Yin Yang     鴛鴦飯店  

We went there for a company lunch and it's still very yummy. With $280 per person for a lunch meal with organic soup, tofu appertizer, veggies, baked chicken, baked rice with crab and dessert, it's good for us (only if you are not a big meat eater).

If the set menu you don't like, you can actually provide them your budget and have them design a different menu for you.

I had such an amazing time at Yin Yang last Friday, I felt the need to shout about it and set up my own account on Open Rice!

I know Valentine's day was last Monday, but I thought the Chinese Valentine's day was on Friday instead so I had asked my bf to arrange somewhere nice for our 5th Valentine's dinner. It was a surprise and I had no idea where I was going and what cuisine it was.

It shouldn't be that hard to find the restaurant if my bf had printed out a map, so we had to call the restaurant to ask for directions, but they were very friendly and helpful on the phone. As I have not heard of Yin Yang before, when the lady answered the phone and revealed the name of the restaurant, I was imagining a huge busy Chinese restaurant with lots of diners eating already as it was a 8pm reservation.

When we've eventually located the restaurant on Ship Street, which is a quiet street for a Friday night, I was looking out for a massive typical Chinese restaurant entrance with automatic sliding doors. But to my surprise, it was a very discreet Japanese style sliding door (which isn't the main door) and thought to myself "Hmmm, interesting, this is not what I was expected!".

As we went through to the dining area, there were 2 other couples and the remaining table was for us. There is an open kitchen towards the back, glittered with lots of vintage Chinese bowls, cups and tea pots. But there was no chef there, so the dining area wasn't perfumed by the smell of cooking.

There was a menu rolled up with my bf's name printed on it, thought it was quite a nice touch. As it was a set menu, you don't have to order anything upon arrival, except my bf called me earlier that day with a really strange question.. "Do you fancy slow roasted pork or yellow earth chicken?", I went for the chicken and am glad that I did in the end!

For once I had forgotten to bring my camera, so I can't share photos with you here, but if you want to take someone out for a special and authentic Chinese meal, I would strongly recommend it and go and see it for yourself. The presentation is immaculate, the quality of the food (Organic veggies from their farm in the New Territories), the skills of Chinese cooking had blown me away. You don't feel rushed at all because it's reservation only, so you don't have any time pressure to turn the table round by Xpm.

The most impressive dish was "Soup without water". Sounds interesting? Go and see it for yourself!

p.s. I think they offer seasonal menus, so if you're reading this post Spring 2011, it may change!

Dinner set: HK$680 per person

My favourite is the Baked Chicken but sorry that I forgot to take a picture. Three of us went there to try out and it's full of surprises. The Chinese plum wine is nice too and we enjoyed so much. I think it's definitely worth to try once and experience a different level of fusion food. Somehow, it may stimulate you and give you some inspiration to cook better at home. Remember to book ahead of time because it's a private kitchen.

this restaurant was way over-rated. Took my father-in-law here, and it was one of the most disappointing meals we had as compared to other private-kitchen or speakeasies. The so-called oven-baked chicken is worst than the "Costco" Rotisserie chicken we had in US. The suckling pig was pretty bad without taste and like chewing on rubber. The rest of the dishes are very basic, which definitely does not deserve the rating and the price we paid.

Last week, I went to this resturant which was recommended by "Ah So" in TV show. The food was above average. It is worth to have a try since the price is over 500 per head.

We ordered the menu around 560+10% service charge. The chicken was the best among all the dishes and the bonelss sardines were my favourite. The other dishes were average and not my taste especially the dum sum.

This resturant doesn't serve any walk-in customers. We booked the table around 1 week ago and then the resturant sent the menu to you for selection ranging from 5XX to 1XXX. Then, we chose the the one around $560 per set with 10% service charge. Furthermore, we also need to sign a contract for deposit charge if we don't go the resturant after booking. We went to this resturant yesterday and the place was good. The dishes were served one by one. However, I didn't taste the different for the organic vegetables. I was impressed by the dish of carrot which was restructed to have the same color and shape like a chesse. For the chicken, it is good, too. For the pig, it was a bit fat.

Overall, the food is satisfactory but the price is a bit expensive.

Went to Yin Yang for dinner. My key complaint is that most of the dishes were quite bland. We chose the $560 set menu. The appetizers sounded good on paper but most of the items didn't have much flavor. Two dishes that tasted ok were roast chicken and roast baby pig. Most of the other dishes were quite disappointing, especially since the meal was not cheap.

I don't think I will go back.

Last night I finally had the chance to visit Yin Yang (鴛鴦), a fusion-Chinese private kitchen. A colleague of mine told me about this some time ago, when it was still located in the boonies. It has since moved into a new location in the heart of Wanhai's happening area. The restaurant has only 3 tables - one on the ground floor and two on the second floor. I would recommend that people book the table on the ground floor, since the second floor is noisy due to both the proximity of the tables as well as the echo from the small dining space.

We had pre-chosen the Menu Yin Yang, which we were told would be served over around 3 hours. There were many courses, and we were definitely stuffed at the end of the evening...

There were four parts to the Headlines, all in small portions. These were:

Organic Seasonal Sampler / Homemade Preserves (野家拼) - the cubes were made from sweet peppers, and there was black sesami sauce in the container. The Mexican chilis were apparently really, really spicy... This was OK but not really special.

Smoked Duck Breast / Organic Fruit Marmalade (黃土烟醬鴨) - the duck was pretty nice, like the French magret de canard. The marmalade was very sweet and delicious.

Drunken Abalone (樽煮罎子鮑魚) - not very drunken as it turns out, but the abalone was tender. Served with homemade oyster sauce and chrysanthemem.

Moon River (水中月, Black pig dumpling) - created to commemorate the Mid-Autumn Festival, it looks better than it tastes.

The first main course was the very delicious Yellow Earth Chicken (民謠黃土雞). This was presented whole and cut into pieces. Very nicely roasted, with lots of flavor and crispy skin. Served with chopped ginger sauce (沙薑醬) made from organic ginger. Everyone loved the chicken, and it brings to mind my favorite Bresse chicken from San San Trois.

Another meat dish followed, this time called Red Hot (跟紅頂白, hot baby pig with kumquat marmalade). Basically it's the chef's version of roast suckling pig, and came to the table already chopped into pieces. My first piece, with lots of skin, was excruciatingly salty and needed to be dripped with the lychee marmalade. I also had to wash it down with water and wine. My second piece, part of the rack of ribs, had really tender, flavorful meat without the salt. The skin was so well roasted that it basically had the same texture and taste as the pork rinds that one buys as snack from a store. Well...they are, after all, the exact same thing!

With the Sampan Season (水上人家, Sampan Style Seafood of The Day) we switched into seafood. Today's fare was baby lobster, and it was OK.

The Stone-ground Yin Yang Bean Curd Duet (石磨鴛鴦豆腐) was interesting, with half of the tofu made from black sesame. But it wasn't that tasty without either the spicy ikura sauce or a spicier chili sauce. There was also some custard cream topped with small dried shrimps (桜海老).

The Live Fish Drama (活魚演) consisted of a large fish done two ways - some of the flesh was taken off the bone and made into a fish porridge. This was done quite nicely. The bones were deep-fried and the result was pretty dramatic. The rest of the fish was then served separately and dipped in chili sauce. This part reminded me of steamed Japanese anago (穴子) in terms of texture.

The HK Yin Yang Rice (鴛鴦飯, Surf & Turf version) was very good. The centerpiece is a large cuttlefish stuffed with rice cooked with black truffle sauce. The cuttlefish was soft and tender. Surrounding it were chunks of wagyu beef brisket, which were fatty and yummy, leaving a lingering taste in my mouth. There was even some burnt rice crackling at the bottom of the cast iron dish.

Organic Vegetable (玻璃青菜) was not bad, either, and dominated by okra.

We were stuffed by this point, but there were still the desserts to come... a trio of them! First there was the perssimmon ice cream, which was more like custard cream in terms of consistency. Then we had the sesame-filled glutinous rice ball in black sticky rice - pretty decent. Finally another custard/puddng.

I think overall the food was good but it's not cheap, and there were only a couple of "wow" dishes.

original blogpost with pictures and notes on wine: http://chi-he-wan-le.blogspot.com/2008/09/in-memory-of-didier-dagueneau-kind-of.html

Been wanting to try the food but never made our way to Yuen Long. Now that they are open in Wanchai I thought I must try.

The BF and I went for lunch. There were two price ranges: $180 for beef patty or steamed pork, $280 for the roast suckling pig with Chinese crepes. We had one beef and one suckling pig. Both came with soup and dessert.

The soup was a beef and organic vegetable broth. Although the vegetables were fresh, the soup itself was nothing special, and slightly on the thin side.

The beef patty: Came with a half boiled egg served separately in an egg cup. It s basically a steamed (?) beef burger with rice. The waitress claimed it was wagyu beef but because of the way it has been minced and made into a soft patty we couldn't really tell the grade of the meat. The taste was ok, but the worst thing about the dish was that it was not hot enough. The sauce that came with it was cold. Was it supposed to be like that? I really don't know, but it would have been decidedly better if it was warmer.

Then came the crepes. Supposed to be Chinese style, the type with dried shrimps and spring onion etc. mixed with the batter. They made it into a roll and filled it with orgainc lettuce and fried egg. Because all three ingredients had little taste in itself, I found this dish rather bland.

Then we waited and waited for the roast pork. Finally a pork leg came, and I must say it was a huge portion for one. The waitress cut it open to discover that it was still raw inside. Took it back for another 15 minutes. When it came back it was still not completely cooked, but by this time we were running out of patience and decided just to eat the cooked parts, which, to be fair, tasted good.

Dessert: One peanut and sweet potato dumpling each. Quite nice.

The whole time the only thing the waitress kept stressing about was the vegetables being organic and home grown. But so what?

We don't mind paying $200 for 窩蛋牛飯, as long as we feel we are getting our money's worth. Unfortunately we have not been made to feel this way at all. In fact we felt slightly ripped off. The tastes were ok but nothing special. It wasn't worth the premium they are asking for.

Maybe dinner will be better as they seem to concentrate on that a lot more. But unfortunately given our somewhat disappointing experience we will not be coming back again.

One last thing: total bill came to $506 including 10% service charge. We gave them $520, expecting to get the change back, but the waitress kept fiddling with the till and took such a long time to get $14 from it, the BF got impatient and we left in the end. Not that we really cared about the change. We probably would not have taken alot of it back anyway, but not offering it back to the customer, especially with such sneaky gesture, is not very nice at all.