Month: October 2019

A “Neighborhood” restaurant in Soho (Hong Kong)

Lured by its inclusion in the list of Asia’s 50 best restaurants (2019), during my September 2019 trip to Hong Kong I made a reservation at Neighborhood, a bistro hidden in Soho. It is listed on some websites as a “French” restaurant, but the chef-owner, David Lai, plays also with Italian and Spanish recipes and ingredients.

The visit

I established contact with the restaurant on their Facebook page, then they asked for my mobile and we exchanged a couple of text messages to pinpoint a reservation. I was warned that I would get a bar chair, that was fine since I was alone.

The restaurant has an unassuming front in an alley.

The restaurant technically is located on Hollywood road, but you won’t find it there… rather you have to look for the nearby Man Hing Lane (shown above).

I was initially seated at the bar as expected. After 10 minutes one of my leg was numb… it was really an uncomfortable chair and luckily after some begging I was moved to a normal table.

I already knew that the menu changes frequently. I was a bit disappointed that the menu I was handed was remarkably shorter than others I saw online. The most interesting dish would have required a pre-order. Yet, there were some attracting dishes and the ingredients seemed to be handpicked.

My first order was an appetizer, Spanish salami that came with a fantastic ciabatta bread (apparently they buy the bread from a nearby award-winning French restaurant, Belon).

My first dish was a delicious beef tartar with salmon roe. The addition of salty fish eggs gave a nice touch to the overall flavor.

Meantime I was offered a complimentary dish: some grilled bell-peppers. Very nice.

My last dish was handmade garganelli (a type of pasta) with an interesting combination of spicy scallop skirts and beef tripe. It was quite spicy (I would say Korean style), but very good.

With the check, I was offered a complimentary French pastry.

The check

The final check was 610 HKD (78 USD) for three courses. Not outrageous and the food in the end was good. This was a luxury casual restaurant. If I was living in Soho and I was a millionaire, I would make it my kitchen. At the same time I feel I missed something since I could have planned my dinner in a more effective way if I had seen the menu beforehand. If you go, ask them to send you the menu, when available.

Where in Hong Kong:
G/F, 61-63 Hollywood Road, Soho, Central.
(But look for Man Hing Lane.)

Kakigori experience in Hong Kong with Shari Shari

Kakigori is the Japanese shaved ice dessert. Like its Korean and Taiwanese counterparts, it comes with various toppings. Hong Kong now has its own Kakigori house, opened by a Japanese gentleman that is importing even the ice blocks from Japan to ensure authenticity. I visited the original shop in Soho on a quiet September 2019 afternoon.

The visit

The original shop is on a lively street in Soho, easy to reach using the Central-Mid Levels Escalator.

It is a small place, but tastefully decorated and with a few seats. I heard of queues… but at the time of my visit (just after opening time, 1.30pm) I was the only customer. Weekend protests may have played a role.

I ordered the strawberry kakigori with a topping of Mikan oranges. Other flavors included pineapple and coconut milk, honey lemon, pink guava, mango lassi, Japanese tofu. The menu indicated green tea, strawberry with panna cotta, and earl gray milk tea as the store’s best sellers. There was also a list of extra toppings could also be added at a cost to customize your kakigori.

On the menu, they also had some other Japanese sweets such as a yuzu cheesecake, wagashi, and Hokkaido chocolate and cheese souffles. Some tea seats were also available.

The ice was fluffy and there was enough syrup trickling down the ice. They did not provide any extra syrup in a separate cup as it is often the case in these establishments. Yes, it was very authentic!

The check

The kakigori I ordered was 85 HKD (10.85 USD). It is a pretty standard price for a kakigori that could be shared between two people. The kakigori on the menu ranged from 85 to 100 HKD. It is, however, impressive to see the price increase from 2016 reading this other review.

It was a pleasant experience.

Where in Hong Kong:
G/F, 47 Staunton Street, Soho, Central.
In Chinese: 中環蘇豪士丹頓街47號地舗.
There is another branch in 14 Haven Street, Causeway Bay (in case you do not like the idea to climb up to Soho).

Tasting delicious fusion dishes at Man Mo Dim Sum

Man Mo Dim Sum is the brainchild of Swiss-born restaurateur Nicolas Elalouf who wanted to create a fusion menu reflecting the multiplicity of Eastern and Western influences blending in Hong Kong. Dim Sum dishes were chosen as the target for this experimentation and the menu was created with the help of chefs boasting Robuchon and Ding Tai Fung pedigrees. The result is a charming bistro located in Upper Lascar Row (also known as Cat Street) behind the stalls of a curio market. It has been operating since 2014.


The visit

I had a chance to try the restaurant with three friends from Hong Kong on a quiet weekday in September. We arrived quite late, but it is an all day dining venue, so it was not an issue.

The restaurant offers different types of seating: bar chairs on the left, normal chairs/bench on the right, and a couple of armchairs and sofas on the front. Service was very friendly and they went above and beyond finding for us the right seating arrangement.

The set lunch menu attracted our attention. It was perfect to get an introduction to the restaurant.

The hot dish of the day was a delicious rice with chicken.

The bao (Chinese burger) was snack-size, filled with meat, and came with Thousand Island sauce that could be injected inside the bun with the dispenser.

Then we all chose different dim sum dishes to experience the menu. The first was a crispy wonton with shrimp. Quite good, it was the most traditionally-crafted piece of dim sum of the meal.

The ratatouille dumplings were quite interesting. Definitely good, but I would have expected more flavor coming from the ratatouille.

Then there was a very tasty dumpling with goat cheese.

Finally, included in the set menu, there was a chicken dumpling I did not taste.

We also added the foie gras xiao long bao. It was universally appreciated around the table and the foie gras flavor was distinct. I need to note that the skin of this dumpling was thicker than usual xiao long bao.

The set menu also included a dessert. Two of us chose a Nutella ball, resembling a local dish, but with a heart of Italian spread.

Other desserts tried by the group were Bun Tatin and Hong Kong style lemon tart.

The check

The final check was 865 HKD (110 USD) that included the extra foie gras xiao long bao. The individual cost for the set menu was 156 HKD (around 20 USD). All reasonable in the comfort of a nice environment.

Dim sum is everywhere in Hong Kong. This restaurant offers a nice variation on the theme and left me the desire to go back to text more dishes.

Where in Hong Kong:
Wah Koon Building, 40 Upper Lascar Row, Sheung Wan.
Website: manmodimsum.com.

An evening celebrating Leonardo Da Vinci at Va Bene in Shanghai (closed)

An Italian friend of mine invited to a dinner organized by the Association of Italian Academics in China and the Shanghai chapter of the Italian Cuisine Academy in an Italian restaurant in Shanghai, Va Bene, to celebrate Leonardo Da Vinci. 2019 marks five centuries from the death of this boundless genius.

The dinner menu was designed by the chef of Va Bene and inspired by Leonardo and his time. Before the dinner proper, an Italian professor based in China, Andrea Baldini, spoke about Leonardo and his relation with food. There was a lot to be said. I am reporting what I heard from the professor. (He also framed his remarks within the context of creativity theory, but I will skip on this aspect since the focus here is food.)

To begin with, Leonardo is believed to have invented the saffron rice, a typical dish from Milan. While working for Milanese and French royalty, Leonardo was often involved in the organization of banquets and he invented a number of tools to expedite the work in the kitchen, including some pasta grinding machine. Leonardo was very much interesting in what we call today “plating”, that is the aesthetic presentation of food. He even started his own restaurant in Florence in cooperation with another illustrious artist, Sandro Botticelli. It was specializing in frogs, but it did not survive long (perhaps being ahead of his time). The table napkins are another invention ascribed to Leonardo.

The president of the Shanghai chapter of the Italian Cuisine Academy tried to argue that Leonardo may have been the illigimate son of a Tuscan nobleman and an Asian slave. So chances are that Leonardo was half Chinese! But do not quote me on this.

The dinner

The dinner and the presentations took place in the Va Bene restaurant in Xiantindi. They prepared an impressive table occuppying the all length of the dining room located on the second floor of a traditional shikumen house.

The dinner started with three type of canapes: cucumber with delicious cream cheese, lemon and mint; a creamy cod puree on a crispy semolina cracker; a small pastry filled with lamb ragout and cinnamon. I think they did a very good job with these amuse bouche.

The break basket was also there.

The appetizer platter included three items: chicken liver pate in a sourdough bread “oreo” with some orange jelly (top); a classic bruschetta with a piece of finocchiona (a type of Tuscan salami), Parmesan cheese foam and onion jam (creating an interesting mix of sweet and sour, pictured on the left); a fantastic porcini mushroom flan with sweat garlic cream on top (right). I appreciated the creativity of these appetizers and how the references to Tuscany and flavors of another time were gradually introduced.

The first main (“primo”) was the classic saffron risotto with a boost of bone marrow. This dish could not be missed since Leonardo is believed to be the father of this quintessential Milanese risotto. It was very good, I would say perfectly executed.

The second main (“secondo”) was a very inventive dish: roasted pork filled with beef, figs, and foie gras in a sauce made with egg yolk cream and anchovy mayonnaise. Two small boiled chestnuts completed the ensemble. This dish was inspired by a popular practice in banquets at the time of Leonardo that we might call “recursive filling”: the idea of filling a type of meat with another type of meat also filled with a third element. Strangely I did not find the dish very flavorful, but I really appreciated the inventiveness.

Before the dessert, we were offered pecorino cheese (both spicy and sweet) with fruit mustard. The cheese and mustard were excellent.

The dessert included a glass of vin santo, a typical dessert wine from Tuscany.

The dessert was one of my favorite dishes because it was delicious and made full use of the ingredients and cooking style of five hundred years ago. It was a very soft bread cake with raisins, Elderflower rosemary with almond milk.

Wines were a big part of the dinner with a selection from Tuscany and Lombardy, the two Italian regions more connected with Leonardo.

The check

The price of the dinner was 700 RMB. I wish there was a price for people like me that did not drink wine. Not a cheap dinner, but I appreciated all the organization and creativity behind. Certainly I do not regret attending and learning more about Leonardo Da Vinci in the kitchen.

Where in Shanghai:
Xintiandi, 2/F, North Block,
Lane 181 Taicang Lu.
In Chinese: 太仓路181号2楼新天地北里, 近马当路.

Venue closed in early 2020.

What I learnt dining at each and every Michelin-starred restaurant in Shanghai

In October 2018 I set the challenge to visit all the Michelin-starred restaurants in the 2019 edition of the Shanghai Michelin Guide in the following year. I called it the Shanghai Michelin Guide Scramble.

This meant visiting 34 venues. I did visit 33 venues by October 2019; I decided to skip the second venue of Xin Rong Ji because it only accepts groups (since I did visit another Xin Rong Ji on the Michelin list I think I can still claim I completed the challenge). A few venues were visited before setting the challenge. You can see the links to the reviews on this page.

Here’s some of what I learnt.

The Guide is mostly pointing to good restaurants. Of all of the restaurants I visited I was disappointed only by two (YongFoo Elite and Lao Zheng Xing). My experience suggests that the success rate of eating at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Shanghai is around 94%. This is very high, but frankly I would have expected a 100% success rate.

The internal logic of the ratings (one, two, three stars) sometimes does not make much sense. Fine, there is only one three star restaurant in Shanghai and that’s Ultraviolet. I agree with this. Ultraviolet is the epitome of a three star rating: It is a place that deserves a special trip. However, the difference between one and two stars is sometimes a mystery. For example why a pretty standard Cantonese place like Imperial Treasure has two stars and a great Chinese restaurant like Amazing Chinese Cuisine has only one? I just do not know. So do not take the number of stars too seriously.

The Guide seems to have a bias toward hotel restaurants and overseas chains, even better if they are Cantonese. Of 34 restaurants with stars in the 2019 Guide, 19 (56%) falls into the category of hotel restaurants or outposts of overseas groups (Singapore and Hong Kong). I think that the Guide should have been more adventurous and have considered more local gems. The local restaurants included in the list were among the most interesting, like Ji Ping Court and Taian Table (both of which were promoted to two stars in the 2020 edition of the Guide). I am glad that in the 2020 edition of the Guide a crab restaurant was added (Cheng Long Hang). Maybe a hot pot place in the future?

Chinese fine dining still caters to parties. I visited 23 venues of Chinese restaurants and I can say that with very limited exceptions they were all catering to large parties like in traditional Chinese banquet halls. Set menus were often only for a group and most dishes were meant to be shared. I feel that there is something missing here. When I look at the public of the Western starred restaurants in Shanghai I can remember mostly young couples. Chinese restaurants could do more to accommodate this new generation of diners visiting restaurants as a couple and even alone. Also, do not assume that staff will speak English in all of these restaurants. Sometimes making a reservation over the phone will be impossible if you do not speak Chinese.

There seems to be a formula for Chinese Michelin-starred dining. Most of the Michelin-starred restaurants seemed to follow a formula: contemporary dining space (even if this should not count), artistic plating, classic recipes with a few updates here and there, use of international ingredients (wagyu, Alaskan crabs, iberico pork among the fashionable ingredients). This is not necessarily bad. But the level of innovation seemed to be limited.

Western Michelin-starred restaurants seem to ignore to be in Shanghai. There were at least 10 restaurants that I could classify as Westerner (mostly French). With the partial exception of Ultraviolet and Taian Table, which were at the top in terms of culinary creativity, Western restaurants did not play much with local traditions or ingredients. While I am skeptical of fusion dishes per se, there were very few attempts to create something new influenced by the context. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but sapient fusion can lead to great restaurants (I am thinking of Goh in Fukuoka).

Vegetarian cuisine is an important part of Shanghai’s culinary excellence. There were two starred vegetarian restaurants on the 2019 edition of the Guide (confirmed in the 2020 edition): Fu He Hui and Wujie. They were both excellent and I discovered them thanks to the inclusion in the rank of starred restaurants. Great choice!

The Guide does not mean always full in Shanghai. I was able to dine in many of these restaurants with no reservations even at weekends. That would be unheard of in a starred restaurant in Japan or Hong Kong. Clearly, the Guide still has a long way to go in Shanghai.

I have my favorites. There were a few restaurants that stood up and for various reasons I would like to go back in the future. Taian Table and Ultraviolet were amazing in terms of innovation. In my book, they were totally worth the final check for this reason. Yi Long Court served me the best luxury dim sum I had in Shanghai and also the selection of other Chinese dishes was impressive (not sure why they were demoted from two to one star in the 2020 edition of the Guide). By the way, The Peninsula hosting Yi Long Court and Sir Elly was the best hotel for food. Seventh Son and Imperial Treasure were the best for regular dim sum. But when it comes to Cantonese fare, Ji Ping Court was on another level and I am glad it got an additional star in the 2020 edition of the Guide. For more local fare, Moose, Amazing Chinese Cuisine, and Xi Rong Ji were my favorite. I loved Da Dong (not only for its Peking Duck) and I think it is the best Chinese restaurant for someone with a foreign palate. T’ang Court impressed me as the restaurant with the best trained staff (I understand that they were demoted to two stars after having been the only three star restaurant in Mainland China in the first edition of the Guide, but I do not understand why they were demoted to one start in the 2020 edition). Among the Western restaurants, I would prefer some not-starred ones (Racine, Villa Le Bec) over the starred. Sir Elly was the most interesting in terms of innovation among the French bunch. Finally, I will repeat that Fu He Hui and Wujie with their vegetarian set courses are a must-see (even if I do not understand why the Bund location of Wujie got the star and the one in Xuhujui with almost the same menu is a Bib Gourmand).

You can dine in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Shanghai starting at 50 USD if not less, but it will escalate quickly. In the Chinese restaurants outside five-star hotels, it is possible to put together a few dishes for 300-400 RMB. But you need to be careful about what to order. If you start to order fresh seafood and delicacies like bird’s nest, sea cucumber, abalone, the check will reach astronomical figures. However I also discovered that these delicacies command really little flavor to my Western palate, so not much is missed. Madam Goose seemed to be the most affordable in the one star category and Canton 8 among the two star restaurants.

Finally, no more challenges like this… Setting a challenge makes dining become a job. I will not set other challenges like this and in the future I will focus more on going back to the placed I liked.

Michelin-starred Taizhou cuisine at Xin Rong Ji

With this post I declare the Shanghai Michelin Guide Scramble completed. Xin Rong Ji has two locations on the 2019 edition of the Guide: one in Shanghai Plaza and one inside the Pei Mansion Hotel. Now, by the time of my visit the Shanghai Plaza location had relocated to Nanyang Road and that’s where I visited. The new location has one star in the 2020 edition of the Guide. I will not dine in the location in the Pei Mansion Hotel (two stars) because it only accepts groups of at least 4 people for private rooms (and I do not have time to organize).

The Xin Rong Ji Group was founded by Mr. Zhang Yong in Linhai, Zhejiang Province in October 1995. The “new” (xin) in the name represents innovation. There are several restaurants brands operated by this group (Rongxiaoguan, Rongji Hotpot), the Xin Rong Ji restaurants are fine dining establishments serving Taizhou cuisine, a style of cooking from Zheijang focused on fresh seafood. The Shanghai location I visited also features Cantonese fare. The formula is borrowed from luxury Cantonese restaurants in Hong Kong: contemporary dining space, artistic plating, and updating classic recipes with international ingredients.

The visit

The restaurant is on the second floor of an office building on West Nanjing Road. An escalator leads to the restaurant.

Near the entrance there is a display with fresh seafood from the market:

The restaurant has a large dining room so there was no problem finding a place for me, even if I did not have any reservation. Unfortunately the room was too dark for a photo, but it was very elegantly appointed. I was offered three slices of apple and peanuts with pepper as nibbles.

They had a bilingual menu. I would have ordered the business menu (actually a nice mini tasting menu) but it was for at least two people and I was alone. The full tasting menu was also interesting, but it required at least 4 diners. Unsurprisingly, this kind of restaurant is best enjoyed in a group. They also had a dim sum menu (it was Saturday for lunch), but it was only available in Chinese.

I ended up ordering their noodles with yellow croaker. The noodles were handmade and came with some egg dumplings. There were only two pieces of fish. It was a tasty bowl of noodles anyway.

Then I had two dim sum items from the main menu. The first was a dumpling filled with truffle sauce and foie gras. It was really tasty.

The second was an egg tart with a base of wagyu. This was not my favorite,

Finally I had a “small” portion of smoked pomfret. Pomfret is a fish that can only be caught wild in the East China sea. It was smoked to perfection. Maybe too many bones for my taste, but it was really good. In Shanghai you can find a similar dish with cod.

The check

This relatively quick lunch cost me 424 RMB (60 USD). There was no lack of food and the quality was excellent. The only downside was that being alone I could not try more dishes. I think the place deserves its star, but for this kind of cuisine I have some better restaurants in Ningbo that sooner or later I will review.

Where in Shanghai:
2/F, 688 Plaza, 688 Nanjing Xi Lu (West Road).
In Chinese: 南京西路688号恒基688广场2楼.