Asia Flavours

Felix at The Peninsula

The piece of advice you receive from everybody before going to Felix at The Peninsula is don’t forget to go to the toilet. A rather strange first comment, I thought, given that the view from the dining room is outstanding, the food stunning and the service excellent but to be fair, it’s a good point. The toilet is worth the trip in itself. Sure, the décor in the bathrooms - particularly the sink area - is interesting but the key is the view out over the harbour (if you’re female) or over Kowloon (if you’re a guy) which must make it a contender for the best bathroom with a view anywhere in the world (should there be such a competition).

My first impressions of Felix weren’t overwhelming. The restaurant area was empty when we arrived and so we went up into the bar area with its view over Victoria Harbour. It’s all a little weird up there - someone compared it to a futuristic airport waiting area with padded walls and a rather claustrophobic feel to it. Not my cup of tea to be honest - I’d probably do drinks at Aqua if I went again on the grounds that you’d get the same view and well, it would all be a little less orange.

However, things quickly improved. The atmosphere in the amazing dinning room was great, with a good noise level and phenomenal floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides providing superb views. The décor is interesting although the only thing that I can vividly remember are the faces on the chair covers - all apparently current or former staff at the Peninsula which is a lovely, unpretentious touch.

The food was excellent and incredibly well thought through, from the bread basket onwards - indeed I became somewhat addicted to the chocolate chip bread which J.Y. had recommended. My starter of foie gras with poached pear was delightful, with seared foie gras on a slice of toast and also cold foie gras pate inside the poached pear. The flavours were fabulous. I did try to take a photo but I’m afraid my efforts didn’t even slightly do the dish justice.

I really struggled to narrow down my choice of main course and eventually decided on the black cod with rhubarb and sugar snap peas. The fish was beautifully cooked and the sweet peas provided a good contrast to the slightly sharp rhubarb. To be honest, I prefer my sugar snap peas to have a little more snap to them but the combination worked well. The fois gras stole the limelight but only just.

For pudding, I was torn between the raspberry pavlova with dark chocolate and the pudding rather temptingly called “chocolate! chocolate! chocolate!”. Based on the fact that E.L. decided to raid my “chocolate! chocolate! chocolate!”, rather than eat her own raspberry pavlova, I guess I made the right decision. The pudding (which technically should have been called “chocolate! chocolate! chocolate! chocolate!”) consisted of four mini-chocolate deserts: sumptuous chocolate mint ice cream, a chocolate tart, hot chocolate with a lychee egg white puff thing and a really rich chocolate and pastry combo. All delightful.

The only downside to having dinner at Felix is that, unless you are going with work, you’ll probably have to re-mortgage your house first - easier said than done in this market. However, should you find yourself a little flush with cash, this is a very good way to spend it!

Felix
28/F, Peninsula Hotel
Salisbury Rd.
Tsim Sha Tsui
Tel: 2366 6251

Tea at the Peninsula Hotel

Tea is a meal that really doesn't get enough attention. By and large, if you meet a friend for a cup of tea you go to a coffee shop, snuggle up on a sofa and perhaps indulge in a slightly dry muffin (well, at least in Hong Kong - what is it about over-dry pastries in this place?). In my book, that's not tea. What I'm talking about is the full meal that is afternoon tea - and after sampling Afternoon Tea at The Peninsula, I can tell you it is not overstating it to call it 'a meal'. The Peninsula's indulgent afternoon tea gives you the opportunity to have a sophisticated, relaxed and, well, civilised afternoon, drinking gallons of tea and righting the world.

We were warned that the queues on a Sunday can get quite lengthy so we skipped lunch and headed over at about 2.30. This was definitely the right decision because the queue was very short and we got a table relatively quickly. Having said that, it is actually quite nice spending a bit of time in the queue because it gives you a good opportunity to indiscreetly gawp at the hotel's opulent lobby - and, of course, at the other patrons sipping their darjeeling. Despite being huge, the lobby has a great atmosphere, enhanced by the string quartet that played throughout the afternoon. There is enough hustle and bustle to take away any uncomfortable formality but you are still left with a nice level of pomp and circumstance.

The food arrives on a three tiered platter and involves everything you could wish for from absolutely brilliant scones with clotted cream and jam, to dainty smoked salmon or cucumber sandwiches, to mini-quiches to cakes and truffles. Despite our best efforts - and we did try pretty hard - we didn't make that big a dent on the collection. Everything, as you'd expect from The Peninsula, was of a very high standard although C. and D. were particularly enthusiastic about the mushroom 'sausage rolls' (which naturally I couldn't verify because I think all mushrooms are intrinsically wrong!). In case we felt hard done by, the waiters also bought a 'pudding' of tiramisu. The tiramisu was not really tiramisu, it was a pistachio cream pudding. Sorry to jump back on my mini-bandwagon here but seriously, does nowhere do good tiramisu in Hong Kong - one with plenty of coffee and booze? I'm searching high and low to no avail.

I know that Afternoon Tea at The Peninsula tends to be something that you do when you have guests in town but I'm now a convert to a bit of indulgence just because. It was such a lovely, relaxing experience (they didn't rush us one bit, regularly refilling our silver tea-pots). Wonderful.