Hip Katsu    吉列 派  

連漬物都可以出事的餐廳。
服務細節方面是不錯的
反面教材。
食物質素低又貴。環境可取但
恕不推介。

Nice decor.
A restaurant that could even go wrong with pickled items.
Unprofessional service．Not cheap, poor quality.
That's it.
Not recommended.



Out of the frying pan:

My wife wanted to try the lunch menu of Niji Bistro around the corner. We were a bit late so the lunch menu had been swapped. (I was secretly glad that it did as I'm not a big fan of Omurice ) so we entered this to try it out.

I just left my guard off a bit and did not check Open Rice before I enter this restaurant.

Little did I realize that we jumped out of the frying pan

and into the fire...

...



The power of suggestion?

There was a huge queue even at 3 p.m. despite tons of free seats at counter. I found that a bit strange.

Anyway, we approached and then the manager (?) in front gave me a ticket without asking anything.

If you're handed a ticket, most people's reflex action is to wait until the number is called. This strategy didn't work for me, a rather troublesome person at the best of times.

I asked him about those counter seats. Then he said we could get those if we wanted to. He said to himself (or to us) "Why didn't anyone (點解冇人) take counter seats?" (He might have said "No one (冇人) take counter seats." but I'll give him the benefit of doubt.)

After we sat, other counter seats were allocated to other customers as well. So the answer to his philosophical question is simple: He didn't ask.

I'm sure he was not trying to reduce customer turnovers to reduce his workload, and not trying to exploit the possible ignorance or placidness of customers who might be mainly tourists with language barriers..

Menu:

The nicely designed menu had the following sections:

- Pork cutlets (Japanese Miyazaki cutlets or Canadian pork cutlets);
- Fried prawns set;
- Fried sea food platter for two person (it appears to be two prawns and a piece of fried salmon) No scallops.

All cutlet sets came with Miso Soup, a Bowl of Rice and pickled items - standard stuff. No unlimited refill like in Saboten or Tonkatsu.

- Bento boxes: About 5-6 types of bento: Prawn tempura bento, Angus Steak Bento, US Burger Bento, Salmon Bento and others which didn't leave an impression.



I ordered the HIPpest set 101: Miyazaki Pork Cutlet set (HK$138) Apparently a signature set of HIP.

My wife ordered American Angus Steak Set ($96) She wasn't asked how she'd like the steak to be cooked nor did she specify. We later learnt from the receipt that it's 70% cooked (medium?) by default.



Miso Mishaps.

The miso soup appeared on our side suddenly without any warning and before anything else:and without any lid on the bowl. Very strange.

What's that big spoon for? One's not supposed to use a spoon to drink miso soup - just chopsticks. If HIP is professing to be an authentic Japanese restaurant, they should know this. That's basic.

The taste was fine with tofu and kelp.



My wife's set came:The moment you see three pieces of fried tamago tofu (egg tofu) used as part of the bento box, you'll lower your expectations immediately. Coupled with the completely tasteless and limp turnip dish on the top right hand corner, you'll start asking yourself why you didn't stop at the food court.

According to my wife, the Angus steak was edible - but quite tough. The rice wasn't Japanese rice and didn't have much taste wherever the rice grains were from. At least the pickled turnips were fine, unlike mine.



My set arrived in a rather "artistic" manner: Am I being too picky about food presentation or am I just a philistine unable to appreciate the HIP way of setting the table?

My set was spread over the length of two seats.

The waitress simple placed everything everywhere and made no attempt to organize things even just a bit.

Never mind that. Sometimes, if you change your perspective, things actually aren't such a big deal. A similar sentiment is like when you watch a B-grade movie that's so bad that it's actually funny.

I'm prepared. Let's see what they could throw at yours truly:Condiments:

Forget about the DIY sesame, unlimited free rice or lettuce you get in Ginza Bairin, Saboten, Tonkichi or Romankan Yokohama.

They have yuzu vinegar sauce for the salad. That wasn't anything like the olive oil infused black vinegar at Saboten. This was just bland vinegar sauce with a hint of yuzu. No complaints but nothing exciting either.

The sauce for the katsu was really average supermarket grade stuff which was a bit stale too. Even the supermarket grade sauce taste a bit fresher than those here.

Another problem I have was that I wasn't even provided with a small dish for any sauce. Pouring the sauce directly on the pork cutlet wasn't desirable as the batter will become too soggy if I pour it too early. On the other hand, it's too troublesome if I pour after every bite or two.

The other jar was just shoyu.



Not HIP:Back to the pork cutlet itself.

I have to say that this piece of cutlet, which was as expensive as the "Big Boys" mentioned above, was quite a disappointment.

The batter was fine, crunchy and not oily, but the meat was too tough and didn't have much meat taste. Any one of the restaurants mentioned above serve better pork cutlet than here. It's the worse amongst the Japanese cutlets I've tried. The size was also smaller than average. Almost 25% smaller than what I had at Tonkichi.

The lettuce was fine but, like I have mentioned above, the yuzu sauce was quite bland and didn't match too well with the lettuce. It was a bit too sour.

The rice was again not Japanese rice, bland and tasteless.

But what was funny was that the pickled turnip - the yellow, crunchy things to eat with rice - usually the last thing to go wrong, did go wrong!

It was completely not crunchy at all. Instead, it was soggy and did not taste refreshing at all - most likely not preserved properly. I gave a piece to my wife and she also found it not acceptable. The burdock was similarly bad. I can't imagine how pickled items could go wrong like this.

I still finished the whole set because I didn't want to waste any food. While I was trying hard to do so, I was thinking about another philosophical question:

Is it the chef's fault or the customer's fault if the food could not be finished due to bad cooking?





Conclusion:

I'd say it's OK if I was served this meal in a causal restaurant not purporting to be a Japanese restaurant for HK$50. However, they charged me "expert" price but gave me amateur results, including unprofessional service throughout the meal.

Like I said, sometimes a B-grade movie could be so bad that it's funny. But paying more than HK$150 for the cutlet set wasn't. A crying face it has to be.

Not recommended.



P.S. The best thing about today's trip was that we got to see SEDOV nearby:

Japanese food has always been the top of our food list since we met. Thus, me and Adorable decided to try out Japanese pork cutlet (or Katsu in Japanese) as we always wanted to have it in bento style. Hip Katsu, here we come!

Harbour City is full of different varieties of cuisines and we had eaten here for some frequently time. In Hip Katsu, we are eating in a casual modern Japanese restaurant setting and I had ordered an eel bento while Adorable ordered a Canadian pork cutlet bento. The eel came first and the eel itself is tangy while the eel body is slim and boneless. One of the surprises of the pork katsu bento was that it is cooked when ordered. The golden crust covers up the pork within. The crust is not over-fried as it sticks together. The meat structure of the cutlet is clear and detailed while the meat/fat proportion of the cutlet is satisfactory. When you took a bite, you will feel that its moisture is adequate. Remember, don’t forget to put the sauce on the katsu for seasoning!!!For both bento sets, they came with miso soup and appetizers such as tofu, daikon, Japanese style salad (in Citron dressing), Tsukemono (Japanese style marinated vegetables) which is quite complete. After all, you can find a standardized Japanese meal in this restaurant.

The packaging for this restaurant is done very professionally (e.g. menu presented with high gloss picture on a matte paper, high quality paper for placemat, professionally done canvas for lunch menu), however does not match with the actual product (i.e. food was cold, no flavour).

The number of staff was proportional to the size of the restaurant, but I felt invisible the whole time.

Nevertheless, they serve good tea and miso soup!

Will I return? ummmm...I guess not.

- Savour.Affair.

I gave HIP Katso a try since always seeing many people eating there. At the door, no one seemed to know about my presence, until I stuck my entire person into the restaurant. I went there ~11:35a, and obviously it's under staff. The food wasn't so great according to the high prices, but it's OK. But the service was really awful (maybe under staff) after I had to pay 10% service charge. No one cared to fill up my tea cup when I drank up my tea. We also waited for 30 min for the food with the waiter explaining the time needed for the chef to cook. I ordered seafood, which didn't take time to cook. My hubby ordered beef, also not needing long time for cooking. Other things in the Set were cold dishes, so no cooking necessary. I thought HIP Katso being in business for a while, they should have streamlined their services and turn around time for bringing the food to the tables. I was very disappointed for the prices paid, it's not worth it. I will never go back there.

Visited Hip Katsu twice before for dinner. For dinner, we usually ordered dinner set for 2 (around HKD 298). The dinner set has around 6 -7 courses: Salad, appetiter, soup, main course (deep fried pork chop or fried oyster), drink and dessert. I like their cold whole tomato appetiter. The portion of the fried pork chop portion is just right and not too dry. (I don't want to only eat pork shop and salad as in some other deep fried pork shop.) Went for lunch for first time and found out they only have simple lunch set for lunch. Lunch set ranges from HKD 68 to HKD 138. We tried duck liver with minced pork set and oyster set. The duck liver is too small and the menu did not mention the minced port is spicy. But the oyster set is better. Located in the centre of TST, the price is very reasonable for the location. The seat by the window has seaview but have to wait for it. The lineup is not too long for both lunch and dinner.

1) 白飯white rice: extremely soft and wet like eating glue
2) 吉列豬fry pork chops: frying powder thinker than pork, small sizes
3) 麵豉燙miso soup: very cold, watery and no taste
4) oyster: outlook unlike photo. Strange smell. Got stomach problems after eating
5) 耶菜vegetables: not fresh, watery and in yellow color

We found this place after shopping in Harbour City.
I honestly don't normally eat Japanese food in HK except some occasions or sometimes my body ask for it.
Somehow on that day, I felt like eating Japanese food, and this place looked decent.

I ordered Tonkatsu Set (Katsu 弁当) and my friend Tonkasu with Curry.
As I grew up with Japanese food and my family used to go to eat Katsu on sundays, I was hoping that this place can remind me of the hot and juicy Katsu I had in my old days.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a failure.
The Katsu wasn't juicy at all and had no flavour. wasn't hot either. Almost felt like they just fried frozen pork fillet.
I tried some of the Curry from my friend's dish, it tasted absolutely tasteless and the typical instant curry tastes (bad ones,of course)..
It is a shame as the restaurant's interior and presentations are quite good. But I will not go back there again

Someone recommended me this Japanese restaurant. Thus, I visited this restaurant two times on the same week.

The first time we came for lunch.

Katsu 便當: As a fans of Katsu, I ordered this. It came with a piece of katsu with mayo, steamed rice, 玉子豆腐, green salad, 漬物, and 煮物 (taro and mushroom). The katsu had crispy but oily skin and the pork tasted good. If the 漬物 can be cutted in a large pieces, that would be much better. Beef Sukiyaki: This is my wife's choice. She said the sweet soy sauce base tasted good. It came with steamed rice, green salad, and pickles. For any order of main course, we can get a beverage or small sized food at HK$10. So, we also ordered a iced lemon tea and a Japanese steamed egg. Both were "so-so" only.

My second visit was for afternoon tea.

Grilled Beef Tongue: The beef tongue was so tender and juicy. Leek is a good friend of grilled beef tongue. Highly recommended! Coffee Jelly & Iced Milk Tea: Coffee jelly always is my favorite. My mom made excellent coffee jelly by learning from a Japanese housewife in Vancouver during my junior age. Hip Katsu serves excellent coffee jelly with a big scope of vanilla ice-cream. The coffee jelly are full of strong coffee favor which is a good match with vanilla ice-cream. Lovely! The set came with a beverage and I choose iced milk tea. Unexpectedly, their iced milk tea was quite strong in tea favor . Absolutely lovely and highly recommended. Although this restaurant serves great coffee jelly and beef tongue, their service was VERY BAD. It took me over 3 mintues to have the order taken and have some request fulfilled. 侍應態度欠佳

We both ordered the same thing, the pork cutlet tonkatsu, which consisted of a bowl of rice, pickles, pork cutlet with unlimited shredded cabbage. I am not quite sure why our sets didn’t come at the same time, considering we both ordered it at the same time!

It didn’t occur to me at the time, but now that I have thought about it, we didn’t get any katsu sauce (ketchup, mustard, garlic and Worcestershire sauce). I thought at most tonkatsu place you get the bowl of sauce, however, neither of us got it that time. I admit though, the Japanese mortar is a novelty at first, but by the 2nd or 3rd time, the novelty runs out.

Anyway, the pork tonkatsu was a serious disappointment! The breadcrumbs were fried to a golden crisp, which was light and crispy, but the pork itself was dry and lack flavour. It wasn’t fatty whatsoever, it was just dry – not sure if it’s from lack of freshness in the meat or it was overcooked. It was frustrating as we were both craving for good tonkatsu.

I thought the service was quite ordinary; everything about the restaurant was ordinary which was just disappointing.

read rest of review here: http://gastronomous.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/hip-katsu/

Lunch set x 2
Salad - fresh & i like the sour dressing and the sesame smells good.
main course:
1 - deep fried chicken rice ok yummy
2 - deep fired pork with rice in the soup (less rice => not enough for my husband)
and the rice in the soup taste very funny/strange.....
Cold milk tea (taste less) just like water + suger

Overall service is BAD sit down for a long long time, no one serve tea or taking order. food is coming slow even just few tables customers. Service attitute is bad especially for those 2 young men waiter, always talking but no heart to serve customers.

We wanted to go to Tonkichi but they closed at 2:30pm on the dot. So we went to Harbour City to look for food and was very excited when we came across Hip Katsu.

It was already 3:00pm by this time and the restaurant was fairly empty but the manager kept us waiting by the door for over 5 mins before he seated us. I'm still not sure why it took so long to seat the customer when there was no line.

Anyway, we proceeded to order one chicken with egg set and one Tonkatsu set. We were really hungry at that point. The chicken with egg came first and just when we were about to dig in, the waiter rushed back and said he had given us the wrong bowl and then proceeded to give the pork rice to a table behind us. What a tease!

When the chicken egg rice finally came, it was a lot smaller than the original bowl and we realized that the set menu portion size is much smaller. This dish was nothing to write home about but it was 10x better than the Tonkatsu set.

First of all, the shop did not give us fresh un-grinded sesames. They gave us a bowl of pre-grinded white paste. Then the pork chop came and it was warm only and the coating fell off the pork immediately. The worst part was the pork was full of tendon and fat and only 3/4 of it was edible. There was only one dressing for the cabbage, and it had a fresh youzu flavor but I think the dressing lacked salt which just made the cabbage taste very raw.

Overall, would not go back to this restaurant again. I rather wait in line for good quality food at Tonkichi.

I like Tonkatsu. So cannot wait to try this one, especially it looks like a Tonkatsu specialty shop.
Food is just so-so, but the most surprising thing is the service.
1 - the waiter already asked and we already said we want rice not udon noodle when he took our order
2 - then he came back and asked again 5 minutes later
3 - then when they brought the food, they still brought udon noodle to us.
Hope that they can rembmer to bring their ear and brain to work.

After shopping in Muji, my son and I went to here for afternoon tea. My son ordered a Katsu pork with eggs on rice (with shreddled cabbage and beverage). I ordered a crepe with peanut butter and chocolate sauce.

Both taste really good. Honestly speaking, I think the size was relatively small in term of its price even thought this is a shopping district. The pork cutlet was crispy and the meat was tender and tasty. The eggs on the pork cutlet taste really good and the texture was smooth enough. The cabbage was not bitter taste, cool!

The coffee absolutely a garbage - taste nothing except the color. FORGET THAT!!!!!

I think I will come again although it is relatively expensive because it is in good location and no line up on a weekday afternoon.

I walk-in to this new Japanese katsu shop on Sat night…

I sat on the area with oily smells and I asked for changing seats. I ordered pork chop ($160 + 10% service charge), it surprised me by so very oily inside + outside. Also, the rice was not chewy as other Japanese restaurant, only so so quality on soup + veggi, no fruit after meal set (The other T restaurant has a few small pieces of watermelon you refresh your mouth). The price is definitely not cheap for this quality of food, I rather go the original T shop for katsu or CitySupxx food court for better food quality next time.

The only thing I can say okay was their service. Servers are young but nice and hard working although it still takes sometime to “break” into a smooth operations.

I visited on a Friday night around 7pm and the shop was around 70% full. We were lead to a table right beside the deep fried stoves area and outside the kitchen exit.

The oily smile was really stinky in that area and waiter/waiters have been running on the narrow walkway bedside me. I can feel the food tray was passing closely beside me on my eye level. Finally, I asked for changing seat and the waitress leaded me to the side table RIGHT in front of the deep fried area. I said it is too smiley and the waitress insisted the seats are okay cause there are glasses separating the deep fried stoves. I only sat there for 2 mins and the oily smile was TOTALLY unacceptable!

Then I have asked for another seat again at the other side of the restaurant. I realized there are still around 30% empty tables and I was leaded to the 2 worse spots among the whole restaurant!

Anyway, I finally ordered pork chop and prawn, each valued at $160. They were both SO SO oily and I have to soak them on a napkin before eat! Prawns taste fair and pork chop was unbelievable - Salty and no taste of pork, 40% of the pork chop was pork fats and not able to eat! Rice was only lukewarm, too much vinegar on pork chop sauce, only the udon was good. I told the manager (in black suit) regarding pork chop has too much fat and show him the remaining. He did not really show his concern and say would tell the chief of the problem, that’s it. HELLO~~~~ I am not the ginny pig here for your "Animal testing" examination and paid for the bill. I am a consumer, GEE!?!?!

If you never been there, I suggest you go try the real quality Japanese katsu just opposite the Harbour City on Canton road. Otherwise, major chain fast food store also have better quality deep fried items.

By the way, I had 2 cans of Coke after the meal since the oily after taste has remain in my month the rest of the night. I can only say one word after the meal - Disgusting!!