Asia Flavours

The Green Mouse

I really like restaurants where the chef leaves the kitchen to chat to the diners. I don't want his or her life history but a short chat about the food is a simple touch which makes the whole dining experience that much more personal. When it occurred on Friday night, it immediately made dinner stand out.

The Green Mouse, a small French restaurant just off Hollywood Road, would not win any awards for decor but the noise levels are good and the service knowledgeable, friendly and attentive. The food is really very good too. In terms of options, there is a choice of a three or four course set menu, an a la carte menu or the tasting menu. We chose the seven-course tasting menu - something which I never thought I'd get through when I saw the size of the first few courses. Luckily, before I panicked too much, we realised that some of the courses were served together on the same plate. 

The fois gras was quite nice but the definite highlight of the first few courses was the lobster and prawn course. The flavours were delightful and the seafood cooked to perfection. Equally delightful was the scallop carpaccio which was melt in the mouth. On the theme of melt in the mouth, the steak, which came accompanied by duck breast, was beautiful and the vegetable sides really interesting. 

Perhaps the only slightly weak course was the pudding which came as a selection of little taster plates - the floating island was quite nice but I wasn't over-awed by the panna cotta or the clafoutis. 

Why anyone would name a restaurant after a small rodent that is the bain of any clean kitchen is somewhat beyond me but it was a nice dinner with excellent service. Definitely a bit of a winner.  

The Green Mouse
33 Peel Street
Tel: 25440389

SoHo 8

I really wanted to like SoHo 8. For starters, it's really convenient for my flat and it's always useful to have a couple of reliable old favourites close to home. Also, I really like Yorkshire Pudding, it's sister restaurant. It was therefore so disappointing that our meal at SoHo 8 was only so-so, both in terms of service and food. 

I ordered the mussels in a thai lemongrass sauce. I know that it said in the menu that the broth contained fish sauce but wow was it pungent. The problem I had was that I'd suddenly get a waft of pungent fish and my mind would automatically link it to the mussels which rather put me off eating them. It also meant that the broth wasn't great to drink as a soup because it was just so salty - a side-effect was that I was still drinking water several hours later. Even with some bread to help mop it up (HK$25 extra), we still couldn't manage that much of it. 

The other issue I had with the mussels was the size of the serving. Despite being a main course, it wasn't going to fill anyone up - although this might have been different with a bit of bread and some tasty broth. In all, the dish consisted of maybe twelve mussels, one of which was fully shut. N.W.'s crab cakes were equally miniature and delicate. She also made the fundamental mistake of trying the mussel broth before she'd finished her crab cakes and couldn't really taste the crab cakes after that. 

On the service front, there were a couple of small things that annoyed me: my orange juice never turned up, the waiter said it was HK$20 for bread but the bill said HK$25 (pernickety maybe but still) and two sets of bread turned up, on of which was toast and therefore not greatly suited to dipping.

Going to have to stick to the Yorkshire Pudding... 

8 Staunton Street
Tel: 25369068

Marouche Grill

I nearly walked past this place during my first loop of Elgin Street but the number of full tables caught my eye and my inner-sheep quickly got the better of me. Luckily the decision to follow everyone else was a good one, even if the food is quite expensive for what it is. 

We started with some excellent Baba Ganoush which I could have carried on eating all night (although luckily for my waistline, didn't). My friend wasn't at all convinced by the sprinkles of smoked paprika, suggesting that they made the Baba Ganoush taste burnt, but I like that extra smokiness. 

To follow, I had the mixed grill plate. The chicken, lamb and beef were all marinated and cooked brilliantly although I think the chicken just pipped the others to the post. To be honest, the meat was so flavoursome in its own right that it seemed a shame to smear it in the extremely garlic-y sauce that accompanied it. 

We didn't order any sides as the waiter said that all the mains came with vegetables. While technically accurate, I wasn't going to achieve my 5 portions a day with the pitiful serving of vegetables that arrived. Luckily however, I keep a stash of vitamin pills at home so my health was salvaged.

One thing that did surprise me was that they didn't have Lebanese wine by the glass. I'm sure they had a wide selection on the actual wine menu and perhaps it's a cost thing, but it would have been a nice touch. 

Not the cheapest evening but it's a restaurant on Elgin Street so what do you expect. However, the excellent service and tasty food made it worth a visit. 

31 Elgin Street
Tel: 25244123

Box Thai (2/10)

Martha Sherpa may not have managed (quite) to convince me of the benefits of making Thai green curry from scratch in my own home (without a blender) but one thing she did do was give me a good idea of what I should expect from a Thai restaurant. I think that was why I was so disappointed by Box Thai. The menu looked great with lots of different options available and the food looked fantastic when it arrived in the serving bowls, but it just didn't taste great. In fact, in places it tasted quite bad - all sickly sweet with no kick anywhere. 

The starters were by far the best bit with the grilled beef salad being the hands-down winner, closely followed by the grilled salmon salad. The cucumber / lettuce combo below the salmon and mixed in with the beef was fresh and flavoursome with a perfect level of chili. Unfortunately, it then went downhill. The spring rolls were excessively oily and flavourless - to the extent that you could really taste the oil when you took a bite. The papaya salad was perfectly amiable but really lacked the kick that makes papaya salad so brilliant - the powerful but balanced combination of slightly tart green papaya, spicy red chili, salty shrimp paste/fish sauce and sweet honey or equivalent. Even the satay was a bit uninspired - the meat seemed cheap and hadn't soaked up any of the flavours of the sauce. 

The waiter recommended the Massaman beef curry (which had two peppers out of three next to it on the menu) and pork neck curry with pineapple so that is what we went with. What he didn't explain was that they were virtually identical except for the fact that one had tiny bits of pineapple in it. Neither had any kick in it whatsoever and the overriding impact was of coconut cream and sugar, lots of sugar. I've never had sweet Thai curries before and I can't say I like the approach very much. After a while the Thai green curry arrived. It was marginally more flavoursome but didn't really have that balance of coconut and chili that you might expect. Indeed, it didn't really have any chili at all. On the plus side, the beef noodle dish was quite good. 

Then the puddings... The creme brulee was seriously overcooked and had become rather rubbery. The tapioca pudding with coconut milk was fine but not particularly exciting. To top it all off, the tables are absolutely huge square tables designed for about 24 people but in such a way that you can't speak across the table. If you are in a group bigger than two you won't get a lot of cross table chat. 

Disappointing. 

1/F, 4 Arbuthnot Road

Central

Tel: 9123 6049

Eat Right

The build up to Christmas is never a good time for the waistline. The whole period seems to primarily be about eating and having drinks on a daily basis, with extra temptations chasing you at every opportunity. Indeed, I struggled to get into Olivers today at lunchtime - it was heaving with Christmas puddings, Terry's chocolate oranges, mulled wine spices and, of course, more mince pies than you could shake a stick at. 

Not that I'm complaining. After all, what is January without the need for urgent crash dieting? It would be dull otherwise. However, my friend A.C. seems to be fighting this enforced excessiveness tooth and nail. When I met her for lunch on Saturday she suggested this restaurant called Eat Right on Staunton Street which sells itself as a "healthy" restaurant. 

I'm not sure about this "healthy" business. The menu, which seemed to offer all the normal things you'd expect a SoHo cafe to offer, lists the number of calories each dish contains which is quite traumatising. We spent the first twenty minutes going through everything on the menu, swearing we'd never drink fruit juice again (SO many calories). In the end we opted for some creamy tasting cappuccinos which seemed to have fewer calories. Despite being someone who works on trying to have a balanced diet, the menu reduced me to a calorie control freak within the space of a few minutes.

Worse was to come. By now I was obsessed. Every mouthful of my scrambled eggs on ciabatta with smoked salmon was some ridiculous number of calories and I was fully aware of this. It was therefore seriously disappointing when it turned out to be really poor - a dull, boring mess that was, frankly, in need of a few calories to help it out. The bread was dry, being without any butter, but was not as dry as the overcooked scrambled eggs it came with. The chef really shouldn't have let them leave the kitchen. A few herbs might have helped but I suppose that would be few extra calories.... Hmmm. In the end, I ate the smoked salmon on its own and then managed to extract some tomato ketchup to liven up the dried egg / bread combo. 

The problem with knowing how many calories I'd just consumed was that it made the disappointment ten times worse. Maybe the lunch / dinner options are better but I'm just not sure I can get that into calorie counting to want to try it again. 

4 Shelley Street

SoHo 

Tel: (+852) 2868 4832

McSorleys

Had it not been for a recommendation from B.B, I would never have gone into McSorley's Ale House. I'm not a beer drinker and so the pub with its dark wooden furniture - designed to look like a Victorian Irish pub - was never going to be high on my list. However, we'd just survived a somewhat traumatising walk / scramble up to the Sai Wan waterfall and back again in the pitch dark, and our stomachs were crying out for a substantial meat fest. This McSorley's provided brilliantly. 

The tables at the back of the pub are a bit dingy but because the front of the restaurant is open to the elements, the tables there are airy and you don't really feel like you're in an "ale house". Having said that, the menu is pretty traditional, covering everything you would expect from a pub. The highlights, however, were definitely the burgers which were juicy, flavoursome and seriously substantial - I didn't every come close to finishing mine. The slightly unusual sounding Aloha Burger with its sliced pineapple and terriyaki sauce was unusual, certainly, but it hit the spot! 

If you are in need of a good, traditional burger (unlike, say, those provided at the uber-expensive Duke's Burger), McSorley's should be on your shortlist. 

55 Elgin Street

SoHo

Scirocco

I've always spied the little terrace above Stauntons Wine Bar and thought it looked rather appealing as I travelled up and down the escalator. Finally, with the weather becoming rather more suitable for al fresco dining, a Friday night with the girls seemed like a good opportunity to try it out.

The terrace is pretty much it in terms of the dining space of this Moroccan restaurant but, rather luckily given the propensity for the heavens above HK to open, the canopy is fully extendable so the few droplets of rain on Friday night didn't worry us. Nor did the noise from Stauntons below, which we simply didn't hear (although that may have had more to do with the level of noise we were making!)

I have to admit that I was expecting it to be rather over-priced and of somewhat dubious quality given its prime location in SoHo. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the cooking, both in terms of the tapas-style smaller dishes and the larger mains. I have to emphasise the word 'larger' at this point because the portions were pretty tiny, especially in relation to the main dishes. Although the prices on the menu were average, a main course on its own was not going to sustain you so you really did need to do a tapas starter and then a main course. Of the tapas-style smaller dishes we ordered as a starter, the Cheramoula Prawns were the hands down favourite although the special of sherry and garlic beef, while not exactly innovative, was tasty and flavoursome. I wasn't that excited by the hummus with smoked paprika but the olives were good, as was the kofta meatballs with cucumber labneh (which apparently, according to Wiki, is strained yoghurt, somewhat akin to Greek yoghurt).

As a main, I chose the Marrakech-style lamb kebabs with spiced chickpeas, feta and coriander. The kebabs themselves were full of flavour but what made them stand out was the ingredient-focused, simple, fresh coriander and feta salad on the side. It was a great combination. The other main courses seemed to go down well too with A. enjoying her seafood hot-pot and B. her risotto.

The only slightly annoying aspect to the meal was that half the wine list was unavailable, supposedly because of planned changes to the wine list contents. This would have been fine but the main absences were the cheaper bottles and they couldn't provide any similarly priced alternatives - despite being part of the same group as Stauntons Wine Bar downstairs. To their credit, they did knock some money off one of the bottles we ordered but to be honest it was more a point of principle thing (terrible thing being half-Scots, half-Yorkshire, gives you all these principles that everyone else calls being tight!).

Scirocco is in a lovely location with a great atmosphere and given the quality of the food we had on Friday, I would definitely return. It's not great value for money by any stretch of the imagination but what would you expect from prime location SoHo.

Scirocco
10-12 Staunton Street
Tel: 2973 6605

Wagyu

There's something about Wagyu. The 'togetherness' of the food, atmosphere and service make it a really great, easy restaurant to visit.

With my friend L. heading back to the UK the following day, we wanted a lively final meal. The location of Wagyu at the heart of Wyndham Street makes it a brilliant place for people-watching and we were lucky enough to get a window table, despite the fact that we hadn't booked and that by 9pm it was heaving.

Knowing that I was likely to have a heavy red meat option for my main course (it is, after all, called Wagyu), I chose the grilled terriyaki tuna skewers as a starter which were lovely, not too heavy at all. L. had the spinach, walnut and mixed cheese pancake which she really enjoyed and which looked tasty.

I was tempted to a Wagyu steak but the problem is that I've had the Wagyu burger before and it is just too tasty for me to resist. True to form, it was heavenly. I haven't had a better burger in Hong Kong. The meat used is just so flavoursome. Apparently, well according to Wiki, Wagyu refers to several breeds of cattle genetically predisposed to intense marbling and to producing a high percentage of oleaginous unsaturated fat, whatever that may be. It is also known as Kobe beef or Mishima beef.

Although we were completely defeated by the generously sized burger, my friend N. did have a sort of pudding in the form of a Banana Virgin Daiquiri. If you like bananas, you should really try this. It was lovely, even if a mere sip nearly pushed me to a 'mint wafer' moment!

All in all, a great and reliable restaurant in the heart of Wyndham Street.

60 Wyndham Street
Central

Tel: 2525 8805

Bistro Manchu

Another trip to Bistro Manchu which is fast becoming one of my favourite places for a group Chinese meal. (For reference: My First Review of Bistro Manchu). With E., L., and P. in town from London, I wanted to take them somewhere for a memorable, but not too costly, meal. Bistro Manchu fitted perfectly.

As there were 9 of us, we ordered (and consumed) a serious amount of food which amazingly came to HKD280 a head, without wine. I'd probably get repetitive strain injury if I described everything we ate so the following is just the highlights (and lowlights, of course).

The starters were particularly good with the aubergine fillet with garlic and chili oil stealing the show. The garlic shoots, dried shrimp and minced pork boiled dumplings were also great, very flavoursome.

The sauteed cumin beef with chinese parsley on an iron plate completely divided the table in a "marmite love it or hate it style". Bizarrely, no one felt it was merely ok - C. and I thought the intense black pepper and cumin flavours were excellent while E., N. and L. thought it was just terrible. Not sure what to make of that result but there you go! We also tried the Manchurian style leg of lamb which was very tender and the braised ribs with north eastern long beans which were sweet, rich and flavoursome. I wasn't that excited by the classic Manchurian stew with mushrooms and associated vegetables but the sauteed potatoes, green peppers and aubergine were excellent. One dish I couldn't get enough of was the spicy shredded pork which was simple with a slight kick. It came with baked sesame pastry pockets which look really pretty but, to be honest, were somewhat of a fiddly nightmare to handle!

All in all, a good value meal in the heart of SoHo with helpful staff who weren't at all fazed by our rowdy large group!

Bistro Manchu
33 Elgin Street
Central
Tel: 2536 9218

Shui Hu Ju

Not being organised enough to get a table at Hutong and knowing that E.'s birthday is at Yun Fu later this month, I decided to try another Aqua sister restaurant, Shui Hu Ju. To be perfectly honest, I was slightly disappointed. It's very expensive and while the food was good, it was not amazing. If I was looking to spend that sort of money at an Aqua restaurant, I would without hesitation opt for Hutong with its dramatic views. Yes, Shui Hu Ju is "themed" like the other Aqua restaurants (including having the usual kooky toilet design) and the entrance is particularly dramatic but I think it paled in comparison to the Hutong experience.

For starters we tried the shredded duck with cucumber salad which was simple, light and tasty with no overbearing sauce. Unfortunately we decided to be brave and chose the sliced pork with Chinese rice wine to follow that. I think the politest thing that can be said is that it is an acquired taste and, frankly, not one that I acquired. It consisted of thin disks of very fatty looking light pink pork with incredibly strong Chinese wine poured in generous amounts over the top. Still, I'm sure that if this sort of dish is your thing then this was indeed a great version...

We were a bit disappointed by the look of the minced pork with lettuce when it arrived but wow, were we wrong. It was truly fabulous, really flavoursome. The meat had a delicate kick to it which added greatly to the taste. The wok fried beef fillet with onion in soy sauce was a bit of a safe option but it was well cooked with the onions still at that slightly crunchy stage. Equally the Chinese spinach (which bears no similarity whatsoever to "spinach") was simple and good.

All in all, a good meal but I would definitely stick to Hutong if I was looking to pay that much money at an Aqua restaurant.

68 Peel Street
Central

Tel: 2869 6927