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.
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