LaVilla TST  

It's time for Mother's Day. We were having an early Mother's Day lunch last sunday. After having heavy rain for several days, sunshine came finally. A group of 6 arrived the restaurant at 12 pm. The waiter arranged us a table in the VIP room. There were a big screen and a piano inside the room. Along the wall was a huge wine cabinet. All these elements help to create a fine dining atmosphere.It was a semi-buffet lunch (with main course $140-$200, without main course $118). The variety of cold cut and salad was sufficient. Smoked salmon was a little bit of slabby. Ahi tuna was well-flavoured and highly recommended. Salad was fresh also.

For the main course, we ordered spaghetti with Iberico ham, chicken roll and steak. All were good. Iberico ham delighted my palate. The mashed potato inside the chicken roll was yummy and rich in texture. Steak was relatively unremarkable but still, it tasted good.While waiting for the main course, we decided to start the dessert. Tiramisu was the best that I ever had in HK. Another must-try item was their home-made ice-cream. Other desserts, like panna cotta, blueberry cheesecake and creme brulee, gave no surprise.

The semi-buffet here was really good. I am sure that I will come for a second time.

LaVilla has a really good semi buffet lunch. The environment is nice, featuring dark modern decor, and there are views of Victoria Harbor.
The seating is quite spacious.

Food
You can choose buffet only or, for those of us who want something hot in our stomachs aside from soup, buffet and a main.

I typically go for the buffet only because it's quite the light and healthy choice. They have smoked salmon, seared tuna, cold cuts, parma ham and melon, a hot soup, and an assortment of salads and other cold dishes.

For dessert there are around four to five varieties, a fresh fruit salad, and a selection of homemade sorbet (lime and raspberry) and ice cream (vanilla and mango). I particularly like the lime sorbet as it is quite refreshing. The vanilla ice cream is kind of like Movenpick's, with specks of vanilla bean.

They have this interesting pink mineral salt that you can try. Can't really taste the difference myself, but it is quite the novelty.

Overall, this is a great place to have a relaxing lunch.

Two people decided to have something cold on a freezy night. Jap food came to mind first but since it’s like queuing for food in North Korea, we decided to bugger off elsewhere.

Then La Villa TST appeared like a dream. With all those seafood lining up beautifully, gazing and smiling at us. A voice echoed in my head; ‘eat me if you dare!’. Ok, ‘let’s get slouched!’ and we went for it.

To start off, everything was fine. Seating was comfy with a highway view, police bike chasing some Thelma and Louise smuggler outside really adds up.

We ordered our drinks, the fake electrical humpty dumpty like blue candle stand on the table was working it’s magic just fine. Next table was a bit loud but it’s ok, I understand we are not sitting in a cave in New Zealand. Everything was just like a normal dinner should be.

Food was very good, like a normal restaurant. Some food was so good I even asked about the origin. A young guy, full of energy was busy with his tableware setting, bill handling he totally forgotten about my question. It’s ok, maybe no one knows the answer and he is still asking around.

Another young guy, nicely asked if I wanted some more bread. With that quality of bread, I struggled for a moment but I was hope for the best. So I said yes. Maybe it’s the ingredients, maybe mama’s recipe didn’t work out this time, maybe it’s poor just because it doesn’t cost a dime. Highly recommend they do some comparison with their next door neighbours. You don’t normally complaint about bread right? No, I never but I do now. The bread simply tasted crap and dry and dull.

After the half time beak, the game is starting to get excited here. I mentioned about ordering a drink to start off with right? My glass was just simply disappeared without asking for a refill. So I thought, ok, I’ll go with the flow. Maybe something wonderful will happen to me. I was obviously thinking too much. I like the way they change my plate 3 to 4 times but totally ignored that very obvious piece of plastic wrap (from tissue from starter) for the whole meal! Where is the focus man! I think the stationing system has fail a 100% for this instance.

At the end, we asked for the bill. Simple THANK YOU and BYE-BYE was missing totally from the person who gave me the bill, no ‘thank you’ from the floor staffs either as we walked out. The staff who welcomed us in saw us walked out without saying a word. I guess the cold wind freeze his balls up or something!

I can proudly say that my local Tea House do much better than this one. Good food, bad service, it’s still a miss. A miss is as good as a mile. Good luck La Villa!

Still on vacation, so finally had a chance to venture over to TST for lunch. The 2 of us both only had the semi lunch buffet without the main course ($118 + 10%, and we were stuffed by the end of the meal.

The salad bar made available romaine lettuce, potato & egg salad, fruit salad, parma ham, smoked salmon, seared tuna, mushroom with peas / beans, cherry tomatoes, pepper in olive oil, corn with peas, octopus in slightly spicy sauce (think Japanese style), and soup (cream of mushroom today).

The dessert bar had fruits (mixed, pineapple, cantaloupe, and watermelon), creme brulee, chocolate puff, cheesecakes, panna cotta, jelly with fruits, tiramisu, and homemade ice cream. The creme brulee, panna cotta, tiramisu, and ice cream were good while the cheesecakes were ok. Didn't try the others.

We were also given garlic bread and plain bread, and a cup of good coffee at the end.

Service was prompt and friendly. Would come back again!

I invitated a friend to come with me and have semi-lunch buffet at LaVilla. The place is cozy and can face a sea-view, the restaurant have outdoor area if you prefer or if you want to have a cigarette. The semi-lunch buffet menu have appetizer and dessert couse for your choice. In addition, the menu have three main course for your selection if you want. But we decide to skip our main course and only have 2 courses.

We have French bread toast before we start. The bread was warm, the olive paste was a bit salty. The appetizer have few selection of vegetables and cold meat, tuna slices, smoked tuna, tomatoes and some small bowls of japanese starter (jelly fish and crab meat salad). The table also have some different sauces, dressings. I like Parmesan Cheese, Croutons and Bacon bites to make into Caesar. I would like to suggest to put all the dressing and accompaniment which is nearby the vegetables, as I forgot to bring the sauce on my first round.

I spend much of my time on appetizer, the food was fresh, light and tasty. This is suitable for someone who like less meat and more vegetables and salad. The food was quickly refill by kitchen staff. But they seems to be understaff on restaurant side, so we need to ask for water refill and wait to collect dirty plate.

On the dessert, the price was include a dessert from kitchen, today we have bananna pancake, it taste nothing special. My friend comment pana cotta was too sweet. I would prefer have some fresh fruits and sorbet. The lime and raspberry sorbet is cool and very refreshing. The cake and dessert on the table is very common and not attractive to me, there is a room for further improvement.

Overall the food and service was satisfactory and the price for semi-buffet is $108. It is worth to try again next time.

It's friend's Birthday dinner party of over 20 people joining, big party! Original plan was to host a pool side party to cheer with BBQ and bikini, due to little raining, hotel decided to close the pool and to avoid being stuck in indoors, we quickly changed to this restaurant in TST East, outdoor seating, which sounds great.

We had great weather in evening, clear sky, not too hot and humid at the end. This is my first time here, it indeed offers a good impression with the vibrant atmosphere, seats setting looks decent and a waiter was assigned to take care of this party to show their profession. As the first one to arrive, got a few minutes to look around and appreciate the interiors. Envrionment is definitely great honestly.

As people are not yet arrived, a few of us just ordered cocktail and a bottle of white from Argentina, look at the pricing of wine, obviously over-charged. Wine marking at 3 hundred something in other restaurants, they sell it almost 5 hundreds. We didn't bring wine but not sured about the others, checking the corkage fee, which is a hundred...this conversation led to big mess at the end of night...because the waiter for sure would like us to order wine there, and told us it's "buy-one-get-one-free"; his meaning was buy one bottle there, they free one bottle's corkage fee. However, what we, at least 5 of us, the interpretation was something like half price discount. Considering the over-pricing of the wine, we thought actually 50% is reasonable for such a big group.

Anyway, let's go back to the food. * 100 Look at it's location where it's a tourist spot with usual commercial activities around, quality should be up to certain level, provided that the price is talking about upper mid-range, like over 700 for stea, over 200 for a pasta,,,I did expect the quality, not necessarily similar to Gaddi's or Amber, but be frank, it's unbelievable bad....it's just pizza hut / cafe de coral level. Very disappointed.

Seafood platter is highly recommended, friends and myself do love oyster and seafood, and it sounds a must-have item there. It's just so so, not too bad as for cold dish, the essential thing is fresh, and it is. They can do better by offering more varieties such as scallops, shrimps on top of the crab, baby lobster, abalone and oysters.

Cesar salad is the best of the night, don't look at the price, it is nicely presented with crab roe on top.

Foie Gras, the worst I have ever had in my life as a foie gras lover. I'm not a chef and honestly not really good at cooking. I'm sure I can do much better than this. Before tasting, it looks like a dried over-cooked piece of potato, first bite, OMG, thought it's pig's liver cooked in a Chinese way. As all of us had the same feeling, we told the manager and he get the kitchen to re-do it. Okay, 2nd chance, it looked better, but still, wondering, it's actually not goose liver.

Lobster soup, highly recommended by the waiter, again...it is not it should be. I don't know if the chef would like to make it playful or what, but, as a customer, we just want to have what it named to be. There is half of a baby lobster, clams and scallops in the soup, presentation is nice; however, it's totally thin and tasteless.

The steak, so called Australian A5 Wagyu beef. I love steak, basically I have tried all those top ranked steak houses, mid-range ones as well as Home-made myself. This was not an honest deal. If the customer has never tried what is Wagyu beef, or even never tried what is steak, fine. But, for us...it's hard to convince. Also, seemed no one asked us how it should be done.

Grilled Scallops and Shrimps, acceptable but portion is too small with 2 pcs each; even for one person as a main course...

Crab meat with Angel Hair and Back Truffle, portion and taste are fine, better to have a bit more crab meat and olive oil. Seafood Risotto, not bad, cheer up a bit after these 2 pasta dishes. (Remark: after all the disappointment so far, we had lower the expectations a lot).

They arranged a birthday cake for us, it was quite nice actually with the live band singing birthday song.

The drama came when we got the bill, over $28,500.

I hosted similar size of party at Harlan's on my birthday (referring to my review before) and other places such as Robuchon, more dishes of food and better wine, the cost were just 20-25,000 at the end. Can you imagine having approximately 3 - 4 courses and about 3 glasses of wine per person, fast food chain standard, and the bill is over $1200?

The cause was mentioned earlier, it's the mis-understanding or mis-communication or what at the beginning about the wine costs. However, as we found that some of the main courses did not came but appeared in the bill, this and that...after several rounds of discussion / negotiations with the managers there, they cut down the bill to around $16,000 (i.e. around $740 per person). What a drama!

It's a birthday dinner and supposed it's should be fun and loving, it became imperfect.

I can only say, no doubt, it's a great place to hang out for drinks becaues of it's location with great view of HK island from TST East, but for food at this price range, no thank you.

Sunday is supposed to be enjoy relaxation. So me and my buddy B decided to have a brunch We had a rush reservation at around 12:15pm and the waiter there reported that only alfresco is available.

We reached there at 12:45pm and the waiter brought us to our seats (luckily the sunshine was not that fierce as we thought)

After settling down, time for our big big food journey!

My 1st round is some light appetizers - like Norwegian salmon, some Jap. light salad (not tried hams but my buddy has encored twice)
Food there is really fresh and presentable. Many starving one lining up to grab food (very interesting), Tuna there is nicely sliced into thin one and surprisingly not chewy : ENCORED a lot!!!

Then we tried the toasted bread and spreaded with black truffle sauce?! What a duo combination of eating bread than simply with peanut butter or dip with balsamic vinegarwe almost finished whole inside the bread tray.

2nd round: Caesar Salad (mixed with tons of parmesan cheese n balsamic vinegar) - very sweet and bit sour which refreshes me!!

Time for our main course - Pan-fried Salmon fillet w/ Japanese Sauce (served with skin, it might look dry in its appearnace, but when you dipped with the sauce, it's really YUM! The sweetness of the sauce won't cover too much of the fillet, feel so healthy after finished)

Last Last Last, a perfect brunch should come with dessert, a nice and fine dessert, this week's special - APPLE STRUDELLLLL!!!
Cooked apple chunks heated and wrapped with crispy crust (so warm and not too sweet, not like some chain-store), i even had eaten my buddy's plate as well since she's not that into cooked fruits!hahahhaha!

Then two cold lemon tea with freshly-cut lemon slices filled us up! We were so glad and satified with the food and service there. Would try again in near future~~~~~~~~~~~

sorbet-->lime and raspeberry-->they r quite sour and very fresh, easy to melt too~

green tea soft heart-->quite melt inside, however green tea taste is not rich and not hot enough, the cake is not spongy enough too~

jelly-->there's laychee and an orange inside, there's some mentor taste too so it's cool and fresh~

mixed fruit-->mango+blueberry, dragon fruit, melon...they r quite sweet and fresh~

chocolate mosse cake--> not very sweet and moose is smooth and the cake is spongy~

smoked salmond-->nice, not over salty!!

garlic bread-->freshly baked and cripsy, but garlic sause is not enough~

waiter is very polite ~

environment is nice

$98 for semni buffet without main course

fruit salad, potato salad, all r fresh~
carrot soup-->hot enough and quite creamy~
hams--> just soso, not special
tomato sause spegatti-->quite sour and spicy~
blueberry cheese cake-->texture is not very hard, there;s a lot of blue berry jam and rich in cheese taste~
fruits-->watermelon, pineapple are sweet enough~
icecream-->mango and vanilla: they r cold enough and won't b hard after frozen, vanilla is nice coz have banilla seeds inside!

will go again!

Enjoy a nice lunch with friends, very relax environment.

$98 for semi-lunch buffet
$128 with pasta (small portion only)
$148 with fish
$168 with steak

All are yummy~ i like the salad bar with many choice even include smoke salmon, cheese & tomato, carrot soup

Dessert are excellent too!! For me, I like creamy & miky dessert. especially home made ice-cream!

Service is good but a bit slow~ no car parking is not perfect enough~

So happy that we can celebrate my fd's b'day together this year!!
and we finally made a decision to go to LaVilla to enjoy the semi-buffet there.
The time we all present already 12:45pm, and the buffet starts at 12nn and finish at 1430. hopefully we can taste most of foods at the buffet~ aound 1pm, there are only around 15 tables are occupied and most of us are sitting in the indoor area near the window coz we can have a 180 angle look on the habour*=] and I love the decor of the restaurant which has a lot of wine bottle displayed and some christmas decor already. some background music is provided... haha, okay, back to the food there!

We order the sirloin steak with gravy sauce for medium($198), a fish which I have forgot the name($148)- please have a look on the photo then. and Spaghetti with Spinach ham in tomato sauce($118) and buffet only($98). we share the food together for 4ppl*

Basically, each lunch set will have an appertiser which is crab meat+ scallop tar tar today* I think it is perfect. the portion size is not small for the crab meat, quite thick for the scallop and super match for all these together* however, the vegetables on side already with olive oil I dun prefer.

and for the salad bar. there are smoked salmon, cold cut with choices- salami and hams, fresh and large tomato, lettuce, corns, tomato+mozarella, some are pre-protion likes crab meat salad, octopus salad and etc. there are some dressing provided such as 1000islands, olive oil, vingear....
actually i dun like the tomato+mozarella since i can taste a little bit bitter for that. but I love the salami since it not too salty and oily.

the soup of today is Japanese traditional soup which I dun like. but my fd said it is too tasteless.

for the main course.
sirloin steak with gravy sauce for medium- I can say that it is absolutely not medium but medium well already. it is thin and quite chewy, but go well with the think gravy sauce.

Japanese Fish- super stick and fishy.... and the scallops are cooked with the beef so that it is full of the beef flavor which is super disgusting!! however the fruity sauce is quite good. and the side dish too.

Spaghetti with Spinach ham in tomato sauce- I will say that the portion size is super small and taste okay. however, the Spinach ham is very salty.

now is the turn for dessert. there are 2 home-made ice-cream which is mango and vanila flavor and 2 sorbet which is grapefruit and lime. I can tell you the ice-cream are great and there are many vanila seed. but the sorbet are very sour esp. the lime one.

Fresh fruit are provided such as water melon, pineapple, melon and dragon fruit. but all diced well.

Penna cotta is good also less sweet comparing others dessert. Blueberry chesse cake is fair with good texture and layers. Peach tart is out of our expectation, quite good actually. And the puff is fair. however, we dun have a chance to taste the creme brulee. they didn't refill any dessert but for all salad. quite disappointed actually.

the dessert today is green tea flavor pudding. I say it is a good try and taste good. however 1 out of 4, the middle is over baked already.

Finally, we ordered cuppacino and coffee. it is so full to finish the whole cup of coffee. and we left around 4:30pm.
the good thing is the staff did asked us to collect the last round desserts aound 2:30pm and did not ask us to leave after the close of buffet.
It is quite good to stay there for more than 4hours and enjoy such as a great luch!!!

And the bill for us is $600. around $150@ but can stay for such a long time is valuable. I defintely will be back!
But i think the price for dinner is too high la, may be back for lunch again*=]

A great night with my friend at LaVilla TST. We started our dinner at about 8pm, by that time, there's not really a big crowd and we saw 狄龍
just sitting next to us. wow, seems it's a place for stars and celebrities as well (since there's a private VIP room which is really perfect for privacy)

Okay, back to our deluxe dinner (we prefer a la carte menu insteaf of set)Well, we orded the followings:

Drinks: Mojito & Pussy Foot (My friend likes her pussy foot, which alikes fruit punch, my mojito is great with strong aroma of mint)

Sashimi Salad : Wow, light one as appetizer with freshly-cut scallop, shrimps, taste really like heaven lar~

Grilled cod fish: I personally not really a fish addict but i indeed like cod fish in grill! Its texture and its presensation made me a fish-lover~Most important: not salty at all!

Chicken Penne: i wanna try risotto but there's none. So i shifted to penne, wow, sauce penetrating!! Like that!

DESSERT:
UFO-size SOUFFLE ft. vanilla ice-cream: A great dinner can't end without dessert, here we go! this huge size of souffle! Manager's there gave a warmth reminder of eating asap.
WOWWW!The sweetness drives me crazy, comprising with vanilla ice-cream, YUM!

UFO-size Choco fondant: No kidding! i could see loads of choco lava coming out! Sweet monster won't miss that for sure!!!

During about 9:45pm, the live band show started and the hotties sang lots of popular English songs like Lady GAGA and Beyonce
, their dance, their voices still lingering~~What a FULL DINNER it was!!!

Time to write my Sweet Monster eating diary!!

Back to last Friday, I went to TST again wif my man after work. Choose here for our dinner again, this time, buffet again with French themed promotion!!

Mesmerized by the full set of French buffet, i had no rush but to grab my favourite food, seafood paella first. Again, no disppointment at all Then have salads, lots of green veggies, filled me with nutrients, LOVE IT (even more than my man, haha)

Then we both went out to open area and here we go, met a funny chef. We had a chat and found that he was 肥媽個仔呢, amazing!!He is nice and talented

Have some yabbies and mussels (nice and not fat at all with olive oil), then i shifted to dessert bar and had all desserts tryout, again, GREAT la!!

Finally we sat till 9:30pm and left. Wanna give appaulse to the staff there, they are generous and caring to us (that's one of the reasons why we came back)

Got a message from this restaurant that there will be a Moroccan Night on 30 April, and it sounds new to me. So i decided to ask my fds to join with me.

Around 6:30pm, we got there and saw plenty of waiters dressed in Moroccan style. Then they asked us to sit in sidewalk area, which i think is better with breezy wind and cooler.

This was a Moroccan buffet style and i had zero knowledge of the food there. I am impressed by the buffet table, deep fried snacks, lots of salads, great!

Couscous, which is like a grain, size smaller than rice, is quite good to serve, grilled seabass, GREAT, baby lamb of the night, absolutely gorgeous and not dry at all. The chef carved few slices to us, haha~~funny chef~

DESSERT TIME~~~Rice pudding, light and with cinnamon and raisin! Then ate few cheese cakes and mousse cakes, small bites and could try a lot.

I ordered one Casablanca Cocktail as well, nice again too, makes me a little dizzy since i am not good with alcohol drinks.

Last, we could see several water pipes 水煙 prepared for people to try (we didn't try), but heard that there were 4 fruits flavour to try as well.

Appetizer and dessert are on buffet table during lunch hour.
Veggie for salad are with high quality. Since we had a late lunch and waiter had to clean the table, they reserve dessert for us and present as a dessert platter!
Nice service with nice food!