Le Blanc    

We were recommended to come here for good food and a place to relax and chat. We weren't disappointed.

We felt right at home the moment our friendly server showed us to our cosy cubicle with kitschy decor.
He helped us make healthy and tasty choices to share from the full page menu.

Warm savoury loaf served with foie gras pate, salmon dip and butter.
Seafood platter (1/2 crab, 6 mussels, 8 shrimps, 4 clams): served with garlic dip and freshly whipped mayonnaise.
Tuna rillette with tomato jelly, parmesan crisps & salad of roast vegetables: yummy, but only 2 spoonfuls of rillette.
Scallop & hazelnut tartar served with parmesan & arugula sauce: very refreshing!
Seabass & crayfish soufflé with lobster-tomato sauce: perfect match of flavour and texture.
Baked dark cherry clafoutis: not too sweet and not too light.

We found the wine list limited, but the Macon-Villages 2009 was nice.

When we made the reservation for 6:30pm, we were told that the table was only available till 8:45pm.
Still the server was apologetic when he presented us with the bill at 9pm.

We went above the minimum charge of $290. In fact, our bill came to $1150.
But given the excellent service, good meal and nice ambience, we were satisfied and happy.

This was my first time at Le Blanc. One guest had been many times, the other was a first timer like me. I loved the quirky decoration and found the staff very helpful. It was obvious we were there to chat and catch up and we appreciated the fact that the staff did not rush us. The menu was excellent with multiple things that caught my eye. The specials were well explained and the staff answered all questions. I had a souffle with gorgonzola and wanut followed by pork followed by apple crumble and custard. Each dish was served at the right temperature with serving size just right. Side dishes of potatos and spinach were good but could have been a little larger. One friend had duck, the other had sea bass. Each enjoyed their choices.

This place is not fine dining. If you are looking for high end French Cuisine, you will be disppointed. However if you like traditional French food, enjoy tasting multiple dishes and want value for money, I would highly recommend it. The intimacy and decor add a little extra something which makes it a pleasant change from the usual.

The interior of Le Blanc is quirky and intriguing and the restaurant is set out in a way that each party is able to have their own private space with very attentive wait staff and service. Unfortunately this is probably the best thing about Le Blanc.

I really wanted to give this place a positive review given what I had seen from earlier posts and I feel somewhat sad that I am not able to.

I’ve never been a fan of restaurants with huge menus and I think this may be Le Blanc’s issue. It is always better to offer a slightly less comprehensive menu and do it well by concentrating on a few key dishes per course rather than a large menu and do it poorly. The menu could easily be cut down. In my opinion, there is no need to offer 4 different types of soups or some 12+ main courses. For me, the whole point of going to a private kitchen is to experience a unique and bespoke menu that has been well thought out by the owner.

Feedback on the food (some of which I did not taste and the feedback is from a friend):
Bread – excellent and was replenished throughout the whole meal
Escargot – should be served in a proper Escargot indented metal tray and not a bowl
Mussels – should have been cooked a little longer and the sauce could have done with some garlic or onions to stop it being bland.
French Onion Soup – why not just make this the one main soup and do it well! It’s a classic French dish and everyone expects it to be baked. Soup was not hot enough.
Crab Bisque – tasted like they didn’t use the head and body of the crab to make the stock but just the crab meat.
Foie Gras – something was missing here, perhaps a tart accompaniment as the Foie Gras ended up being far too rich on it’s own. I think there was some sort of fruit sauce served with it but it was too bland to compliment the Foie Gras
Duck Confit – a bit too dry and salty
Seabass – fish itself had no flavor and really needed to be eaten with the sauce
Lamb Shank – huge but not much flavor

Sadly, I don’t think I will be rushing back to Le Blanc again anytime soon. I’ve given it 2 shots and both times I was unimpressed.

This restaurant came highly recommended by my husband's colleague, so we decided to give it a try.

While the decor is INTERETING, and wait staff were pleasant and attentive, I find the food rather blend and tasteless. Portions were also incredibly small!!! Duck leg was a bit dry, creme brulee was cold (strange!), and it was also way too creamy for how it should taste. The only dish I liked was the Dark Cherry pudding, although I think it would taste much better with ice cream, rather than whipped cream.

To be fair, $290 for a 3-course meal is relatively cheap for French cuisine in HK (no service fee or corkage), but I can't say I'll be rushing back for a second try.

I came to this place with my husband, which came highly recommended by his friend. While the staff are nice and attentive, I find the food way below expectation. Escargot, mussel, and scallop were totally blend and flavorless. The duck leg was completely dry. Creme brûlée was cold and way too creamy than how it should be. Baked cherry was decent though.I guess relative value-wise, $290 is not bad for "French" cuisine,, but I can't say I would come back.

We went there with a group of 12 ppl, and everyone complained about their food.

overall, the taste of the food was average, lacked flavour and seasoning.

i had a ox-tail soup for starter, it is just OK
then i have the venison for main-course, too dry and not much flavour in it.

My friend had a scollop entree which also lacked flavour and pork chop for main which was dry and had no sauce with it.

Dessert was a chocolate cake which was dry, served without cream / ice cream.

I could NOT recommend ppl to go there

This is my first time to try this restaurant but really disappointed. for environment its very nosiy and we don't think that such a restaurant with this charge (min HKD290/head) offer place like that. maybe we are unlucky on that day.

As introduce by my friend said that the dishes are very nice. And we ordered only 3 course-appertizer/soup/main course. no dessert order as we don't think that the restaruant can prepare delicioius desert after we finished the 3 course. For appertizer the parma ham have some taste like-油益味, that i never have this experience before at othe restaurant and the there are sand in the escargot bourguignonne. for the salmon just OK not special. Of course we told to the waiter of the restauant but feel no sorry for that.

for the soup not creamy, like having lobster soup at SpahXXX house.

for the main course Pork Chop fm USE grilled very dry, hard almost no juice and for the beef my friend said that it likeed to have 牛腩. Only the dishes with lamb was no complaint.

As we paid HKD303 per head with 3 course, i am sure we can have some better choices. anyway we will never go again and introduce to others.

I've actually been to Le Blanc before for 2 friends' birthday back in mid December. My overall impression that time was the food is not bad...but had some execution issues (mainly a few friends' steaks were undercooked). This time another friend had a birthday at Le Blanc and treated about 20-30 of us to dinner.

Environment: Like last time we got the back area. Seating was a little cramped but not uncomfortable per say. I always find it funny how all the 'rooms' are separated by cloth walls. It felt more spacious this time since we had more people and they combined 2 'rooms'.

Service: Service I think was pretty good. The waitstaff was attentive and friendly. The owner checked on us multiple times to make sure everyone was ok. Overall I thought they really took care of us. Food came out a little slow but considering we had 30 people this is understandable.

The best way I can describe the food here at Le Blanc is 'Hong Kong style French food'. It's not supposed to be a negative statement by any means. All I mean is if you are looking for classical French cooking...Le Blanc is not your place...BUT if you are looking for French food that appeals more to a Hong Kong person's palette...then Le Blanc is more suitable for you.

Tonight was a set menu so we got way more food than normal:

Marinated Mushroom with Salad Provencal - The mushrooms were actually pretty good. The salad...was forgettable. Wish the was some added crunch amongst the leafy greens. I also feel they should provide more dressing with this dish.

French Onion Soup - Tried the crab bisque last time so I switched to the French Onion. Not bad at all. Soup was flavorful and quite tasty.

Green Welks and Rose Shrimp - This cold dish was shared amongst the table. My initial impressive was it was extremely small to share between 10 people. Can't even have 1 welk and 1 shrimp each. I had a shrimp. Not bad and tasted fresh but it was so tiny.

Sorbet - Again I stress this is less of a sorbet but reminds me more of the old Dairy Farm Creamsicle (so it was mango exterior but inside was vanilla ice cream). Don't think there was any cooking involved in this dish but it was tasty.

Personally if the objective was to cleanse your palette it probably would have been better to choose something that wasn't so creamy.

Fish, Tiger Prawn, Oysters and Mushrooms with Curry Leek - I was a little surprised by it and quite liked this dish. The curry leak sauce make perfect sense with the fish, tiger prawn and oysters. Tiger prawn was little hard to eat with the knife and fork but it tasted fine. The fish and oysters that was sitting in the sauce I thought was more flavorful. Also nice contrast to eat a creamy oyster then eat a more firm textured fish. Would recommend this dish.

Baked Potato with Cheese (Gratin Dauphinoise) - Didn't get a chance to try this since I was pretty full and was just saving room for the apple crumble. Looked pretty heavy though.

Apple Crumble Topped with Cinnamon Ice Cream - A favorite of mine at Le Blanc. Apple crumble was warm and slightly crunchy which was a nice contrast to the cold and creamy nature of the cinnamon ice cream. Yum!

The general consensus seem to be the food was pretty decent. I definitely appreciate the extra effort by the waitstaff and owner to keep us happy. Overall my experience was better than last time mainly because my seafood main this time was better than the duck I had last time. A friend ordered the duck and it suffered from the same under-saucing issue (plus it was a little overcooked this time). Not a bad meal at Le Blanc.

Friend took me out here to celebrate passing exams. We were offered a table by a corner measuring about 3 ft by 6 ft (and I'm probably being generous with my estimation here), or another 3 by 6 but with blinds on both sides which felt a little better as the wall wasn't closing in on us.

They kept refilling the warm bread basket, which deserves a lot of credit as I love bread, and we had the salmon and goose pate which was $40 I think to go with it. You then proceed to tick all the food you want from the pretty extensive menu list, starting with appetisers, soups, salads, seafood platter, entrees, side plates, desserts. Food was all well executed, well proportioned, leaving us satisfied but not stuffed. Special mention about the rabbit stew, very tender, rich sauce, a delight. Water was from the tap with a squeeze of lemon, but if you prefer perrier or evian, there's a bottle on the table for you to open. Free corkage too (i think up to 5 bottles, but for the 2 of us, a bottle of windy bay sufficed).

The couple next to us had an interesting conservation about the dating scene in HK, not that we tried to eavesdrop, more like we didn't have a choice. Free entertainment, why not? (And if the French dude next to us is reading this, please ditch that girl, she's a nutcase).

So I came here last night with 13 friends for 2 of my friends birthday dinners.

Environment: The place looked pretty festive and dim. There were Christmas lights hanging over our table and during dinner they played Christmas songs which I thought was a nice touch. Although I knew beforehand I still thought it was a little weird that all the tables were separated/sectioned off by cloth walls. Most customers tonight weren't too noisy so it didn't bother us per say but I just thought it was a little strange visually.

Service: I thought it was good. Waiters/owner were friendly and accommodating. When my friend had a slightly undercooked piece of steak they gave him a brand new piece which I thought was nice. Things did take a tad long but it wasn't uncomfortably long by any means.

Food: My food I thought was quite decent but looking at my friend's food I definitely thought there were execution issues. Steaks looked slightly undercooked across the board.

Menu wise there is a minimum expense of $290 (no corkage) but there are quite a lot of choices dishes wise to choose from (nice!). Prices I thought in general was quite reasonable depending on what your ordered. The menu looks like a dim sum order form and you basically check off what you want and hand it to the waiter.

This is what I ordered:

Snails (Escargot) With Garlic Butter & Potato Puree - Escargot was cooked properly (not rubbery) and somewhat flavorful. On a minor note the tongs they gave me to secure the escargot wasn't that helpful since the tongs were meant for bigger escargot (so the snail shells would slip around). The potato puree was a little too dry for my tastes and really could have used some sort of a gravy.

Crab Bisque - This was pretty flavorful and they were generous in terms of crab meat. Unfortunately the portion felt pretty small for a $48 soup.

Sorbet (for cleansing palette) - Since I was $9 short to their $290 minimum I ordered their $15 sorbet. The sorbet (tasted a little artificial lemony flavor) was topped with a small scoop of mango ice cream. The mango ice cream was more milky in taste (kind of like the creamy Dairy Farm ones you find in the supermarket) which I didn't particularly like. The sorbet flavor wise tasted like it was made from a store bought lemonade. Would have been nicer if it tasted more of natural ingredients.

Baked Duck Leg (Confit) With Berries - This to me was the best part of my meal. The confit was sitting on top of a small side salad. The confit was baked properly because you could tell the meat came pretty clean off the bone. Meat was quite yummy. My only gripe about this was the sauce. It's supposed to come with some sort of a berry sauce and I felt they over-reduced their sauce and also put too little on the plate so essentially I ate this sauceless. The salad to me was somewhat forgettable. Just a basic salad that was underdressed with the berry sauce. If this dish was sauced properly it would have been quite a killer dish.

Apple Crumble Topped With Cinnamon Ice Cream - This was pretty nice. The cool ice cream was a perfect complement to the warm apple crumble. The crumble crust was warm and crunchy...the ice cream was smooth, cool and had a nice hint of cinnamon. The apples I thought could have been baked a little longer since they still felt a little too 'firm' but it is only a minor thing. I told the owner afterwards they should put more ice cream in this dish since after strategically eating spoonfuls of ice cream with the apple crumble I found I still had lots of apple after the ice cream was done. A nice finish to the meal nevertheless.

So my overall experience was pretty decent. My friend's main dishes seem to fair not as well. Most of the table ordered rib eyes and there were a few obvious problems:

1) Pretty much all the rib eyes were uncooked and looked a little too much on the rare side

2) They need to learn how to evenly cook the steaks. I saw on at least one rib eye where one side was cooked quite a lot more than the other (mainly caused by the steaks being cut a little 'unevenly' width wise)

3) Female friends who got the rib eye dish had much smaller portions. Easily 30-40% less steak than my male friends who ordered the same dish. That's just weird to me.

If they can tweak a few of their dishes I think Le Blanc will be a much better experience. Not bad overall and for $300 there was actually quite a lot of food.

I love the decor of this place! With all the lights and candles, it gives it a very homey and Christmasy atmosphere! Though on that day there was a huge party next to us, so we could hardly talk without getting interrupted by talk and loud laughter!

I think they should definitely close the restaurant for private parties, esp when its a large group of 20+people! As it is a small restaurant, and they section each tables by these linen cloth, noise gets carried out through the different tables easily!

However besides the noise, the food is delicious! Had the Pan fried Foie Gras with figs ($105)! Very yummy!
My friend had the Escargot de bourgogne (with garlic butter & Potato puree) $39

As this place has a minimum charge of HK$290 nett, its definitely not a place for small eaters! We also ordered the Fresh mussels steamed in white wine sauce ($70) It was a bit too sour, not enough butter!

However the Risotto with mushrooms & truffle ($98) was the best tasting Risotto I've ever had! The creamy risotto had just enough white wine to flavour the piece, unlike the mussels which was too strong !

My friend had the Lamb shoulder braised with French beans ($98) which was also very tender and delicious

Dessert we ordered the Creme Brulee ($39) and the Citrus Cheese Cake ($39) which was a bit on the small size in terms of thickness about 1.5cm thick....Cheesecakes should definitely be at least 1 inch! Nice and citrusy with citrus bits inside!

However the service was also homey as well! The waitress didnt know anything on the menu and had to leave our table to check at every question we asked. After 10 minutes she'll come back but had forgotten about our questions and had to leave again. Overall, I'd say this restaurant definitely have potential, however they really need to make an effort and hire staff with some waitress skills! With the prices they are charging, I dont think they can afford the poor service!

French food private kitchen - sounds really exciting! But I was a bit disappointed about my experience.

To begin with, the waitstaff was friendly, but not very knowledgable. English-speaking friends at my table had such difficulties communicating with them. The waiters were also smoking right outside the kitchen, which I think is quite disgusting. The decor resembles my grandmother's den - very crowded, dusty, and full of mismatched and unattractive decorations.

The food was OK; not terribly French, more than the generic HK version of "Western" food. All in all, it was a tad less exciting than I had expected.