Tag Archives: restaurant

JAR

20 Apr

JAR, which humbly stands for Just a Restaurant, is another new addition to up and coming Lyndhurst 8. It opened in December and has since created quite a following, meaning it is near impossible to get a table without a reservation. Serving European cuisine in a modern, very simply designed setting, I guess it would be fair to say that it is, in fact, just a restaurant; the walls are white-washed brick, the floor is stripped wood, the tables are bare (at least at lunchtime – it appears that they dress the tables with a table cloth for dinner), and the chairs are mis-matched. One touch I particularly like are the numerous bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, with all cables exposed.  With their motto being “no fuss, no frills – just a restaurant,” they seem to be going for minimalist design, in order that their customers focus on what is most important in any restaurant: the food. I wholeheartedly agree.

I got a little over-excited by the way they serve their bread. I had read about it online and was actually like a young child (or even my 23-year-old self) on Christmas Eve. They serve you little herby rolls in a cloth bag which has hot stones hidden in the bottom of it to keep the rolls warm. Ingenious idea and would have made me happy even if the bread was stale and mouldy – which of course (thankfully) it wasn’t.

There are two set menu options for lunch which change seasonally: “Just a lunch” at $128 or “Just another lunch” at $98. Both offer a three course meal plus tea or coffee, but obviously the dishes on the pricier side of the menu are a little bit fancier and larger, with options such as baby lamb with sweet corn mashed potato, or slow-braised ox-tail with cauliflower mash. Steak frites demands a $50 supplement which seems a little unnecessary. The other side of the menu, which was our selection, offered smaller and more down to earth options. The starter (on both menus in fact) was either soup of the day (leek and potato in this case) or some salad from the buffet. The soup, although at first sight appeared watered down, was actually rather tasty. I wouldn’t put it on the same scale as Covent Garden soup but it’s up there. The salad buffet was fine, where strangely for me, the beetroot won top trumps. It was only really fine because I knew I had more food coming. Had that been it, however, I think I would have been disappointed. 

Main course for me was grilled flatbread with caramelised onions, taleggio cheese and chorizo, served, very rustically, on a wooden board. It was a little bit rich as there was a LOT of caramelised onion, but had a nice flavour and I particularly enjoyed the taleggio. I’m glad I tried it, as I was completely torn over what to choose (the menu online is not their up to date version, so my original choice of smoked ham, asparagus and ricotta quiche was sadly not an option. Naturally I did have a little grumble about this), but I’m not certain I would order it again. My opinion was the opposite of my friends’ however, who both ordered the “mac and 4 cheese” (fontina, gruyere, emmenthal and cheddar) and thought it was so deliciously wonderful that they said they would come back and order it again and again. I don’t know what they’ll do if it is removed from the set menu. There was a small case of food envy, however, as one looked beautifully golden, whilst the other, slightly anaemic.

For dessert we had a choice of “yoghurt flavoured ice-cream” (do you mean frozen yoghurt?!) or mango and raspberry torte. Although when the waitress told us the options, I was a little put out by the lack of anything chocolatey, both desserts were actually delicious. The frozen yoghurt was very tart in comparison to the kind you buy in the average froyo place (by the way, Yo Fresh on Caine Road gives you an extra free topping every Monday!). I love sour things so this was exactly to my liking, but I guess if you don’t then it might not be your cup of tea. The mango and raspberry torte looked artificial and overly sweet but was surprisingly fresh and more-ish. Personally I felt that the two desserts went hand in hand, and as the yoghurt was a measly one small scoop, I don’t see why they don’t serve them together as one dessert. Perhaps I’m being greedy.

Including service (which was pretty poor, although they did apologise at the end without being prompted), total bill came to $108 per person. For three courses and given the central location of this new spot, I think that is absolutely pas mal du tout. From what I can see, the dinner menu seems to double in price, although it does offer pancetta wrapped rainbow trout with mint almond dressing which sounds spectacular. My mouth is watering… hmm perhaps I will dine there tomorrow…

 JAR
2/F 8 Lyndhurst Terrace
Central
Hong Kong
Tel: +852 2543 8000

Date visited: Monday 11th April 2011

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Tango

20 Apr

Having spent numerous holidays in Uruguay and Argentina and having eaten a ridiculous number of their delicious cows, Tango had a lot to live up to in my eyes. I had been recommended it by several people and was eager to try it to see how it compared to the real deal. My expectations were not very high as there is no way that a restaurant overlooking Wyndham Street could even come close to a restaurant on a cobbled street in San Telmo, Buenos Aires. No chance. But we can’t have it all, can we? We live in HK, not BA, so I told myself to forget about the location and let Tango become my Argentina for the night.

 It definitely made a great attempt at doing this. We walked in to a typically Argentine wine cellar: the walls in the reception area were stacked floor to ceiling with a huge array of wine bottles – mostly all Argentinean with a few Italians and Spanish thrown into the mix, staying true to the Argentine roots. Bare brick walls and wooden floors give it that rustic look common to many Argentine parrilla restaurants. Not to mention the parrilla itself, which is always the centre of attraction at any Argentinean meat restaurant and is very much the case at Tango: a huge wood-fire barbeque where they usually cook literally everything they serve you – meat, vegetables, cheese, you name it, the Argentines can barbeque it.

 As usual, I had a sneaky peek at the menu online (which, I might add, is actually quite difficult to track down. I had to Google ‘Dining Concepts HK’ after a search of ‘Tango restaurant HK’ only came up with the usual suspects of review forums). The menu made me immediately nostalgic and excited and of course I started to plan my meal. I insisted on ordering a few starters to share and didn’t really give my fellow diners much of a choice in the matter. We had octopus ceviche, which was supposed to be spicy but definitely wasn’t. It was good….but I’ve had better. Peruvian ceviche is the best there is, so finding anything comparable is never easy. We also had a selection of empanadas, one with hand-cut beef, a second with goat’s cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, and a third with sweet corn. I LOVE empanadas. Little parcels of delight. These were great, but again… I’ve definitely had better. Most countries in South America have their own version of empanadas, and I would say that Argentinean ones are up there on my ‘best empanadas’ list. Although not always, they are usually baked rather than fried, and the pastry is so light and delicate that it simply melts in your mouth. These ones were fried and a little heavy on the pastry. 60 bucks an empanada also seems to me an absurd price. The chorizo we ordered was very tasty but there was nowhere near enough of it: there were four small pieces. Luckily there were only four of us eating, so we each had a piece but it left us wanting more, especially as there was still so much delicious chimichurri sauce left over. The last (but by no means least) of our starters was calamari with a green salad and lemon aioli. This. Was. A-mazing. Some people can get squid so wrong and cook it for too long so that you might as well be eating a wellington boot, but not Tango’s head chef, Argentine Ignacio Elizondo. The squid here is so tender that you barely even need to chew it, and that lemon aioli… wow.

 For mains, although there are lots of yummy looking dishes on the menu which aren’t cut from a cow, such as pasta, barbequed trout, chicken or lamb, we thought “when in Rome..” and went straight for the steak. After all those starters I wasn’t particularly hungry, but I had been to fitness training earlier in the evening and worked myself extra hard to make room for a big, juicy steak, so I ignored my nearly-full stomach and ordered a fillet steak, medium-rare, or, as I used to order in Uruguayan restaurants, “quemado afuera, jugoso adentro”. The steak (imported from Argentina of course) was incredible. As with the calamari, it was so tender that it barely needed chewing at all. I think the steak knives they provide you with are made for giants. The knife might have been bigger than my head! All it needed was a gentle push and it slid right through the tender steak. I would not want to get into an argument with anyone in this restaurant!

 In Argentina, steaks are generally not served in any kind of sauce. As delicious as black pepper sauce is on a steak, Argentine steak is so delicious on its own that it just doesn’t need it. It is almost considered an insult to smother the steak in sauce. So what you are served at Tango is a selection of six accompanying ‘salsas’: Criolla (which our waiter struggled to pronounce, so quickly mumbled over the word three times. It’s a combination of onions, olives and peppers), Chimichurri (the most typical accompaniment to Argentine steaks, consisting of olive oil, vinegar, chilli, garlic, onion, oregano, thyme, pepper and bay leaves – delicious), spicy tomato, Dijon mustard, whole-grain mustard and horseradish. The steak really was so amazing that it could have been eaten on its own without a problem, but these sauces served to enhance the flavour.

 The menu contains a range of ‘guarniciones’ – side dishes – which are big enough to share. We ordered roasted peppers marinated in garlic and olive oil (always one of my favourites), marinated eggplant escabeche and a very pleasing ‘rustic’ potato and spring onion mash. Rustic because the potatoes were still wearing their skin when they were mashed. There are several other choices including oven roasted sweet potatoes with rosemary which I would like to try next time. I’m certain that there will be a next time.

 The meal was teamed with a delicious Malbec from Argentina’s best wine-growing region, Mendoza. This fruity, velvety wine was the perfect companion to our beautiful steaks.

I know there is usually a separate compartment in my stomach for dessert, but on this occasion it was nowhere to be found. I actually couldn’t even finish my steak which upset me ever so slightly. Had there been room for dessert, however, I would have devoured the dulce de leche crepe, or the warm apple empanada. Or both. You can even buy a jar of dulce de leche to take home… I’m struggling to remember why I didn’t do this.

 I guess I must make a comment about the service. Even though we were bang smack in the centre of the restaurant, we were pretty much ignored by the waiters. Had we been in a rush, it would have bothered us, but I actually think the slow service added to the authenticity of the experience and made me feel like I could well have been in Argentina.

 It goes without saying that the prices here are ludicrously expensive compared to the real deal. On first sight I was outraged, as we could get incredible steaks in Uruguay which were sometimes cheaper than a loaf of bread (albeit a rather pricey loaf of bread!) If we consider, however, that all the meat, wine and even the chef are imported from Argentina (which is a jolly long way away!) it’s not as awful as it could be. Dinner for four, including two bottles of wine, came to around $800 per person. A little bit punchy but to be expected, and, for an almost authentic Argentinean experience on our very own Wyndham Street, definitely worth it. It seems that they do a great lunch set too (2 courses for $98) so I have every intention of trying that out very soon.

Tango
1/F 77 Wyndham Street
Central
Hong Kong

Tel: +852 25255808

Date visited: Monday 4th April 2011

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Food Glorious Food

20 Apr

I’ve never really been certain of exactly what I want to do with my life. This is probably the reason I went for the first job that happened to fall in my lap. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great job! But let’s just say it was never really my preferred choice of career path. But what actually is the job for me? What really makes me happy? I can safely say that, although, of course, friendships and running and family and sunny days do make me smile, what really makes me happy, what I get up for in the morning and what really gets me through the day has got to be…FOOD! Have you heard people talk about whether they eat to live or live to eat? I am most definitely, 101% the latter. Food makes the world go round. Or my world at least. I feel somewhat selfish and thoughtless saying this when evidently there are people across the globe dying of starvation. I’m sure food doesn’t make their world go round. Suffice to say I have had a very fortunate upbringing and am luckily not in that disgustingly high percentage of people who do not have the luxury to admit that they simply live to eat.

What gets me through any day is the knowledge that, however slowly the morning passes, it will eventually be 1 o clock: lunchtime, when I basically peg it out the door and into the lift as fast as my little legs can take me. If I take less than an hour for lunch, I actually want to cry, so definitely none of this quick-stop-to-711-to-get-some-pot-noodles-and-eat-them-at-my-desk malarkey for me! Whether my stomach is screaming at me with hunger or not (the latter is rarely the case), I absolutely HAVE to go and have a proper lunch which keeps me busy for least an hour, before I can drag myself away to count down the hours until dinner time. Let’s not forget that 4 o clock is what I like to call chocolate o clock. Everyone knows about my emergency chocolate drawer and believe me, these emergencies do happen. With frequency.

I once did a detox trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand, which pretty much involved NOT eating for 3 whole days. These were not pretty days. I even cried one day when forced to drink a ‘liver flush drink’. I won’t give you details on what exactly this consisted of but I will tell you one ingredient – 4 cloves of raw garlic. Under normal circumstances, I absolutely love garlic. I actually put it in most dishes I cook (obviously not sweet dishes, don’t be ridiculous) but having that much garlic – RAW garlic – in my drink? No thank you. Never again. Did I feel any different after my 3 day fast? Umm.. no, not really. Perhaps this was because I was invited to lunch at the Mandarin Oriental for a work meeting – tough job! – and couldn’t really say no, so I think I may have ‘masticated’ a few bits of raw vegetables which is apparently completely against detox rules. Whatevs. Or perhaps it had something to do with having to delve into the emergency bag one night at the market when too much shopping brought me close to fainting. Sadly said emergency bag didn’t contain chocolate this time as thought that would be bending the rules ever so slightly too much, so instead I opted for 2 pieces – 2 measly pieces! – of dried mango to bring me back to life.

I am not the kind of person that will listen to anyone telling me what I can and can’t eat. It simply makes me crave that food even more. Diets are ridiculous in my opinion. If you can’t eat what makes you really happy then seriously, what is the point in living? Eat what you like (within reason, let’s not get carried away now) and up the exercise – that’s my mantra. On a freezing cold day, do you really want to be eating a salad? Definitely not going to warm you right down to the bones, is it?  And is it going to fill you with that warm fuzzy energy that’ll keep you going through the day? Rather unlikely. What you need is some Vietnamese Pho noodles – full of goodness and will reach even the deepest coldest pit of your stomach.

Along with walking behind infuriatingly slow people, and trying to walk against the flow of people who refuse to veer even slightly to the side to let you pass, one of the things that annoys me most about living in Hong Kong is that a great number of restaurants simply don’t have their own website. When you Google them, all you get is pretty awful websites with hideous pictures of dishes and terrible reviews with an abundance of grammatical errors that make any perfectionist like myself cringe. I can’t stand it. Did I mention I love food? So when someone invites me to a restaurant, naturally the first thing I do is Google it, look for the menu and scope out what I am most likely to order. When a place offers a huge menu, being as indecisive as I am, this always makes life a little bit difficult for me. I’m not saying I don’t like big menus. But it’s always rather embarrassing when it comes to ordering and there are just so many amazing dishes to choose from that I don’t know where to begin. Then I start to get nervous and either ask the waiter for their opinion (said waiter, more often than not, has never actually tried any of the dishes himself and therefore cannot provide me with any valuable advice. For example a waiter at a lovely restaurant in London claimed he could not tell me if the chicken pie was good as he was intolerant to chicken. Really?!) or  I panic order and go for something I really should not have ordered. Hence the need to see the menu beforehand. Definitely a sensible request methinks. But alas, not every restaurant offers such luxuries here, and as I mentioned, the reviews just aren’t up to scratch. I read a review about a very good dim sum restaurant where the review’s author had given it the complete thumbs down because her elderly mother had not been escorted to her seat. What did it say about the food? Zilch. Really helpful when all you want to know is if it’s going to make your taste buds tingle.

Therefore I am proposing to check out these places with my own taste buds and let you know my verdict. It’s always so easy to find a place you like and trust and keep going back there. But Hong Kong has so many restaurants to offer and new ones opening up what seems like every day, so why keep trying the same place? I am setting myself the oh-so-difficult challenge of trying out a new (if only new to me) restaurant at least once a week and writing about it. Let’s see if I can help some of you fellow foodies out there. I unfortunately won’t be able to provide you with an up to date menu, but I can (hopefully) at the very least, provide you with a (nicely written) critique that will still make your mouth water (or not, as the case may be). Watch this space…

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