Harakan-S: Read the menu first. Always.

Shop info:

Harakan-S Japanese Dining Room

Shop 311, 3/F, Lee Gardens Two, 28 Yun Ping Rd, Causeway Bay

www.harakan-s.com

5 August 2012, Lunch

$290 per head

Some say it is most important to at least read the menu before entering a restaurant – so you’d at least know what they serve and form an idea of the budget for the meal – and often Locust Tunghok and I would turn away from a restaurant if we don’t like what we see, or we simply think the food might not warrant the price.  This Sunday, however, we made this amateurish mistake of taking the risk to enter a restaurant via its backdoor, without even seeing the menu, and sitting down only to find that the menu isn’t as attractive as we thought.  It was lucky that we survived with just a minor hit to the bank, although that was a rather optimistic view of the events…

THE ENVIRONMENT

Located on 3/F of Lee Gardens 2, Harakan-S is the renovated and rejuvenated version of the previous Harakan.  We entered through the back door, through Habitu Ristorante and the Garden.  The furniture chosen creates a casual dining environment although I kept hitting my head on that interesting pink-sea-urchin-like chandelier.  The Japanese paper door styled partitions echoes the cuisine this restaurant serves and the green wall makes the dining room a relaxed place to be.

THE SERVICE

Nothing much could be said about the service.  The staff was sufficiently attentive, but given the format of the lunch there really isn’t much service required…

THE FOOD

So why not much service is required?  Because it’s a semi-buffet lunch.  Had we known that it is a semi-buffet we wouldn’t have entered at all.  Worse still, the choices at the semi-buffet were very limited, with only a handful of choices for appetizer and one (ONE!!!) choice of green tea cheese cake for dessert.  To add to the insult, I found on its website, when researching for this post, that normal lunch with appetizer trio (salad, chawanmushi and “daily special”) is priced much lower than our semi-buffet lunch.  How convenient – oh it’s Sunday, let’s turn it into an appetizer buffet so we can charge more and use less service!  Genius! 

As one would reasonably expect, since these appetizers have been sitting on the table for quite a while they weren’t in their prime condition at all… even the sauce has shown signs of drying…

Grilled Cod Marinated in Saikyo Miso (Semi-buffet:  $298.  Normal:  $258)

This Saikyo grilled cod was quite forgettable – normal flavour and slightly on the dry side, with skins that are quite burnt with a pretty strong charcoal taste.  Portions were rather generous but that hardly compensates for the burnt skin and the inflated price.  The equivalent of 3,000 yen for a mediocre Cod Saikyo Yaki?  Come on…

Classic Grilled Eel over Rice (Semi-buffet:  $228.  Normal:  $188)

I have only had a bite of the grilled eel and from that can only say it was a disappointment.  The texture of the eel was rather mushy and the flavour quite weak – a long way away from the ones we’ve tried in Izuei Honten in Tokyo or the one with egg cover at かねよ at Kyoto!  Again, a 20% premium for coming on a Sunday, for less service, is outrageous.  On their normal menu at least there is a chawanmushi…

CONCLUSION:

We should have read Timeout HK’s 3/5 review and avoided this place, or read the menu at the main entrance before coming in.  Personally I feel that given the quality the normal lunch set prices are already on the high side, but with this Sunday premium the overpricing is outrageous.  Perhaps they make better dinners, and perhaps the a-la-carte menu is superior, but we definitely would not risk our hard-earned dough again just 0to try those.  Not coming back.

Summary (rated 1-5):
FOOD:  (3/5)  Mediocre at best, very expensive for the quality.
SERVICE:  (3/5)  Not much service to speak of especially given it’s semi-buffet.
ENVIRONMENT:  (4/5)  Very comfortable.
BIG LOCUST'S RECOMMENDATION:  (3/5)  Maybe, if you’re willing to risk a not-small amount of money on a meal that will probably be less than satisfactory!

Further reading:  原了，就是完！@ Harakan-S Japanese Dining Room

Amore di Tubino: Love of sheath? eh?

Shop Info:
Amore di Tubino
25-26/F, L'hart, 487-489 Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay

29 April 2012, Lunch
$120 per head

Locust tunghok and I were wandering on the streets on Causeway Bay trying to decide on somewhere for lunch.  The suddenly hot weather has affected our appetite quite a bit but somehow we wanted pasta.  So we decided to try our luck at Ana Oyster & Grill in the restaurant building "Kyoto Plaza".  On our way there, we noticed this seemingly new (to me at least!) restaurant called Amore di Tubino, and decided to give it a go.  Of course, we later realised that this is in fact the same restaurant we've been to and didn't really care much about, with the name changed.

Now I do not have any knowledge of Italian, but Google translate has taught me that the name of the restaurant means "love of sheath".  Eh?  Chinese translation is even worse... "愛護套"... hmm... interesting.  Can someone enlighten me on what the name actually means?

Anyway, when we arrived and asked for the menu to test the water, the waitress shown us a budget lunch menu and the full menu.  Whilst the lunch menu seemed pretty standard, the full menu was rather attractive.  Which is why we decided try.

However, when we were seated, we were told that only the items on the lunch menu is available.  Now, the lunch menu was a tiny menu with a pasta, a lamb, a beef, a chicken and a fish to choose from, or something along those lines.  The crab and king prawn linguini in the main menu and the pizza in the main menu, which were the reasons why I decided to risk it, were of course not on this lunch set list.  Why, for crying out loud, did you not tell us we can only order from the lunch menu?  Or rather, why did you show us a menu which we cannot order from??


I settled for the fish, but unfortunately this extreme disappointment has pretty much set the tone for the meal.

  

Don't be fooled.  Whilst this bread basket looks reasonable its looks were merely a bluff.  The bread is only just considered warm.  We weren't given any olive oil and balsamic vinegar, nor were we given any butter.  Worse, the bread was of CX-flight quality.  That is, the upper crust was slightly crispy slightly hard.  The bottom was rather solid and the core was rather dry.  Now of course this is a cheap lunch set (although I still wanted that linguini...) but how hard can it be to ensure that the bread is suitable for human consumption?  The photo on the right shows how much was left behind.

"Creme of pumpkin soup"

According to the waitress this was "creme of pumpkin soup".  That pathetic blob on top was likely some kind of cream.  The soup itself was quite light (read:  somewhat bland) and not overly filling (read:  thin).  Flavour does somewhat tell that it is a pumpkin soup but was not very vocal about it...

"Talipa" fish

"butter sauce"

That's what the menu says anyway.  I suspect they mean tilapia, which is actually a common name for a group of some 100 species of freshwater fishes from the tilapiine cichlid tribe.  Really should have looked it up before ordering, since according to some website (yea, homework done too late) the fish is rather tasteless itself and usually it's taken as a blank slate for the sauce to shine.  And the sauce in this dish?  A stupid butter sauce.  Which was not a very good sauce at all... didn't even taste of butter.  The photo above, taken immediately after the dish was served, shows the layer forming on top of the sauce -- a tell-tale sign of how long ago that has sat somewhere in the kitchen before it was brought to the table...

Damn... did I mention the fish was overcooked?  And part of it was so thin that the "crust" was thicker than the fish?

"Cheesecake"

Again, this is "dessert of the day", which according to the waitress was a cheesecake.  Cheesecake my arse.  To me that was a poorly made, tasteless sponge cake with some gelatinous stuff on top purporting to be a cheese cake.  Only had one bite.

The verdict

Coffee was very sour, lacks aroma... and in general not suitable for consumption.

So, as a summary:
1)  Misleading us into thinking that the full menu is available, whilst it wasn't.
2)  Bread was cold and of CX quality.
3)  Pumpkin soup was bland.
4)  Fish was horrid.
5)  Coffee sucked.

Enough said.


Summary (rated 1-5):
Food:  (1/5) 
Service:  (2/5)  For misleading us to think that the full menu would be available.  And for not providing much service anyway -- see the butter sauce...
Environment:  (3/5)  Not bad actually, but the background music was quite weird and not suitable for the decor at all...
Big Locust's Recommendation:  (2/5)  Don't bother, really.  It's lunch sets are not pricey, but the quality is horrible.

Manzo Italian Steakhouse: A culinary roller-coaster ride

Shop Info:
Manzo Italian Steakhouse
Shop 1104, 11/F, Times Square,1 Matheson Street, Causeway Bay
http://www.diningconcepts.com.hk/manzo/index.php

26 February 2012, Lunch (Restaurant Week HK)
$390 per head

This dinner at Manzo was the last of our Restaurant Week meals, and we were hoping that this would be a good one.  Of course, knowing that this is a Dining Concepts really didn't help since our previous experience with Dining Concepts restaurants have been mixed.  There were some that we really liked (i.e. Bouchon) and one that I absolutely hated (i.e. Craftsteak).  The atmosphere, the sausage ageing room, the towel with a diagram of how beef cuts are named as well as the claim on the paper that they have a "Spiritview Ranch" where they raise their own cattle to high specifications gave us hope that this might actually be a decent steakhouse.

The Manzo Restaurant Week set dinner was actually a very interesting one.  Unlike other restaurants, their set actually did not give any choices -- the only choices available were red or white for the welcome glass of wine and how you would like the Sirloin cooked.

The bread was actually OK -- not as hot as I would have liked but at least warm.  Butter was piped (?) and there was this nice grilled garlic which the cloves were cooked so tender that it spread like butter.  Combining the butter and the garlic made up for the less than optimal bread (which was actually a bit dry).

We both went for the red wine, given we will be having steak and don't really know anything about wines except that red stuff goes with red wine (anybody better versed in the lore of wines care to enlighten us here?  Thanks!).  In the back is the Aqua Panna water which they almost double charged us for (OK, compensation for The Pawn who forgot to charge for the water?  Why do these restaurants always make a mess of charging for water?).  Lucky that we spotted it before paying...

That aside, we didn't like the wine at all...

Bolito Misto, Caramalized Onions, Beef Shank

We actually had no idea before the meal what Bolito Misto actually means, but a search on Google showed that it might be a dish that's "boiled together".  That's a wide definition!  It turned out that this bolito misto was a clear(ish) soup of beef shank and onions -- a bit like the soup part of the French onion soup but quite a bit richer (and a bit too salty IMHO) due to the beef shank.  Locust Tunghok thought it was a bad idea to actually have strands of the beef shank in the soup, since it was quite cooked and rather tough.  However, I did like it since its presence greatly enhanced the flavour of the soup (yes I mean chewing that tough bit of meat with the soup).  Guess it's difficult to have both then!

12oz USDA Sirloin with Barolo Reduction Steak Sauce

The steak was a bit of a disappointment.  Given that we both asked for it to be cooked medium rare, it was probably reasonable to arrive cooked the same.  And they weren't.  Mine was closer to medium rare than Locust Tunghok's, which was somewhat overcooked.  Whilst the photo might look attractive, the steak itself was actually somewhat lacking in flavour (that I had to further season it with salt...) and somewhat dry inside.  So... not that good quality a steak, as Ms. M commented?  The fact that this Sirloin is equivalent to the cheapest cut on their menu proper probably didn't help...

The barolo reduction was a joke to us.  Didn't really work with the steak, made things sticky and I don't think its flavour complemented that of the steak at all.  Luckily we didn't pour it on!

Torta with Mandarin Orange Sorbet

The "torta" was actually a slice of cheesecake, with my favourite biscuit base.  Rather fortunately / unfortunately, the flavour of the cheese was rather weak (albeit light) and as a result the thing was quite bland, especially after the steak.  The sour compote drizzled on top didn't help much either.  Why fortunate?  Because we were really really full by then... The mandarin orange sorbet was rather decent though.

Nonetheless, I'd very much prefer a decent "pick me up" then this cheesecake thing...

Latte

The latte was the real disappointment though.  It was thin, sour, bitter and with a layer of oversized bubble foam on top.  It was on the verge of being an awful cup of coffee.  One sip each and we left it there.  That we just went to Rabbithole for their latte and had that fresh in our memory certainly didn't help!

In all, the meal seemed to have gone downhill from the soup, which was rather nice, to the awful coffee.  I guess we really couldn't ask much of the restaurant though, as $390 for dinner at a steakhouse was not very pricey and we might be asking too much if we wanted a superb cut of steak.  That said, I would at least expect better execution!  The conclusion?  I wouldn't regret trying this restaurant, but given the quality of food and the not-really-that-cheap price, I wouldn't be going again either!

P.S.  The steak really made me wonder what's the point of Dining Concepts' restaurants participating in restaurant week.  Normally I would think it is to promote is restaurants to the foodies who manage to book tables via the system to enjoy these supposedly attractively priced sets.  If that's the case, what's the point of participating then giving the restaurant's worst shot to the cause?  The cheapest cut cooked to show inconsistencies?  The frankly rubbish steak at Craftsteak?  The rather unattractive menu for Bouchon?  That will ruin their reputation!  Do they ever realise that some of these people might well be coming back if they're impressed, or that some of these people might write to bitch about their unsatisfactory experiences?  Really... If you're gonna do it, please do it properly (read:  feel free to charge more but don't be such a cheapskate!)


Summary (rated 1-5):
Food:  (3/5)  Decent.  Acceptable given the price.
Service:  (3/5)  Not bad.  Kind of friendly.  Need to wave around to attract attention at times.
Environment:  (3.5/5)  Reasonably comfy.  A bit too dark though (see the photos!)
Big Locust's Recommendation:  (3/5)  Maybe worth visiting.  If you're curious.

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.

Sushi Shota: Where are your standards?

Shop Info:
Sushi Shota
8/F Kyoto Plaza, 
491-499 Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay


1 May 2011, Lunch
$165 per head


(Photo courtesy 蝗蟲同學 @ locusttunghok.blogspot.com)


It was a hot Sunday when we visited Sushi Shota for lunch -- so hot that the only possible lunch that we could think of was sushi.  The shop was almost empty, with only a few tables occupied when we arrived, and at 12:40 that could only spell trouble.  Nonetheless, we decided to give it a try.


I've been keen to watch the chefs work lately, especially at sushi joints, so when the waitress (probably aware that Hong Kong customers tend to prefer tables instead of the "bar table", or am I mistaken?) shown us to one of the empty tables I asked for seats at the "bar table" so we can have a view of the chefs' work.  That, eventually, turned out to be revealing.


Choice of lunch, for us, was limited.  It was either the 8 sushi + small rolls pick-your-own set ($150) or the 16 sushi recommended set ($forgotten).  Seeing that salmon is listed as one of the pieces of the 16 sushi set it was a easy decision for us.  Interestingly, perhaps business has been tough, certain items has been crossed out on the pick-your-own sheet, as shown below.  We didn't bother to check what those items actually were, but as these forms goes the item above maguro is usually... chu toro.  That's somewhat disappointing.

Further signs of trouble appeared when we ordered.  I took quite a while to decide on the pieces I wanted but before I handed the form to the waitress, they have served the Japanese style steam egg (茶碗蒸し).  Now being born and bred in Hong Kong, I surely appreciate efficiency.  However at restaurants, especially at supposedly traditional Japanese sushi restaurants, I price freshness of food more than the speed it is served.  I immediately wondered -- how long has this steamed egg been sitting in the steamer, waiting to be served?  Way before lunch service, perhaps?  This surely shows in the quality of the steamed egg (which, as shown below, was served in a... "container" which I personally thinks resemble that for creme brulee than Japanese steamed egg.  But that's my opinion).  Whist the flavour was there, the texture of the egg shows that it has been overcooked.  The egg was nowhere near smooth.  I have no trouble with preparing food beforehand, since it is necessary for the kitchen to properly function.  But how difficult is it to push off the steaming until it has actually been ordered?  So us, as customers, can be served freshly steamed 茶碗蒸し?

Further signs of trouble came when the chefs started to make our sushi.  The Japanese chef (who I suppose is the head chef?) called out the items to be prepared and his team started work on it.  Then the Japanese chef immediately started work on the... Gunkanmaki (軍艦)... Now I don't really have any trouble on the order they make my sushi, but since they took so long to make the nigiri and the hosomaki the nori was soggy by the time it was served.  

The quality of the sushi in general was not bad (nowhere near good either!).  The fish were fresh-ish except for the plastic-like, fishy 小肌.  The rice for all the sushi were too big for my liking (look at the photo above -- the shrimp looks pathetic sitting on such a huge amount of rice) and the salmon roe sushi was so watery that in addition to soaking the rice, the "juice" overflowed on to the plate and soaked the rice of the eel sushi to the right.

The hosomaki wasn't much better either.  We asked for negitoro maki and it was sloppily made. As can be seen from the photo above the ends of the small roll looked pathetic.  The chopped spring onion was not mixed with the chopped toro (both were prepared early on and was sitting in containers in the desktop fridge) but was sprinkled on to the chopped toro before rolling (the chef was making that right in front of us).  The result?  Not only did the chopped spring onion not complemetn the negitoro, it was heavily to one side of the hosomaki, giving a strange experience -- one munch it's no spring onion and much again you'll get a mouthful.  Weird.  I certainly would expect better from a team headed by a Japanese chef!  These chefs probably have the skills to make sushi properly, they just couldn't be bothered to do so.


This lack of passion, standard and professionalism was obvious in other areas as well.  The bowl of salmon roe in the desktop fridge in front of us was about 30% full when we got there.  Its contents were used a bit to make the two salmon roe gunkan for us.  It wasn't used again during our lunch but before we left, we saw that the bowl has been refilled!  Now if they refill the bowl every time instead of using it up, cleaning the container and replacing with a new stock, how fresh are their salmon roe going to be?


To further show such lack of standard, half way through our lunch the Japanese chef called the manager (?) over and talked to him in Japanese.  The manager went out for a while then came back with... guess what... a packaged green tea pound cake.  To my horror the Japanese chef then picked a knife and opened the packaging right in front of us -- then cut the cake into pieces and into a plastic box, perhaps to be served later.  I do understand that at certain restaurants it is probably not feasible nor financially worthwhile to make their own dessert, but at least I would expect the chefs NOT to announce so blatantly their lack of standards in front of his customers!


The worst thing for our lunch was actually not the quality of the food, nor was it the service of the front-of-house team.  The worst bit was the attitude of the chefs.  Sitting at the "bar table" and watching them work, they gave me the impression they were not serious about what they're doing and didn't really give a damn:  the Japanese head chef was joking to the other two chefs when making our sushi and I saw one of the chefs playing with his iPhone.  That's definitely not something I would expect a professional chef to do when preparing food, even behind closed kitchen doors, not to say right in front of the customers!


Our dessert -- two scoops of ice-cream (I finished both since my locust friend wasn't feeling well), which were huge.  That, however, could not make up for the disappointment we've had.  The following photo summarizes our comments pretty well:

Summary (Rated 1-5)
Food:   (2) I'd penalize the restaurant for the lack of professionalism.
Service:  (3.5) not bad.  Not particularly rude nor inviting.  Quite typical of such restaurants.
Environment:  (3.5) typical setting of these restaurants
Big Locust's Recommendation:  (2) poor impression due to the attitude of the chefs and mediocre food.

Uosen Japanese Restaurant: Lost Identity

Shop info:

Uosen Japanese Restaurant

銅鑼灣霎東街33號快捷假日酒店1樓

Locusts Visited:  25 April 2011

Before we decided to try this Japanese restaurant, my locust friend and I have done our homework (yup, that's OR research). We were wow-ed by the overwhelming majority of smilies over crying faces and by some of the comments of our fellow OR-ers. Unfortunately, as is sometimes the case, OR popularity can prove to be delusional. This was certainly one of those times.

Now before I'm mistakenly understood to be saying this restaurant is bad -- it isn't. It's MEDIOCRE and LOST. The problem is, at this price and location, being mediocre isn't good enough. FYI we spent about $230 per head. Not much provided that it was dinner, but that was because we decided to try its cooked food for our first visit (which has proven to be a wise move... more on that later). If the restaurant couldn't convince me that its food is very good, there's no way I'd cough up $998 for that set-for-two. Also, it's located in a hotel. A budget hotel, but I'd still take that as a hotel nonetheless.

Anyway, my doubts started when we entered the restaurant. Before letting us in, the manager (?) picked up the stick and drummed (well he hit it only once, but I'd take that as drumming) on the Taiko at the entrance to welcome us (photo below). My thoughts were immediately split -- it's either that they have perfected their food and service to such a degree that they want to make the diner feel special, or they're just another restaurant trying to stand out from the crowd with such gimmick.

And gimmick it was. I started sensing trouble once we were sat down and started looking around and at the menu. The setting was modern Japanese with wooden shelves showcasing its sake and wine collection but on the other side it shows traditional prints of caught fishes. The menu covers sushi, sashimi, "deep fried", "Japanese special cooked", "grilled", "cooked" (ranging from clams in sake to hotpot), noodle (udon, tempura, etc), salad, "Japanese cooked" (which is somehow different from "cooked" and includes fried rice to congee), soup and dessert. The dessert page was by far the most non-Japanese: featuring France panna cotta, France creme brulee, Europe cheese cake, France warm chocolate cake and Italy chocolate mose. Not to say that some of the other items in the menu are highly westernised / hongkongised. (the items above are the spelling and wordings they've used in the menu, by the way). The executive $998 set dinner for 2 include items from most of the categories above.

All these screams at me that this is a restaurant which has lost its focus. With its small kitchen (guessed from the position of the restaurant and the size of the building) it is just impossible that it can cook all the food in its menu well. The worst thing is: whilst some of the items seem to be authentic, most are obviously localised. Combine that with the strange combination of décor inside, one can only conclude that by trying to please everybody by providing something in all the areas they can think of, they've turned the restaurant into a Hongkong-Japanese style we've-got-em-all restaurant that is unlikely to be worthy of any premium price.

To be on the safe side, we decided to order cooked food only. We decided to try the "seafood in tea pot"(which was a seafood soup), grilled ox tongue (just because I like it), "clams in sake" (coz the other locust likes it... :P), "Eel fried rice with white truffle pate" (since I've seen recommendations here on OR) and a"cold udon with seaweed". The manager was certainly not pleased -- his annoyance with us ordering "cheap" food was obvious on his face. He asked whether we wanted some drinks (showing a pricy sake + wine menu, but unfortunately neither of us really drinks), and when we turned that down asked whether we wanted some sashimi. Without recommending anything that's fresh. Now it's fine if you have some freshly caught fish with good quality which you sincerely would like to recommend to us, and if that was the case we might even have ordered. But trying to push us to order sashimi because it's more pricy? Get lost. It was fortunate that he didn't recommend salmon sashimi to us... or we'd have walked out right away.

The food:

Seafood in tea pot ($55)

We suspected that the seafood used to make this soup was not fresh the moment the waiter provided us with a tiny piece of lemon and recommended us to squeeze its juice into the soup. As far as my minimal knowledge of Japanese food tells me, clear seafood soup doesn't go with lemon juice. (In any case, how on Earth am I supposed to squeeze juice from such a small piece of lemon? with my hand?) Unless, of course, there is some unwanted flavour to cover up. And yes there was. The soup was slightly bland for my liking, and if you smell at it closely you can sense a slight unfresh, fishy smell in it. That was partly because we refused to use the lemon, but good job covering that up. Only that I prefer fresh ingredients are used so that there isn't any unfresh fishy smell to begin with.

Grilled ox tongue ($48 per 2 skewers)

The ox tongue, surprisingly, was good. The pieces are bite-sized and well seasoned, without covering up the flavour of the ox tongue itself. And cooked just right -- juicy in the middle and not overly "bouncy". I personally like grilled ox tongue and this was good enough to make me order a second round. 

Clams in sake ($88)

The clams in sake was a major disappointment. Normally this is a dish that is difficult to screw up. However, in this case when it was served the clams were bland, with the taste of sake only in the sauce and almost not in the clams at all. It took us some 10-15 minutes of leaving it there soaking in the sake for the clams to gain some of the flavour it's meant to have. Again, although the clams were quite big, I don't think the were anywhere near fresh. We didn't detect any strange flavour, but when we tried to pick the clams out from their shells they broke up easily under the chopsticks. I don't think they were properly cleaned either, since we ate quite a bit of sand from some of them.

Eel fried rice with white truffle pate ($98)

My feelings are mixed on this dish. If you completely ignore the name of the dish, it is a decent fried rice -- the grains a evenly coloured and did not lump together. It was served very hot and smelled enticing. However, if you consider the name of the dish, it really didn't live up to what it claimed to be. To begin with, the "white truffle pate" seemed like the type you can get in bottles from citysuper (I wouldn't expect otherwise, actually), which was fragrant when you smell it closely when the fried rice was served but once we've mixed it in as recommended by the waiter, the fragrance was completely killed. The eel pieces in the fried rice weren't big, which is fine, but I found it difficult to taste the eel, which isn't fine. In fact, the way the dish was presented is my biggest disagreement with it. Truffles, as far as I can tell, don't like high temperatures. Which is why when you make e.g. pasta with truffle the truffle is always added at the very last moment. By serving the fried rice in such a hot Korean-style rock bowl and recommending mixing the truffle pate with the rice you would be doing the equivalent of adding the truffle to the fried rice in a wok. You couldn't not mix it actually, unless you wanna scoop it up and eat it with a spoonful of rice, which might be the better idea anyway.


Cold udon with seaweed ($52)

Udon has never been my favourite noodle, but in this case the texture was reasonably good. The sauce was a bit tasteless for me, but I'm not to judge that. Again I disagree with the presentation of the dish, as can be seen in photo above. At first site that would be impressive, but it's actually not a good idea. When you eat cold udon, you'd normally like to have a separate container for the sauce which you mix with the side ingredients of your liking before dipping the udon into it by the mouthful. In this case all of the udon were hanging on the chopsticks, with the ends already soaking in the sauce. If you want to use the chopsticks to eat the udon, you inevitably will have to pull them out, dropping all the udon into the sauce...

So IMHO, the food we had here wasn't all bad, only mediocre and for this price, not good enough. If it's priced at 70% of current price I'd be satisfied and if it's priced at 50% I'd be pleased with its quality. However, at this price and location, there are surely plenty of room for improvement. The bottom line is always quality -- $230 for this as dinner was expensive, contrary to 8000 yen for lunch at Sushi Iwa being a bargain. Quality is everything.

Finally, we've overheard an interesting conversation during our dinner. Apparently a group of some 4-5 people having dinner nearby had actually booked a table and ensured that there would be uni sashimi when they arrive -- and there wasn't enough for a portion. They were obviously annoyed because it was a request they've made. In any case there was nothing they could do and after some arguments ended up ordering something else. YET after some 15-20 minutes "fresh uni" suddenly arrived from their supplier... I truly wonder what supplier they use, since normally I'd expect fresh ingredients should arrive for the preparation of dinner, not DURING dinner? Oh wait... isn't there a citysuper in Times Square nearby...