Shop Info:
Goccia Ristorante e Bar
Shop 2, 73 Wyndham Street, Central, HK
http://www.divinogroup.com/restaurants/goccia/about-us/
23 February 2012, Lunch (Restaurant Week HK)
$215 per head
Locust Tunghok and I decided to go for this little restaurant on Wyndham Street for our Restaurant Week Thursday lunch. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive on the public restaurant review website, so we hoped to be in for a treat.
The establishment has two floors, the ground floor being the bar area and the 2nd floor the restaurant. I did notice this rather interesting staircase design... ladies with short skirts should be careful when coming down... wait, that's a design feature? Fine...
Rather depressingly, despite having booked rather early on I was informed that the indoor area of the restaurant was "fully booked" despite having quite a few empty tables and was told to seat at a table in the outdoor area (which I was later told is a SMOKING area). Fortunately weather was not too bad and warm enough to seat outside -- it wasn't like there was any choice anyway!
That was the first disappointment of the day. Now the second: despite having the basil crusted cod fillet on the menu, it wasn't available, and was replaced with grilled salmon. And they did not tell me when I was presented the menu. Nay, I caught that change when the waitress was confirming my "fish" order! Now two things: 1) I like cod; and 2) I dislike cooked salmon with a passion. So I ended up with the sirloin steak, same as Locust Tunghok.
Having just looked at the public restaurant review website, I've realised that others were served salmon as well... That doesn't sound like cod has "ran out" as the waitress claimed! Now, if you do not intended to serve cod, which I understand to be a more expensive fish (?), do not put it on the bloody menu! Just say you'll serve bloody salmon and I'd have avoided coming in the first place!! Anyway...
The bread basket (actually a basket, of which I forgot to photo...) was OK.
Wild Mushroom and Black Truffle Soup
The soup was actually quite flavoursome, but I would suggest Goccia to rename it to "chunky mushroom soup". The mushroom pieces weren't small and the black truffle (paste? oil?) was good to be seen but didn't really add much to the flavour -- the signature earthy fragrance of the truffle was definitely missing here.
Sirloin Steak with Fontina Cheese and Sauteed Mushroom
Overcooked
If the soup was disappointing, the steak was bad. It certainly wasn't as disastrous as the one I've had on my own at Craftsteak the day before, which was severely overcooked. This one was very thin, about 1cm thick I'd reckon, which never bodes well for a steak, and was again overcooked. As usual we asked for medium-rare, and as shown in the photo, that was closer to medium welldone. The char-grilled flavour was lacking as well, since the steak was only lightly grilled (yet overcooked? strange).
The cheese was a nice addition. Although its flavour can possibly be ignored, it did add smoothness to the steak, which it in itself lacks... Furthermore, the steak came sliced and all the juices seem to be gone... that thing was quite dry. (Need I say again that steak should be rested before cutting?)
Vanilla creme brulee served with chocolate ice-cream
Molten chocolate ice-cream
The dessert was a further annoyance, although by this time we were almost giving up on the restaurant. The photo above was taken immediately after the plate arrived, and yes the chocolate ice-cream was half melted when served. I do seriously wonder how long that plate has been sitting in some obscure corner before it was served to us, and whether the chef has any QC before letting a dish leave the kitchen -- any chef who can allow that half molten crap to be served should be fired. This should be an unforgivable sin. It was a horrid view to behold!
The flavour of the chocolate ice-cream was decent though, in fact rather strong, which I liked, but given the shape it was in I really didn't enjoy it at all.
The vanilla creme brulee was again OK, with plenty of vanilla seeds which looked more than it tasted. Also a tall and thin-ish cup with a not-so-small spoon to eat creme brulee with was a bad idea. The chef / waitstaff need to put more thought into how to serve and present their food! The supposedly hard caramel was somewhat under-burnt (how I hope this is evened out with the overcook steak...) and not as crispy as I would have preferred.
Service was again mediocre, with no waitress to be seen when we wanted to pay and leave. Many thanks to the guy at the pizza oven who helped us to find one... we could have been stuck there for much longer otherwise!
I do like to say again that I could not understand the rationale of these restaurants of participating in the Restaurant Week. If all the reviews on OR are positive, there must be some good to the restaurant (oh wait some are free PR meals?), yet it has ruined its image to us by serving this obviously sub-par meal. Good enough for the price, perhaps, and meeting price limitation might well be the reason why the cut of meat was poor (couldn't explain the half molten choco ice-cream or the overcooked steak though!) but that's no excuse for a restaurant to serve such poor quality food when they should be able to do better. To me, it's always a choice of either raising the bloody price to serve a decent meal or to not participate at all!
So for me, unfortunately, I will not come back.
Oh, and for $290, slightly more than the price we paid here, we got a much better meal at Chez Patrick Restaurant.
Summary (rated 1-5):
Food: (2/5) Look at that steak.
Service: (2/5) No reasonable waitress should serve a half-molten scoop of ice-cream!
Environment: (2.5/5) Despite indicating that we wanted non-smoking, that wasn't accommodated and a guy who seemed to be the boss / boss's friend was there smoking. Duh.
Big Locust's Recommendation: (2/5) Don't bother.
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