The Re-invented Tate

I cannot believe it's only my first time sitting down at Chef Vicky Lau's restaurant at its current venue for her full tasting menu when I visited a couple of weeks ago (previously I was there for one of those "four-hands" meal thing - and that's late last year already). I am always impressed by Chef Vicky's spot-on techniques and aesthetic presentation in her beautifully designed dining room up on Hollywood Road, and I think over the years, she has begun to develop a consistent theme of taking on ingredients more common in Asian cuisine with her interpretation to create something unique.

Place to Rest

Recently we became more conscious to bring our business to local and small shops around our city as our tiny contribution to support them. And it often led to pleasant surprises as we ventured out of what we are more familiar with and started checking out new places.

Italian Feast

Theo Mistral in TST East has quickly become one of my favorite casual Italian restaurant in town since its opening last year, and I was glad to make a quick return visit last week when Chef Theo Randall was in town to present a series of special menu at his namesake restaurant. With the invitation that only mentioned a “1-meter Italian Feast”, turned out they did literally prepare a feast for the few of us who attended the dinner at their private room.

Best Things Begin in the Mornings

Breakfast at Four Seasons Hong Kong was the part I most looked forward to before the start of our weekend stay-cation at the hotel. With both The Lounge and Blue Bar offered separate breakfast menus to guests, we decided to go to both on two separate mornings just to check it out.

Japanese Buffet Lunch

Not wanting to feel like we were stuck in one building all weekend long, we did venture out to eat during our "Central vacation". It's been a long while since we last ate at Kaetsu, the Japanese restaurant at the Grand Hyatt so we made a booking for their popular buffet lunch on Saturday afternoon.

Chilling at the Top

The Four Seasons Hong Kong marketing team was kind enough to extend us access to the Executive Club Lounge facilities throughout our stay (which otherwise would have cost extra unless you booked for a "selected" suite), in addition to the generous gift of the hotel stay voucher. And that turned out to be one of the favorite bits about our Central weekend staycation.

Vacation in Central

With weather forecast suggesting there’s going to be severe thunderstorm and rain throughout the weekend, we seriously thought about postponing our staycation plan til some other time, but at the end we went on with our original plan, and proved that weather forecast cannot be more wrong this time (much to our delight). Last year at the hotel media party, I was lucky to win the lucky draw prize of a 2-night weekend stay at the Four Seasons Hong Kong, and so we thought we should take advantage of that and have a little staycation at the end of August to spend some time lying by the pool and chill or something.

Not the Usual British Bar Fare

The other night I was at Gough’s on Gough to check out the new bar menu that they are introducing, in addition to their regular a la carte menu. The entrance area on the street level was remodeled slightly to fit in a small bar counter with trays of seafood on display, which formed part of this new menu featuring a few seasonal dishes and some simple British bar bites.

Dinner By Chance

A chance encounter with our friend DSJ led to me crashing the dinner organized by her and other common friends the evening right after. Dinner was at Man Wah on top of Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, and I had little doubt that the meal was going to be spectacular even before the first dish was served. With their Chef Wong Wing Keung working hard to pick up a few cooking skills from DSJ lately, I know he would pull all he’s been learning to impress his si-fu.

Long Table Lunch

(Almost ) the same group went for a repeat of weekend lunch at Caprice a couple of weeks ago, this time with even more people. The restaurant was kind enough to arrange the private dining room for us - that's the only table that could seat 12 anyway - and Chef Guillaume Galliot offered to customize our menu with a mix of his signature dishes and a few new ones on the upcoming seasonal a la carte menu.