Cheaper Alternatives in Elements?

It kinda sucks being poor in Elements.

It's like going to a strip club....when you are blind. Everything looks pretty, but unaffordable. This ultra-snobby shopping malls, lined with equally snobby brands such as Chanel, Fendi, LV...to name a few. You hours wondering around aimlessly to find something that won't blow your credit limit on your credit card....but fail miserably.

Around the 6th hour, you will be starving for food....and find equally unaffordable restaurant. The menu selection in the mall makes you feel like buying disposable LV bags. Painful stab to the wallet in every bite.

So when my mom told me there was a decent restaurant inside Elements, I was pretty skeptical. Enter 牡丹 TMSK....
Amazing Decor? I was staring at it for a long time too. Created by the boss who owns Liu Li Gong Fong, a glass merchandiser which specializes in making exotic glass craft and selling them at ridiculous prices. It seems they put the same skills in designing this restaurant, from the wavy pattern ceiling to the individual plates and utensils. It gives a nice.....hip.....nu.......'insert lastest trend adjective here'......vibe to the restaurant.

Anyways, my main concern was that 牡丹 proudly serves Shanghainese, Hunan, Italian fusion cuisine. Argh, fusion never works. Chefs usually end up mixing the two cuisines together....and create a dish that fails on both sides. You can have a strictly good chinese dish, a strictly good italian dish, or a TERRIBLE Chinese-Italian dish. So being orthodoxy and unexperimental, we tried picking the most chinese dishes for a try.
獅子頭/ Braised Minced Pork Ball, was really disappointing. Maybe it was the chef's attempt to be 'fusion', the soup it was served in was either a failed Mushroom cream soup, or fishbone soup. Tasted terrible either way, the meat had a bad smell as if the meat wasn't fresh.
The stir fried vegetable was alot better. The mix with asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms and lotus leaves truly showed the chef's stir frying skills. The main surprise here was how fresh this dish tasted, without any hint of oil or heavy seasoning. 五花腩炆魷魚/ Fatty Pork with Cuttle Fish. This was an amazing dish, with a nice mix of sweetness and texture. The pork wasn't as fat as imagined, making the meat melt as it enters the mouth......mouth watering goodness. Just merely upset that they put in a boiled egg into the sauce to disguise itself as a cuttle fish. The dish should be called Fatty Pork with EGG for the lack of cuttlefish.The highlight of the night. 脆皮荷香雞卷/ Baked Chicken Wrap. This dish was the closest fusion dish we ordered for the night, because it looked incredible judging from the table next to us. The chicken was surprising tender for something that is baked. The chicken forms a wrap around a clump of oriental style mushroom rice. Extremely good dish and well presented.....but awfully small and bitesize for its price...

The bill came up to be $420 HKD for three person, which is a borderline modest number for the area we were dining. Food was TINY, although finely cooked, everything was close to bite size. Somehow the chef forgot to mention French cooking style when he offered us French porportions :(

Another random rant. IF you really want to call yourself a fusion restaurant, either make it GOOD, or just avoid it! This restaurant technically ISN'T a fusion restaurant, just a place that HAPPENS to serve both Chinese and Italian dishes.

Final Verdict: Skip it. 夏麵館 downstairs offers a bigger proportions at a lower price. This restaurant falls under the category for rich scene kids.....or anorexic Supermodels.
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=19415