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