Sushi Chika: Simply Horrid

Shop Info:

Sushi Chika / 千賀燒 / Chikayaki

銅鑼灣耀華街3號百樂中心7樓

23 October 2011, Lunch

~$210 per head

A casual lunch on a Sunday with Locust Tunghok.  In short not good but not bad enough to warrant an extended rant.  So a few comments:

1)  What the hell are they actually serving?  The Door says Sushi Chika.  The sign downstairs says Chikayaki, but the first item on the lunch menu is Sushi set... wtf...?

2)  Decor was weird at bast, despite being a comfortable place to sit.  Walls and window blinds were kind of Japanese, or purport to be.  However the tables and chairs are rather western... a strange combination if you ask me...

3)  Staff were rather incompetant.  And rude.  Especially that MK-girl waitress.  Politeness seemed not to exist in her dictionary.  AND she asked us, in Cha Chaan Teng tone, who wanted the coffee and who wanted the ice-cream, despite that the other waitress, who took the order, should have known.  And I heard that MK-girl swearing, loudly.  Now go back to the Cha Chaan Teng where you belong!  wtf...?

Pick-your-sushi set -- 10 pieces including the roll.  $188 + 10%

Eel

One had shell, one not.  If you are gonna remove the shell, go all the way please.  Such lack of care or standard.

4)  Sushi was not fresh.  Salmon Roe was watery.  Maguro was tasteless.  The other sushi we ordered in our pick-your-sushi set tasted pretty much the same, despite being different fishes.  Uni wasn't good either.  Eel tasted OK but from the temperature of the thing it was surely not freshly made -- the question being how long has that been sitting there.  Skill of the chef was questionable as well -- amount of rice varied and for me at least, too small.  Oh did I say the ama ebi fell off... plus the tails were missing whilst bits of shell remained... wtf...?

5)  Wasabi seemed to be grinded instead of toothpaste type, but the bottom of my wasabi mound was mushy... how long have it been sitting there like that?

6)  Miso soup was bland at best.  Gave up half way through.

7)  We should have known that it was not gonna be any good... because on the table was a pack of alcohol wipe for each of us... how Hong Kong style Jap restaurant is that?

8)  They don't seem to wash their spoons properly... the spoon I was given for the ice-cream had sticky orange matter on it... wtf?

9)  None of the staff ever bothered to refill our tea without us asking them to do so... and we were the ONLY TABLE of guests in the restaurant!  WTF???

10)  Finally, the chawanmushi tasted of... yup... M-bloody-SG... a.k.a. 味精 for you.  How much chicken powder did they use in it?  WTF?????

Summary (Rated 1-5)

Food:  (1.5)     Not the worst sushi I've had, but horrid nontheless.

Service:  (1)     The MK-girl waitress made us really quite uncomfortable.  Not proactive in serving at all.  And I heard her swearing, loudly.

Environment:  (3)     

Big Locust's Recommendation:  (1)      Enough said.  AVOID.

Mansa Organica: Mind your health...

Shop Info:

Mensa Organica 有機飯堂

銅鑼灣禮頓道95-97號星輝大廈地下B&C鋪

4 October 2011, Dinner

~$250

As my Locust Tunghok went girls dinner with her friends, the poor big locust (i.e. me XD) had to scavenge on the streets of Causeway Bay.  Wandering on Leighton Road I came across this new (?) restaurant called Mensa Organica.  It had no presence on Open Rice then (I think this place has been open for a while though… come on… update your database!) and since its theme of organic Italian cooking looked promising, I decided to give it a try after briefly looking at the menu at the door.

As usual, the suspicion that I was on to (yet) another disastrous mess of a dinner crept in after I was seated, since I realised that I was the only customer in the premise – and the guys sitting at the table next to me were the staff / owners, who were actually discussing business plans, right next to their customer!

Whilst there didn’t seem to be an a la carte menu (wtf?) or a drinks menu (wtf x 2??), the dinner set menu wasn’t bad at all.  With a choice of 2-course or 3-course dinner, 2 starters, 2 appetizers, 5 mains (spaghetti, risotto x 2, fish & steak) and an optional top up for dessert, I’d say it was well sized and should be easily manageable for any competent chef.  So I decided to risk it all and went for the 3-course:  Caesar Salad for starter, “Trio fish tartar” for appetizer and mixed mushroom with truffle risotto for main.

(Apologies for the poor quality of the photos… taken with my iPhone 3Gs… )

The bread.  After a bit of waiting, the waitress served this pathetic piece of tasteless bread on a plate – yes, just like way they do it at Cha Chaan Tengs – and asked whether I want some butter, before handling me the olive oil & vinegar bottle.  Fine.  The bread was actually quite warm, possible freshly reheated in an oven, but any experienced bread-eater can tell with their first bite that this bread was likely a few days old.  With the oven (or possibly microwave oven) reheat it was warm, soggy and mushy inside with a dry shell.  Then the rock solid, freshly cut butter arrived.

I then gave up on the bread.

When the salad arrived I could barely tell that it was a Caesar salad.  The lettuce was roughly chopped (c.f. broken up by hand), the dressing was a vinaigrette (c.f. CAESAR dressing), the white powdery parmesan was basically tasteless and the croutons were small, tasteless cubes which looked rather like those you use to feed fishes.  I don’t think the lettuce was very fresh either.  Horrible.

I have up half way through.

The fish tartar was no salvation.  When it arrived in a small espresso cup I wished that the portion could be bigger, but with the first bite, I felt that the portion was too big.  The trio fish tartar was actually small cubes of salmon and tuna sashimi, the thickness of which strangely resembles those you get from packaged sashimi at Citysuper, and small dry fishes which looked somewhat like 脆脆銀魚s.  There was a sauce which taste I have forgotten.  The taste of the fish, however, was not forgotten, because it was quite fishy – not fresh at all.  It tasted like the fish has not been properly stored, like it has been warm for quite a while, like it has been bought 3 days ago.  

I genuinely feared for my health and bravely gave up on the fish tartar.

The risotto was marginally better.  In fact, the first half of the risotto was OK.  The smell of truffle was faintly detectable, a pleasant surprise since by this time I have given up all hope on the food here.  The risotto itself was only just slightly overcooked, and with the mushroom it was edible.  Until when I was 2/3 through the risotto and came across a very sour piece of mushroom, which I somehow swallowed but almost threw up afterwards.  I gave up on the risotto as well.

By the way, I found it utterly pointless to pile some raw veg that’s obviously not fresh on top of the risotto.

I asked for tea with milk.  Then I wondered what tea they gave me.  Flavour was weak.  Strangely, though, the milk the served with the tea was *quite* warm, which I saw the barista steam with the coffee machine… that’s peculiar.

Conclusion:

Usually $250 is not exactly considered expensive for an Italian dinner.  For this quality, however, even $80 is too much, especially given that I had to put my life at risk eating their food.  Despite their staff being quite friendly and welcoming (albeit a bit clumsy), I will not come again.

If the owner is reading this post, I have an advice for you:  stop thinking about opening new stores or your fancy business plans.  All you’re thinking about what the customers want is WRONG.  The minimum that we want is good food – at least make it fresh!

Summary (Rated 1-5)

Food:  (1)     I’m glad I survived.

Service:  (2.5)     Friendly staff, but quite a confusion asking whether I wanted butter… and I do not appreciate the owner / staff sitting right next to me loudly discussing their business plans when I was having my dinner.  Thank you.

Environment:  (3)     Pleasant enough setting, with strange music – if I remembered correctly, Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem?  WTF?

Big Locust's Recommendation:  (1)      Don’t want to come again.  Thank you.

Aurora: we did expect better (Macau)

Shop Info:

Aurora

Altira Macau

15 October 2011, Lunch

$240 per head

The locusts have decided to go for a weekend trip to Macau to (again) sample some of its restaurants, recruiting two other locusts to join us on the trip.  The first stop -- Aurora @ Altira Macau.  We have seen posts by fellow bloggers praising the food to be worthy of its Michelin 1 star rating, expectations were high.  Unfortunate for us, however, our lunch did not go as smooth as we'd hope for.

To begin with, the staff certainly was courteous and friendly but somewhat lacking in ability (missed my primi piatti!  That’s for later.).  The default language is Putonghua but Cantonese or English was fine as well.  

Bread basket was not particularly outstanding, but OK.

Seeing that we were munching away the grissini... the sommelier / manager (?) got us some more...

Locust Tunghok's Appetizer: Buffalo mozzarella and roman tomato mille-feuille, deep-fried mozzarella and vegetables terrine.

The buffalo mozzarella and Roman tomato mille-feuille was quite nice. very refreshing but I do find the buffalo mozzarella a bit weak in flavour. 

Locust Tunghok's Primi Piatti: Cavatelli pasta with Manila clams and lobster, vine ripe Sicilian cherry tomato and parsley -- only tried a mouthful. Impression was good (couldn't remember any details) but not particular impressive.

My Secondi: Red snapper in saffron broth, sous-vide fennel, basil tomato, squid and mussel. Not bad, but in my opinion nowhere near as good as those at Robuchon a Galera or Amber.

Now of course the fish was different, this being a red snapper and that being a cod, so was the method of cooking. However, as a dish I certainly enjoyed the others more than this one.

The problems: 1) texture was almost rubbery but not really"smooth", 2) I didn't realise there is saffron on the broth until looking at the menu again to type this up, 3) the fish itself tasted a bit... "fishy" (not that fresh? that would be unthinkable at such a restaurant), 4) I couldn't recall eating any squid at all, and 5) somehow I find the the dish to be a collection of unrelated bits -- they just didn't work together for me. I couldn't remember a thing about the fennel, or the mussel. All the flavours somehow didn't "work" into the fish itself, and physically, those bits and pieces in the broth isn't that brilliant an idea, since I ended up having to scoop them up after finishing the fish.

To conclude... need improvement.  (see the texture of the fish on the right... I might go as far as to suggest that it's overcooked?)

Mushroom consomme and truffle ravioli, hazelnut emulsion

My primi piatti -- which came AFTER my secondi. Apparently the waitress who took my order missed this and I had to ask about it to get it back. Their follow up was fine though, getting the dish ready within minutes and served after seeing my finishing the fish.

Couldn't quite taste the hazelnut...

The mushroom consomme was good though, very strong in flavour and worked well with the truffle ravioli, the flavour of which bursts into your mouth when you bite through that skin. I think Locust Tunghok liked it too?

Hot chocolate fondant with caramelized banana and Italian pistachio, Sicilian cream and saffron ice cream.

Call me conservative but I didn't like the saffron ice cream -- for me a good scoop of vanilla ice-cream would have worked better.

I think I might not be alone in thinking that "plate" looks strangely similar to those we see on the wall... XD

Summary (Rated 1-5)

Food:  (4) Food was good albeit with minor hiccups (e.g. the fish…).

Service:  (4.5) Courteous & friendly.  Despite missing my primi piatti they made us feel comfortable eating there.

Environment:  (4) Internal décor was decent without being intimidating.  Windows provided sufficient light making the premise feel bright.  The outdoor area, however, was a bit of an eye-sore and could have been better.  Penalised for that.

Big Locust's Recommendation:  (4) Good for the price.  Probably not good enough to warrant a return, but must try.