Newest on the Block

We kicked off the Easter long weekend with a visit to a new restaurant in Soho. We loved both the previous restaurants by Chef May Chow (of Little Bao and Second Draft), so we expected great things from Happy Paradise, her newest project not far away from the ever-popular Little Bao, one that shot her into fame with contemporary, playful twist to the traditional Chinese cooking.

The Remodeled Takumi

Recently I had the opportunity to try Chef Daisuke Mori’s cooking at his restaurant Takumi in Wanchai, which went through some slight renovations to keep the venue afresh. The restaurant, with counter-only seating tucked away on the ground floor of an apartment building, joined a handful of other places around town serving a genre of French cuisine with Japanese influence (or the other way round, depends on how you see it)

Slow Food Awakening

Up a flight of stairs of a random industrial building in Kwun Tong is a small café/restaurant called "8104 Box of Life", and every Monday evening, Kong Yeah, a small advocacy group that supports local farming and food products, puts words into actions by hosting dinners at this place with an ever-changing menu using produce freshly harvested from local farms and other locally made artisan products.

Teppanyaki Omakase

Sans the Japanese dessert stall at the street corner, I have never set foot on Haven Street, a little cul-de-sac at the tip of Causeway Bay. Once filled with filthy car repair shops and garages, it has slowly transformed into a corner lined with hip cafes, bars, small restaurants and at the end of the street, a Japanese restaurant called Kyoku specializing in sushi and teppanyaki. And that's where I was a couple of weeks ago trying out their new omakase menu in front of the teppanyaki counter.

On My Day Off: Izakaya Dinner

A long story why I ended up on this side of harbor after spending a good afternoon browsing through exhibits at the Art Basel on the other side (alright, for me it’s more about the champagne at the VIP lounge than the art pieces, I admit), but anyway, since we were around this neighborhood (TST, that is), I thought it's a good idea to check out this new Japanese izakaya nearby that I always meant to try. Goshaku sat on the sixth floor of a commercial building on Knutsford Terrace and behind the restaurant was the same team which operates Keyaki near LKF and a handful of other Japanese casual diners around town.

On My Day Off: Pasta Bar Lunch

I heard great things about Pici, the new pasta bar at Wanchai's St. Francis' Yard, but I also heard it's next to impossible to get a table at this no-reservation restaurant opened by the same team behind Pirata (and TokyoLima, which I went recently also). So with my day off I decided to try my luck by going there early before they opened for lunch service at noon.

On My Day Off: Early Bird Breakfast

After my original plan didn’t pan out as expected (for the better), I found myself having an extra day off in the middle of the week. I decided to make best use of it to do things that I wouldn’t be able to do normally when I had to work. I woke up, thinking what that might be, and the first thing that came to mind was this little dai pai dong in Central called Yue Hing (裕興大排檔). Multiple friends have sworn by the place serves the best sandwich in town (some even said the world), but the catch of this casual restaurant is first, they only opened on weekday mornings, and second, you just had to be really patient to wait for their food as it may take up to an hour to arrive.

C'est Magnifique

With an invitation for Dom Perignon stating the event starting at 6:30pm with pre-dinner drinks, I ain't going to miss any minute of it and arrived right on the dot. And as a bonus of arriving early, in addition to a few extra glasses of the current 2006 vintage being poured for me, I got to enjoy a bit of the sunset off the terrace of On Dining on a particularly clear day, along with plates after plates of Joselito ham and 24-month aged Comte cheese being passed around. That certainly made what was an awfully-long work day less painful.

Uncharted Territory

Understandably I was a bit surprised when I heard several high-end restaurants are opening up at the tip of Kowloon Bay all by the same owner. One of those restaurants is Le Pan, headed by the Singaporean chef Edward Voon specializing in contemporary French/progressive cuisine, which I had a chance to visit recently at the invitation of their PR team.

The Forgotten Recipes

It’s pure coincidence that I ended up with another outstanding Cantonese meal within the same week after our dinner at the Seventh Son just a couple of days ago. I was delighted to tag along with a small group of media people for the tasting of the special menu at Ming Court at Cordis Hong Kong. For the next couple of months, Chef Mango Tsang introduced a series called "The Forgotten Recipe", with "new" dishes based on classic Cantonese recipes and offered them in addition to the regular a la carte menu.

"Family" Dinner at Seventh Son

The last Sunday of March was a wrap with a trip to Seventh Son Restaurant in the evening. Well, I forgot how and when the conversation for the dinner started but anyway, we sorted out the date that we were all available and someone made a booking.

Lovely Catch-up at La Paloma

La Paloma in Sai Ying Pun is what I would categorize as a "no-brainer" restaurant - you know, one of those neighborhood hangouts that one wouldn't mind going every day with a menu you are so familiar that you memorized everything on it - whether you call this a pub, a diner, a chiringuito, an osteria, a chachaanteng or whatever depending on where you are from.

Restaurant Week at TokyoLima

The Restaurant Week promotion often gave us the chance to check out any new or up and coming restaurants that we somehow missed out, and this year we decided to visit TokyoLima, the new-ish restaurant specializing in Japanese-Peruvian fusion cuisine opened only a couple months ago. The restaurant, branded itself as an izakaya, has the feel of an exclusive speakeasy, tucked away on the ground floor inside a non-descript commercial building on Lyndhurst Terrace.

New age with the new Rech

We made our way to the other side of the harbor to have dinner at the new Rech by Alain Ducasse in Tsimshatsui on a Friday evening. The restaurant took over the space formerly occupied by Spoon, another dining outlet under the Alain Ducasse "empire", on the ground floor of Intercontinental Hong Kong. Well, I did bemoan the closure of Spoon for a little while – after all the place always has a special place in my heart as being the subject of my first blog post (wait, is that 10 years ago already?) – but I am also hopeful of this new concept of a casual, Parisian style seafood restaurant taking its place, suitably located by the harbor front with the most gorgeous view. Sometimes change is for the good.