Cafe Zambra   (Renamed)

The restaurant is now known as Bolaven

Visited Zambra for lunch with my wife. Heard it is run by a kiwi so was looking foward to some NZ style dishes. The place is has a grotty 90's throwback interior. The seats by the window look particularly sad - like they haven't been drycleaned for a few years. This place could definately use a facelift. I had a chicken curry pie set. The soup was very bland, seemed like it was just hot water with diced veggies. The curry pie was ok, with nice pastry but rather cold. I had the greek and malaysian salads which were both bland. My wife had the canelloni iat least it was cooked properly but also tasted pretty average. She had the bean salad with her set which was also bland. By the way, when you order a set they say coffee is included, but if you want a latte you have to pay $12 extra.. Go figure.
The coffee was ok, better than normal HK standard but not great. To finish off we had a banana cake which was... Bland. Seriously never had a meal where there was so little flavour i was willing my tastebuds on to find something. Really dissapointing and am pretty suprised by how well reviewed the place is on open rice. Definately will not be returning.

For ten years I've been coming here off and on, for a few years it was every weekend for the breakfast.

Since the last recognised Barista left to start Cafe Corridor the quality of the coffee has really dropped off, situations that I would have considered unimaginable for Zambra have occurred: Late without art being served, missing ingredients for my breakfast on several occasions and coffee so bad that I've had to send it back.

The management has changed and the new management seemed to think it was a good idea to get Filipinos in to run the place; service has become very sloppy and often my orders are wrong.

I really used to love Zambra because unlike most other places in Hong Kong you could usually get a seat and the tables were well spaced. I even donated a couple of books to the weird little eclectic library they have upstairs. I'm so disappointed that this has happened to what used to be one of the best coffee places in Hong Kong.

I hope the new management gets a full time professional Barista in and stops hiring lazy staff before the shop shuts for lack of business.

I have been here many times for lunch but I have never tried the breakfast there. I had art class nearby at 12nn so my friend and I decided to grab some food first. There weren't many people so we got the sofa seats at the window which was really relaxing. Both of us had egg benedict with banana smoothie. It was ok, nothing really special.

i was out in wan chai during the afternoon to visit a newly opened center ran by a friend of mine. after i left, i find that i have lots of time until my dinner, which will also be in wan chai. so i started wandering around. the best place to kill time is to find a nice cafe to sit and grab a cup of coffee, and thankfully i've came across this cafe.
there weren't a lot of people in the cafe when i went in. it was quiet and cozy. i took a look at the food, the serving sizes of the cakes and pies are pretty large. although they are mouth-watering, i've decided not to eat since i will be having dinner very soon afterwards. so i ended up having a cup of coffee. i picked the Coffee of the Day, which was Brazilian Coffee that day.

On the night I decided to cut off my caffeine intake, a barista poured me the best looking bear I ve ever had in a latte. i told the bear, "Let's kiss."

It's fresh and smooth like velvet. Velvet teddy bear.

As you can see from the photos, the latte art was very good. Indeed the coffee was very good too. However, we waited like forever for these 2 coffee. Therefore, this place is now black listed.

I have been coming to this place since it was a little hole in the wall on O'Brien Road in 2000 or 2001. This could be one of the first places in Hong Kong where they roast their own coffee, the New Zealand owner would cook up such a storm that the extractor fan upstairs would suck out the coffee smoke out onto the street - I am amazed the fire alarm has never gone off lol. Some of the barristas have been here there and everywhere, they used to have some Nepalese ladies who were really nice and shared some of their food with me and even bought me souvenirs when they went back home. The whole in the wall was truly a home away from home for me then. What remain of them is the tall Chinese guy with black-rimmed glasses, he's pretty ok with the latte art and is a pretty cool dude. I hardly have lattes these days so I haven't seen that here for a while. Today they seem to be having a caffe art class upstairs. Personally I think although latte art is fun, it's nothing to be taken that seriously.

Being a regular, I am very familiar with the food in this place, especially the sweets. I used to like their lemon cheese cake, but it seems the freindly filippina head chef (she always wears a plain white shower cap ) hardly makes them anymore, so these days I just have to make do with the ok New York cheese cake. Their flourless chocolate cake is not too bad either, but by far the best sweet here is the signature banoffie pie that I only discovered around 2 years ago. The cream is light and fluffy, and the filling has just the right amount of banana slices, dulce de leche and a solid buttery biscuit base. I didn't know that the banoffie is an English invention; because of Elvis Presley's penchant for it, I've always thought that it's American. Makes me look at English food in a slightly different light now

Today I had the house brew, a Mocha Java, just a plain black coffee as it is de rigeur for me these days. I tried the apple crumble for the first time, it's a huge pie that measures around 6 inches in diameter, with the right amount of apple, raisins, and cinnamon. At first the crumble looked a bit too lumpy and dry, but in fact it was quite nice and crunchy, it made the guilt trip less painful because you felt that the proportion of butter was much less in this one, so that there was almost no butter taste detectable. Besides, I did my 40-minute of cardio this morning, so I well deserve a bit of a sweet treat. The thing was so big that it took me a whole hour to nurse it down

They also have Bolaven beans here that is fair trade from Laos I think. I've had a taste and it was quite a "calm and soothing bean, if I remember correctly. The colour of the package is that ubiquitous and supposedly tasteful Tiffany baby blue - not sure if it's s apt for coffee bean though.

Before I forget, their cinnamon roll is also quite ok, soft and cinnamony, and definitely not much of a guilt trip. They are also selling Californian chips now, I really like the chipotle flavour. They were selling in Park n' Shop and Great before but I don't think they are being stocked anymore. I know where to get my fix now

I've been to this Cafe quite a few times already, also been and reviewed the TST outlet and went to Admiralty's outlet once.... When I read the new 陳毫's My Coffee Guide however, I felt surprised that Zambra's did not received any mention at all, despite a lot of other smaller or lesser quality cafes (some I've never even been to) were given a spot on the pages!

On a very personal matter, I DID IN THE PAST think that the default Northern Espresso coffee blend at Zambra's to taste a bit 'commercialised', almost like one of those imported commercial Italian or Singaporean coffees marketed at the larger audience... Together with Coffee Assembly's similar tasting profile, they took an approach that I could not grasp nor understand for a few months - especially considering both these are Independent Roasters! However perhaps having stayed in Hong Kong a little bit longer, I did finally realised that they've probably chosen to go down this path smartly because many people might have different associations and taste expectations in their head when the word Coffee is mentioned! So personally I might not desire their blending too much but that's unfair to say its therefore not a very good coffee - because its a subjective matter! The Coffees I have at Zambras are actually quite fresh and pleasant tasting, but everyone's different in a way!

The Wanchai store also has barista(s) who make the best free-pour or sketched Latte Arts in my opinion! Although there're many Cafes which also does this, perhaps because I do have a slight knowledge of which ideas, art or pictures are harder to perfect in real life compared to the easier or medium difficult ones - I find that it is in the most minuit details and accuracy of the poured/drawn art here, which excels over the other shops. Credit is due when its required!

In my eyes, the Latte Art here is definitely without peers locally (and I've only seen 1 other barista in HK who can do similar but he's no longer in the trade) and its easily better than what I can muster myself! The coffee making skills is definitely World Class!

Me and My friend have a gathering at Zambra for Birthday party. We sit upstairs in a private area, it's very nice and quiet.

My favourite is the Coffee and the art work they do, I recommend to order the Lattee or Iced Mochca!!

The Staff is nice and friendly also the dessert is good, Try the NY cheese cake or Banoffiee Pie.

Hope you will also enjoy !!

The food's ok but the service's bad.

The staff didnt really listen what the customers said...so strange!

The coffee's really bad! Worse than instant coffee!

an excellent dining place ~
silent with good mood ~
the set dinner is a bit large for ladies ...
soup/ salad + main dish + dessert + drink ....
salad is so so ...
but the pumkin soup is wonderful ~
fish fillet is also nice ~
the sauce is tasty ~
blueberry cheesecake and apple crumble are normal ~
a full night ~
happy to dine there ~

p.s. 2/f is better then g/f ~

Saturday afternoon, just bought tickets at Tom Lee round the corner, saw either PCC or zambra... am sick of bland, poor QC, chain-store, personality-less coffee shops, so decided to pop in Zambra for a change.

The staff were friendly, the place could do with more comfy sofas and seats, but i bagged the corner spot, next time i could go upstairs.

Coffee, Cappucino, Grilled chicken bagel (i stayed for a few hours), all freshly made, especially impressed with the food here, actually tastes like someone made it, not pre-packaged in a small factory and transported to shop overnight. 4 large chunky succulent pieces of grilled chicken in a warm toasted bagel, with slices of tomatos, lettuce, grilled pepper and slightly melted cheese... yum.... filled me up really well. Whenever they heated up a piece of cake or muffin for other customers, the aroma wafted over and tickled my appetite eventhough i'm quite stuffed... and seeing the waitress bring out whole cakes freshly baked and still sitting in the tin just reminds me of home cooking. (one downside is that my clothes and hair smelt of chocolate cakes and toasted ciabattas when i got home)

Nice smooth music alternating between soulful house and pop-jazz like Nora Jones. And most importantly, prices still reasonable, don't understand why chain stores still want to rip us off...

No doubt this is serve the best take away sandwich for the Wanchai area. However, if you add a small box of salad to a sandwich, it will be very expensive. service by the staff is really annoying if you look Chinese. Those Filipino are really racists.

Price was quite expensive. $48 to $68 one set. Only main dish plus coffee or soup. Environment is quite noisy. You need to pay at the counter rather than order at the seat.You can have many other choices in wanchai for this price and services.

This's no local alike cafe you used to see in town, a surge of european style electrified me once i stepped into this amazingly cosy cafe with its ambient decor. It's a surprise to see a open balcony on the upper deck in this hustling city in which every inch of space values!The staff is attentive and patient enough to give recommendations even there was quite a long line behind me..hehee.

It offers quite a varietly of set lunches comprising a kind of pastry or meat patty with 2 choices of salad, together with soup or coffee at $58, an addition $8 for changing the coffee to flavoured one and other $6 for a medium treat.

I was choosing between chicken tortilla and crabmeat, the-not-much-left tortilla made the decision and my delicacies kicked with with onion-n-lemon flavoured couscous and apple salad; the pastry was a bit hard and unusually chewy (coz it's rebaked..unavoidable) yet the fillings tasted real nice with the tomato sauce, the couscous was another nice treat, comparable with those i tried in an high end 'Kasbah', the latte did reach my expectation, milky yet the aroma of expresso is not masked.

Don't overlook the lunch it could energize you for the entire half day left. The desserts look good as well, must try next time.

This is definitely on my list of re-visits.