already unsettling. For people who don't know, Lan Kwai Fong is famous for drinking and not eating. Restaurants that could afford rent in LKF are usually famous for either tricking tourist or catering towards snobby expats who have cash to blow.

This time, we are going to Azure, a amazingly bar situated on the penthouse of Hotel LKF. The view there is absolutely mind blowing, as the hotel sits on the hillside in the middle of Central. The panoramic view the skycrapers huddling around the tower makes you feel like you are on the set of Bladerunner or Metropolis. Honestly, a recommend anyone who is new to the city to grab a cocktail in Azure on a friday night.....but for dinner?

Since Han and Cirline are both in town, so what the hell, might as well try, it wouldn't be too expensive....right? Walked into the restaurant and already felt a little underdressed. The place is surrounded by people in suits and dresses, and i was caught wearing shorts. Cirline didn't fare any better, since she and her friends just came back from Disneyland, everyone on the table was dressing pretty shabby for the location. nice nice

Open the meal, BAM! $1000HKD wine list. Skip
Flip through the many pages of entrees....shit shit shit.....every dish was $300 HKD and up.
Getting a little nervous and sweaty, drinks a entire cup of water and the waiter helps me refill the glass.
Finally found something affordable, a simple Carbonara for $220 HKD.
*phew*

The meal started out pretty well, a nice platter of refillable bread, all handmade by the kitchen. The platter also proovide a variety of cheeses as spread. Since I am pretty uncultured in cheese, I just slab the purple looking cheese (err....Blue Cheese?) into my bread. The olive oil they provide with the bread was really fine, giving out an exceptionally rich olive flavour everytime i use it as my dip.

When the Entrees finally landed on the table, I could see a few frowns in the dining crowd. The proportions looked a little small, especially for a crowd of hungry tourist who just spent a day roasting in Disneyland. The size of my carbonara turned out alright, around the size I imagined a fancy restaurant like this to be.
Deception; The keyword for this dish. Even though by display the carbonara appears to be the plainest dish on the table, it gave me a few surprises.

I first started poking the white blob sitting on top of the dish, thinking it was cream cheese, i thought i could spread it across the pasta. Then yoke started bursting out of the blob and melted into the cheese. OH CRAP OH CRAP, its actually a finely disguised poached egg! So I took a bite of the pasta, and was met by an explosion of flavours. Wow, the bacon smokiness, the fine selection of cheese and melted egg yolk, all mixed together into a mindblowing experience.

'Hmmmmmmm.....'
I am getting more and more surprised by the pasta. The spaghetti was cooked perfectlyinto a chewy texture, wasn't too hard nor too soft. Digging around the pile of spaghetti, I saw flakes of mushroom, but WAIT! thats not mushroom! It's actually flakes of TRUFFLES. Wow, first time ever in my life. As I was slowly enjoying the best pasta I ever had in my life, I was getting more and more convinced that $220 may not be so bad after all.

I took the opportunity to try Han's baked cod, which turned out medicore for its price. Wasn't exceptionally mind blowing and the proportion was really small. Same with Cirline's baked chicken. Nothing too special, underwhelming for something that cost around $300 HKD.

The meal ended with a nice aftertouch with chocolate coated icea cream balls and chocolate dipped strawberries on the house (ok, couldn't find photos of the strawberries, so just raspberries here)
......then comes the sad part...the Bill. Turns out that the water they served us was actually brand bottled water, which was given to us without our consent. Since we took our time, chatted a little bit, and sipped a few cups of water, they managed to charge us an extra $350HKD of water. A little excessive right?

Splitting the bill, I paid an extra $50 for water, which totaled up to around $270 HKD, the cheapest meal out of everyone. There were a few moans and groans as people paid their bill, most of them topping arond $350. Definitely a stab to the wallet.

Final Verdict: Conflicting Signals. Best Carbonara I ever had in my life. Even worth the full $220. But other dishes were excessively overpriced and underwhelming. Maybe I was just lucky with my dish and the restaurant was always poor? I will never know, because I am never going back there for dinner. As for you? err....if you are rich, what the heck? Get their Carbonara!

Low on cash? just popped in there later the night for a simple cocktail. Azure is honestly a place built for drinking, and not for fine dining.

And now....let me mourn over my wallet....I think I just blew my lai see money in this meal :'(

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=17304

Kinda Like a Big Deal

This place is Kinda Like a Big Deal in HK. Its probably one of the oldest cha chan teng in HK, and it also claims itself to be the first inventor of the silk stocking receipt of making milk tea.

Love it or Hate it. 蘭芳園/Lan Fong Yuen conveniently sits on the edge of Soho and Graham Street, the oldest street market in HK, so a tourist exploring in central will probably cross paths its path a couple of times.

Everytime a tourist comes to town, its usually one of the first places i take them. The classic outdoor kitchen, the cramp tiny seating inside, the rude waiters that teases your chinese, it pretty much has HONG KONG written all over it. And after the meal, i usually bring them a walk around the street market, before it gets torn down by the govt., have the famous egg tarts around the corner and a trek through the soho district. Awesome place for sightseeing. If you feel a little adventurous, you can also dine outside on the outdoor kitchen, u literally squat on those little wooden chairs.

Anyway, Han was in town, what better way to show my Ningbo friend around than to show him some local food cultural. I was also starving cuz i didnt eat the whole day.

I got myself a 蒜蓉雞肉撈丁/garlic & onion chicken with fried instant noodles.
I explained before, HK people love eating instant noodle for the texture. Fried instant noodles is also the place's speciality. Cooked not too soft or too hard, giving it an awesome chewiness. The noodle doesnt come with soup, just a swallow dip of soy sauce. So it kinda gives a weird feel of a mix of italian spaghetti with chinese spring onion sauced chicken ahhaha. PRetty damn unhealthy, but reeally a must try.
This is what han got, 港式豬扒包/pork chop bun, another speciality fro the place. Its always sold out in the later afternoon. Its a tiny bitesize burger of porkchop, tomatoe and special cream sauce, perfect for girls or people looking for a light snack for tea. Different from the famous macauinese 豬扒包, the ones here uses normal burger buns. The boss claims that he hates the macauinese style because the bread is too hard and scratches his mouth alot.

Anyways, very tender and chewy, nice and bitesize. Their cream sauce gives it a bit of flavour. Good Snack.
The Main Course. The sole reason why you would come to 蘭芳園 in the first place. It's one of the smoothest lai chai HK has to offer. It has a good mix of tea and condense milk, and it doesnt have that horrible coarse tea aftertaste texture that other noob cha chan teng has. This place boils the tea and pours it over a silk stocking looking net, this is to filter out any remaining tea leaves, keeping the tea smooth and clear. Sometimes they even served cold milk tea with froze milk tea ice, to prevent normal ice in diluting the tea when it melts.....serial stuff.

Final Verdict: MUST TRY. I didnt even mention other signature dishes such as French toast and salted lime 7-up. Good place to go for a true taste of HK, either you are just a tourist, or a person wanting a trip back to memory lane....

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=1814

this is why americans are FAT!

Subtlety..........is not a very American thing.

And I guess this place proves it. FAT BURGER, seriously not trying to hide anything by its name. Its the infamous burger joint from the West Coast LA (and also recommended by Moez). Mentioned in Ice Cube 1993 hit 'Today Was a Good Day'.....

'....No helicopter looking for a murder
Two in the morning got the fat burger
Even saw the lights of the goodyear blimp
And it read ice cubes a pimp...'

As well as Letterman's Top 10 things he missed about LA.

So personally, I think having Fat Burger open in the middle of Wan Chai is straight up gangstaaaaa, although I don't think it opens until 2am. Designed as a American style deli with an open kitchen, it issurrounded by a chinese street market which make it seems a little out of place.

Looking at the meal, the burgers come in FAT BURGER, DOUBLE FAT BURGER and TRIPLE FATBURGER. Due to the size of my aterties, I only got the DOUBLE burger, which comes nicely as a meal set at whopping $90 HKD ($13CAD)
The fries were real good, came fresh from the deep fryer. The burger itself consist of lettuce, tomatoe, relish, onion, cheese and I added an Egg for an extra $5. Here is a close up on this artery clogging MONSTER.
So how did it taste? Well.....disappointing. At first bite, the burger literally exploded in my hands with oil and juices bursting in all directions. It got my suit pants (a bitch to dry clean) and eating the damn thing became a race against time aas the hot oil slowly burns my fingers. All the ingredients were exceptionly good and fresh......it was surprising the beef patties themselves that were lacking. The beef didn't have any flavour! It was so flavourless that a blind person will have no clue that he was eating beef.

My heart probably dropped a few times during the meal, had to punch myself in the chest to restart it. The photo below?
It's all the oil that was dripping from the burger, by the end of the meal, the oil slowly solidify into white blobs of fat....ewwwwwwww.

Final Verdict: Maybe its a bit of home bias. But I think Triple O's provides much better burgers at the same price. At least the beef patties actually taste like beef there. And seriously...even my arterties couldn't handle it. This place is a definite skip.....unless you are looking for a slow method of commiting suicide. Maybe Fat Burger was lost in translation sometime between the flight across the Pacific.

And by guilty conscience, I couldn't stand the meal and actually hit the gym right after. Yeah....scary shit.

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=26321

Has Our Standards Went Up?

A japanese friend of mine came into town, and she insisted in eating in Wong Tai Sin area because of her luggages.

Wow, what is there in Wong Tai Sin? All i could think of was the temple, but they don't serve food there. A quick click on openrice gave me a name '詠藜園'. Isn't that the once famous sichuan restaurant from Whampoa?

It used to be the talk of the town, and I restaurant I highly recommended to dine in HK back in the days. It was an old ghetto joint that got evicted from the old squatterhuts of 慈雲山. Due to its amazing cusines, it was invited to the whampoa's 蔡瀾 gourmet center. (蔡瀾 is a famous food critic in HK) It used to take around an hour of line up to get a seat, and they were cocky enough to never take reservations unless you are a VIP. But over the years, the food started deteriorating, everytime i visited 詠藜園 i get more and more disappointed, even the lines got smaller and smaller. In the end, I threw this place out of my mind, the restaurant also fell out of culinary magazines' mind and I stopped recommending this place to my friends. Now looking that they opened a branch in Wong Tai Sin, are they trying to go back their fundamental roots of serving good old ghetto food?

There was already a line outside the restaurant when I got there, a good sign that the food is good already...or was it?

Inside is the usual small elbow to elbow floursent lit restaurant that you typically see in HK, as the waiter huddled us to sit down on the round table, we jumped straight to the meal to pick the usual goodies. We tried ordering the old regulars to see if 詠藜園 has improved over the years.

First off, siu long bao came freshly steamed with its skin gleaming with juiciness. Me and Kelvin both took the first bite, and looked at each other with disappointing. The skin was a tad too tough, and the soup inside wasn't anything too special. It was merely average. Kinda a bad start to the dinner, we recommend siu long bao in Din Tai Fung more. The other dish is their famous 擔擔麵. It turned out relatively better than it's Whampoa sister store, the noodle is freshly handmade giving lots of chewy texture, the soup base was spicy with a little hint of peanut. But the soup still lacked a bit of depth. I also find the 擔擔麵 in Din Tai Fung better.
We also order 紅油炒手/red spicy dumplings. A tad disappointing too. Sauce wasn't strong enough to flavour the dumpling, and its filling was too plain. The 紅油炒手 in 王家沙 is alot better.
Since every table ordered one of this we figured we had to order it as well. 雲吞汽鍋雞/wonton chicken soup turned out to be unexpectingly good. Inside is a soup mixed with different vegetable and half a chicken. The soup soaked in the chicken essense pretty well, giving it depth and very smoothing flavour.
We ordered this for fun. It is Kung Pao Chicken Soft Bones. And it literally started the way it sounds. Kung Pao, and bits of chewy chicken soft bone. A little too salty for my liking, but a good snack to chew along with.
Final Verdict: Overall, the meal ended in a minor disappointment. None of the dishes surprised us, it felt like every dish would've tasted better in another restaurant, which defeats the point of coming here in the first place. I always wondered how on earth could 詠藜園 once be one of HK's highly recommended restaurants at this quality. I left the place with a confused face thinking 'Has 詠藜園's quality really went downhill? or has our standard in food went up significantly over the years?http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=4014

Late Night Sushi Madness!!!

'Half-Priced Sushi? THIS IS MADNESS'
'No....THIS IS SUSHI ONNNNNNEEEEEEEEE'

Yes yes, I am usually not a big fan of conveyor belt sushi. It usually ridiculously over priced, the seating is tiny and i never leave with a full stomach. They always put the most expensive ones on the conveyor belt and give you the evil eye if you order the cheap ones through the order sheet.

Worst still, there is always this fat kid who sits next to the chef. Always eating the best ones before it ends up spinning your way. God Damn that FAT KID!

Anyways, enough with the bitching. So where am I taking this?

Sushi One! A usual couple couple dining experience that charges ridiculously prices. But NOT ANYMORE. After 10:00pm, the restaurant goes on a inventory clearing spree and everything on the menu turns half price. YES, 50% off. EVERYTHING. That includes Liquor!

Getting annoyed with $70HKD shooters? DONT WORRY! After 10 pm, you can get bottle of Sake for $35HKD ($5 CAD?). By $100HKD, you already will be pissed drunk on sake crawling home. To give another non-alcoholic perspective....a typical Salmon Sushi at $9HKD turns to $4.5...CHEEAPP

Of course, picture is worth a thousand words. So here are our victims for the night.
Damn, forgot a picture of my warm sake.
This was just half the meal that we took photos of, the other were a set of sashimi and handrolls. Now Sushi One is better than the average conveyor belt sushi joints like Genki Sushi, so the overall quality is pretty good. It wont be tsukiji fish market fresh (that will be Kenjo), but good enough for a filing meal. But don't try their Sea Urchin Sushi ($14)....it was nasty...they use local sea urchin so the sushi tasted like sewage.

Oh, and since Sushi One is catered towards couple, did I mentioned that every wall in the resturant chain is.....
A MASSIVE coral reef tank with real fishy swimming around. Kinda slapping IRONY on the diners face (or the fish?). I am sure Nemo isn't too happy that we are eating Doria in front his face.

Final Verdict: Go! It's cheap and good. Excellent choice for dinner if you have the midnight munchies. Especially at times when you finish a movie late at night. REMEMBER, ONLY GO FOR HALF PRICE DEAL.

Word of Caution: Due to its popularity, although the Half Price Night Deal starts at 10pm. A massive line will start forming as early as 8.30pm. No Jokes! Some HK people have no lives. So don't go there at 10pm expecting seats. I recommend going there at least 9.30pm. A good place is to go to the Mong Kok Sushi One, its conveniently located next to a Starbucks Coffee, so you can chill as you wait for your table. The wait is probably around 60 to 90 min. Avoid going on Weekends.

MK Location
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=18145
TST Location
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=14792

As Local as it gets...

'Ah, Excuse me! There is a fly in our milk tea'
*Waiter throws the cup into a bucket and grabs for a new one*
'Here is your new CUP!'
*SLAMS cup hard on table*
*I looked at Kelvin and giggled*
'Oh my god, do we owe him money or something.....'

Welcome to 金鳳茶餐廳, Wan Chai's 老字號 cha chan teng. It's probably one of the oldest in HK and keeps its forumlas practically the same for the past couple of decades.

How can we tell its old? Well for starters, all the waiters themselves looked like a relic of the past, all looks like they have been alive for at least half a century, they even kept the old HK 'G' attitude towards customers (example above). Dining here feels like no better than being stabbed in the streets. Every word said is a word of caution.

Secondly, the menu.
Notice the difference between the meal sets? Me neither. 早餐 = 午餐 = 快餐...? Ahahaha. Now I get the McDull joke.

Thirdly, the interior design. The old flourscent light that bleaches the place into blue and white. The menu placed under the glass table. Those tiny ass booth seats that say its for 4 people but could only fit 2. If I sat in the 2 seater booth, half of my ass cheek will hang out.

For only $26 HKD, I got myself a Satay Beef Noodle meal set (which is also 早餐/午餐/快餐/常餐/.....).
It comes with an apprectizer of a very HK style 菠蘿油/Pineapple Bun with butter and two eggs. This arterty clogging goodness comes freshly baked from the oven. The bread is soft and sweet like fluffy mashmallows, with a nice crispy 'pineapple' top.Here is our main course, Satay Beef Noodle. I usually get this as my HK breakfast, but since they serve this after 11, I might as well order. The funny thing about HK is that instant noodle is commonly conceived as an inferior good around the world, EXCEPT for HK. In fact! They charge you an EXTRA $2 for having instant noodles.

Why? Because HK people craves not only flavour, but texture in our food. Instant noodles, when cooked right, gives off a chewy texture to the noodle base. That is why, oddly, HK has the highest breakfast consumption of instant noodles...i think.

Also notice that we got cold milk tea/ lai cha, which is 金鳳's self proclaimed speciality. When we entered the joint, we were greeted by this fridge next to the door way.I was reading an article about this before, most cha chan teng usually makes cold milk tea by pouring freshly prepared hot milk tea in ice. 金鳳 prepares it milk tea before hand, then pour inside empty coke bottles, milk cartons & cups and placed into the fridge for cooling. This is to avoid the melting ice in diluting the tea when it is served to customers, 金鳳 also tempers with each cup's sweetness as they found that cold drinks requires a different level of sweetness than hot drinks. The boss proclaims that cold lai cha is harder to make than hot lai cha. Kind of hard to imagine how 金鳳 turned a simple drink into an art form.

The final result. One of the smoothest, creamiest, coldest cup of lai cha i ever tasted. The level of sweetness was absolutely perfect, and it didnt have the coarse tea aftertaste that amature cha chan tengs have. Final Verdict: This is as local HK as HK gets. The food itself is not mind blowing. But it is the cha chan teng that I think represents HK the most. From the traditional menu, the hustle bustle dining crowd, claustrophobic seating and the 'I-am-Meaner-Than-Compton' waiters. 金鳳 is honestly a must try for anyone looking for the perfect HK experience.

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=1549

A Wong Family Recommendation

It was Dragon Boat Festival a while back, so by tradition, I had to spend the day with family. Especially during lunch time, a very popular thing to do during chinese festivals is to have chinese tea/ yum cha with family for lunch.

Here is a restaurant chain our family frequently go to, Lei Gardens/利苑, a place with a reputation of quality and authenticity. It's a little more expensive than the usual yum cha places, but its definitely worth the money for its freshness and its stubbornness to use the highest quality of materials for every dish it makes. This place is sadly a great example on how much dim sum has fallen in quality in other restaurants over the years.

The kitchen starts operating around 6am every morning, as many chinese dishes require alot of cooking time, especially chinese soup. The chef only cooks a limited number of each dish everyday, to ensure that the quality is consistent, everything is made from fresh ingredients and not leftovers from previous night. So kinda a pain in the ass sometimes as the place usually run out of food by the afternoon.

The average chinese family's dim sum table, with many culinary treasures scattered across the table cloth. This review is to point out specialities that you typically won't get in other dim sum joints. Btw, that weirdly coloured dish in the middle is the burnt rice from the 煲仔飯, not very proper dim sum, but it was filling.

First off, 糭子 or Chinese tamale as they call it in English. Its a traditional thing to eat during Dragon Boat Festival, kinda like a rice dumpling with different content wrapped inside. Not going to go into details on why we eat it, for those who don't know wikipedia is your friend. This one is a 碱水糭, sort of like a dumpling made out of glutonous rice, with a red bean paste inside. The rice is soaked in alkaline water, making it look yellow, and the 糭 is dipped in sugar before each bite. A good dish to eat once in a while, its not amazing in taste, and only eaten during festival time.This dimsum is worth introducing. 皇棗糕/Red Dates Cake, a long lost cantonese dim sum according to my dad (not a very good source, but a source none the less). It used to be a common dim sum served in restaurants 'back in the days' and was slowly forgotten over time. Fortunely, the chefs in Lei Garden kept the receipe and decided to revive it recently. Its very mochi, with a light sweet and sour taste of red dates, and is usually eatten last as a dessert. Definitely worth a try for people who likes dim sum.This is the main course for me, and usually the highlight of my week. It is probably my most favourite dish in the worlddd, and nothing can compare to it. A nice bowl of 老火湯 or 'Old Fire Soup'. A soup that has its ingredients cooked under a very slow flame for hours (hence the name 'old fire' soup), the chef has to wake up in the morning to place in ingredients in this pressure cooking urn. After a few hours, the ingredients will begin to dissolve into the soup under the heat and the pressure, releasing this amazing fragrance. Don't let the colour of the soup fool you, every sip of this soup will give you an explosion of flavors in your mouth, as if you ate all the soup ingredients in one spoon full. Lei Garden rotates the ingredients of the soup every week, so its always something different in every vist. It varies from simple materials such as chicken, carrots, shellfish to even Crocidile. Watch out though, due to its popularity Lei Garden usually runs out of 老火湯 by 1pm, so I advise booking one in advance. Forget Campbell Soup bull crap, this is the REAL DEAL.

Final Verdict: 老火湯 WTF? GO TRY NOW! I SAID ITS THE BEST DISH IN THE WORLD! WHY ARE YOU STILL SITTING THERE?

P.S. Did I mention the Lei Garden chain won one star on the Michelin Guide? Even those snobby frenchmen couldnt resist the amazing dimsum and 老火湯 here, hehehe.

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=1860

So Close, Yet So Far....

I have a thing for vietnamese food. Just the simplicity of a bowl of pho and the herbal ingredients they use makes me shiver in happiness. The cuisines are usually Chinese-Lite, equally as tasty without the stir fry or MSG. Also very cheap too, located around chinatown and a filling meal under $10CAD. So vietnamese food in my mind symbolizes cheap tasty food.
Enter Lei Soleil, a upscale vietnamese restaurant hidden inside the old Royal Garden hotel in TST east. Finding the place inside the hotel is hard too, it is on top of a patio thats tucked inside the beautiful hotel elevator atrium, right on top of the Italian Restaurant Sabatini (A place that I cant afford reviewing). I only found this place when I saw their weird looking water fountain when I was grabbing Christmas buffet at the hotel atrium. Lei Soleil is listed as a Honorable Mention in the Michelin Guide(or Bibs Gourmands as they call it), ran by some Celebrity chef called Danny Wong who has critically acclaim restaurants in San Francisco blah blah blah. So is the food good?

I honestly don't know. This place was giving me conflicting signals throughout the dining experience. We went for lunch, and with the lunch set coming at around $120 HKD, its rather reasonable for a restaurant with such reputation.
The appetizer were either a vietnamese platter or their seafood soup. The platter was pretty good, the spring rolls wasnt too oily, and the choice of mint they use in the other roll went perfectly with the meat, not strong to a point where it covers all the taste. Not bad for a start. The soup was a little funny. It is cooked with a coconut based, but has this strong lime sourness to it. The sourness feels like a cheap move chefs usually do in North America to remind diners that the dish is oriental. In the end, it comes out a funny/nasty result. Advice: Skip the soup.This photo looks awkward. Because the actual dish is awkward looking too. With such a huge plate, the proportion is TINY. This is the baked cod wrapped in a banyan leaf with jasmine rice. The fish itself was good, wasn't overcooked to a point its dry. The meat slowly disintegrate in your mouth into wonderfully tasting fish oil. Wait a minute, cod always taste good. It's honestly really harrd to screw Cod up. The fish doesn't come with any type of sauce too, making the rice rather plain. In the end, the dish left us felt rather cheated than happy.
Here is the real deal, Pho. The problem with Hong Kong is that vietnamese restaurants tend to get lazy here and use Chinese wide rice noodle/河粉 instead of the proper pho noodle. Using 河粉takes away the chewy texture that a bowl of pho normally gives. Thankfully, this place uses real pho noodles (OMG WE FINALLY FOUND IT KELVIN! REJOICE!).

The soup based? hmmmm....rather disappointing? Especially for pho, the soup based is really important. Good authentic pho usually have a slight sweetness to it, from the slow cooking of beef bone they used in the stew. This bowl lacked such features, it went with the more HK style soup base you usually find in normal local veitnamese joints, which I have no clue how they make it but its not as good. Maybe it was the chef's choice to cater more towars HK's taste bud. Or maybe the chef just sucks. I have no clue. I didn't like it. The meat was good and tender, but the soup based seriously made this whole bowl rather disappointing.Nice touch with the mango grass jelly dessert. We didn't expect a $120 lunch set to come with both dessert and tea. The dessert tastes excatly as it looks, Mango, Grass Jelly and sweet cream. The meal ended with some authentic vietnamese drip coffee. My personal favourite. It was very strong and very sweet. A must try for serial coffee lovers. I love it how they didnt try watering down the coffee to cater towards the more local tongue, extra points for keeping this coffee as dark as hell. The extra dose of caffine made me extra happy for the rest of the day.

The problem with the restaurant is that if you take each individual parts of the dishes, they are good and all finely well made, but the summation of all its parts transforms into a rather medicore experience. But at $120, with appetizer, main course, dessert and tea, it is quite a budget meal for its location. I have a feeling I need a second review in order to seriously judge this place properly. I have a lingering feeling that I was unfortunate enough to try the wrong dishes of the restaurant. Maybe I should spend more money and come back for dinner.

Final Verdict: I recommend it for lunch or tea. In some areas its not properly authentic. But the mix of the beautiful hotel atrium, the restaurant design, and that jolting cup of vietnamese coffee makes it a pleasant lunch experience. And I also love the glass roof of the atrium, which pours in a natural lighting into the restaurant, so the mood of the place really changes with the weather outside. Btw, the meal wasn't too filling. I ended up eating KFC for tea. :( Fatty me.

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=21187