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
No comments:
Post a Comment