Green is perhaps the worst hotel coffee shop I've ever encountered in Hong Kong.
Similar to some of you, I have heard of endless compliments about how beautiful the interior design of Hotel Icon is, which is also something that the hotel is famous for, mainly.

Yet, my Sunday brunch experience here was very unpleasant, especially for my friend who have been to most major hotel cafes in Hong Kong. We expected Hotel Icon to live up to the same, orelse similar, standard of service and quality. We believed this is a basic element of hotel management and servicing in today's hotel industry in Hong Kong.First of all, I must say that, the environment in Green was nice, but not overly complimented as many others. Yes, the roof was high and there was a huge piece of green embedded into the wall. Other than this, I did not find anything else impressive me in particular. The design of the furnitures reminded me of W Hotel's The Living Room. Actually, a great deal of similarities were spotted in the designing concept and the use of colours. Altogether this did not make Green stood out in my first impression towards the cafe. So, at this point, all I could look forward to was the food.. which, did not impress me any further at all. We were first served our appetizer - Egg benedict with croissant. I myself is a huge fan of egg benedict. But this dish disappointed me. The croissant was cooled down when served which would be something totally unexpected to find in a hotel coffee shop. Fine, I moved on to my egg benedict. Out of my expecation again, the egg benedict was flavourless, salty and soggy. Seriously? Was this even a qualified egg benedict? Something that could be served in a hotel??And my another appetizer - The smoked salmon and parma ham salad did not make the situation any better. I felt kind of cheated by looking at the extremly small portion, worst of all was that the salad again, felt so flavourless. A lack of dressing was clearly the problem. Another appetizer for my friend - the Grilled Lobster. At first sight, we thought it was an amazement to enjoy a half-sided lobster as appetizer, in the price of a brunch set. We soon turned to our disappointment when my friend realized that there were barely any lobster meat be found in the shelf. Sigh. "A book can never be judged with its cover" - totally applies to this grilled lobster. I could not emphasis how important HYGIENE is in any hotel coffee shops. I've been to Island Shangri-la, W Hotel, Riz-Carlton and many more.. and the standard of hygiene was so, so important to the training of the staff. And perhaps here in Hotel Icon, due to mostly "fresh graduate faces" (I expected most of them as fresh grads or summer interns), their mindset of HYGIENE was clearly problematic and untrained. It shocked my friend and I entirely out of our blue when my friend's cutlery for appetizers, were placed together with the main dish cutlery, instead of taking away with the dishes. The thing was, the cutlery for appetizers were already soaked with mixture of sauces and flavours, PLUS a vege dangling on the knife. Gosh! How on earth could a hotel waitress be leaving that on the table, together with the NEW CUTLERY? This is so, so unacceptable. I seriously question the staff training here at Green, or Hotel Icon perhaps. Afterall, they are all under the same management company, don't they? Moving on to the main dish, I ordered a fish fillet, with the only hope of finding the main dish more satisfying. However, the fish fillet was no surprise or whatsoever. FLAVOURLESS (yet again), small, and just.. very, very unsurprising! I'm running out of words here.. but just that I could never imagine such a fish fillet be served in a hotel's coffee shop, something that I could even cook it myself in my first attempt. I'm sorry but the fish fillet was a failure due to the flavourless cooking. I've been mentioning Hygiene..hygiene and HYGIENE! throughout this review. And gosh, while we were waiting for our dessert, we could not possibily believed what we saw -- State of mess could be seen around quite a few tables for being left unattended for more than 10 minutes! I understand how busy a Sunday brunch period could be for a small coffee shop like Green. And at the same time, I understanad that the waiters and waitresses could be very busy to spare the time to clean up a table. But.. for leaving it more than 10 minutes? That was completely unacceptable. We did not pay to go to a random western restaurant in the street or a shopping mall.. we were here for a hotel's level of servicing! And finally, finally. The legendary cupcakes. The one and only dish that brushed a smile on our faces. The one and only satisfying dish out of all. Unfortunately, there were only lemon and double chocolate when we ordered our dessert. Too bad we did not have the chance to try out Green Tea. Highly recommend you guys to withhold your cupcakes preference before you proceed to appetizer.

All in all, our experience here in Green was truly, completely, disastrous and unacceptable.
For your information, the whole brunch procedure took us 2.5 hours in total Yes, 2.5 hours! I'm not even joking. We barely finished our cupcakes when we were asked by the manager to pay our bill for the afternoon tea's customers.
The undurably long hours of waiting, the lack of hygiene training (or mindset even), the poor servicing on a hotel's level basis and the below-average food were all degrading factors for Green.
No wonder the first thing we did when we were walking out from Green, was to grab the Senior Manager and complained all about it. By the way, the S. Manager looked quite shocked with the level of unsatisfaction we experienced. Clearly those were the things that Green itself was not expecting.
If only I was a journalist for food magazine, I would not have gone easy on Green. Too bad I wasn't, oh well. No more next time, for sure.

It was a relaxing weekend. CM’s friends called for an impromptu dinner when I was having lunch with him in Al Dente. It was random, but why not? There’s nothing more joyful than spending the weekend with your loved one and close friends.

CM was considerable (or careful?) enough to ask his lovely friend to book the table half an hour earlier so that I wouldn’t be starved to death. The lounge was quite spacious with a nearly two-level high ceiling. Though without the harbour view, the decoration, dim lights and cozy seats still offered a relaxing environment for a long chat. This indeed suits the hotel’s chic and stylish image.

While waiting for his friends, we first ordered a Nicoise salad. The bread basket arrived first together with butter and olive dip. They can be happily skipped. But the disappointment was swept away by the Nicoise salad, which came quickly. It has all the usual Nicoise salad ingredients like tuna, black olive, boiled eggs and mixed green, except potato. The tuna was slightly grilled with a beautiful inner layer which was still raw - my favourite style! It was cooked right, though I expect stronger taste and smell. As our friends arrived one by one, we ordered our dishes one at a time, starting with a Portobello and red pepper salad, then fried calamari, and then cheese platter. Portobello is supposed to be meaty, but the one that night was rather “skinny”. Fortunately, grilled red pepper never failed to please me. After having fired calamari in Piccolo, I have been difficult to please by this dish at other places. This one was good, but there was better one. The cheese platter had Brie, goat blue cheese, and another cheese which I have forgotten (that wasn’t impressive anyway). I loved the tangy goat blue cheese most! After the gang had finally mustered, we began our feast first with a seafood platter. The mussels were a bit dry, but the prawn and lobster were chewy and fresh enough. The sweet crab legs and clams were the most impressive and sought-after items. Overall, the platter was not as good as I expected, but not bad either. How can I possibly skip wine in a seafood feast, especially as Green’s wine list was so tempting? I had a Burgundy Chablis, followed by a glass of Champagne. The former was fruity and honey, and went rather nicely with my grilled tuna.

The Oyster Chowder which I had much expectation was, sadly, not god enough. The slight oyster taste was a bit overwhelmed by the creamy and rich soup. I did not like the texture either. As I supposed to eat the bread with the soup, the latter should not be that thick. In fact, there was not much soup left. Perhaps they were soaked into the bread already? Fortunately, the outer crust of the bread was crispy and it was soft inside. Compared with my frd’s Mediterranean Saffron Seafood soup, it was way too heavy in both taste and portion. If you have small stomachs like CM and I, the Chowder was enough for three to share.

The next to come was baked sea bass. Sea bass has been one of my most favourite fish. Its timely-cooked, snow-white flesh was elegantly placed on a bed of tomato bed. I called it a tomato “bed” as it was puree-like. The contrast of red and white remained charmingly poignant in the dim light, oddly reminded me of the flag of England... The tomato sauce was overwhelmingly strong though, so I ate the fish with only a little bit of it and left most of it to be finished off separately.The mushroom risotto was another highlight of the night. The risotto was chewy, and the creamy sauce gave you a mouthful of mushroom flavour. There was nothing to complain about, except it was gone within five minutes!

The clam Linguini was nice too. Apparently, we were lucky enough to have fresh clams supply on that day. : ) We then moved to the desserts. The molten Chocolate cake had some room for improvement, as its heart did not melt and the cake was a bit dry. Fortunately, they did the apple strussel right. I was glad that they did not, as some restaurants in Hong Kong did, mix up apple strudel with apple strussel. I love the crispy sheet dough with crunchy and buttery toppings. However, I would like to add green apple to the fillings, as its sourness can create another layer to the flavour. I really did not expect much beforehand, but I found the whole meal quite satisfying. I also loved the cozy environment and would definitely come back for a casual dinner with friends.

Went there for a casual meal with a friend as many people on Openrice said it's good. The restaurant is quite chic with some nice design features. The food was nice and well presented but it was a bit pricey especially as the service was not that good just like other people said.

For some TST is considered the dark side, where you always get lost, where the weather seems less sunny and everybody wants to sell you fake watches, but for others it's considered the shopping paradise of hong kong(especially people with a lot of RMB's would agree with this). I belong to the first kind of people. Everytime I cross the harbour I get lost in TST, but there are a few reasons why I happily would accept to get lost. One of them are the cupcakes of Green. Although it's not the level of Adrian Zumbo, but enough for me to accept the waste of minutes of being side tracked in the dark side.....
Green is located in TST East at hotel ICON in front of the daily tours from China. As the name suggest it's decorated with a lot green which gives the lounge / restaurant a relaxing and comfortable place to spend some quality time. The massive wall decorated with grass and plants is the icon for this place. Unfortunately it hasn't got a link with the menu or you should associate pasta and cupcakes with being Green.
Green is a place for wannabees, yuppies, young professionals, girls gossip night or just a catch up. it's a trendy place which serves decent food. Light and bright for lunch and dark enough for a night out.
The starter: cupcakes, the main: cupcakes and for dessert: cupcakes....but then you would forget that they also have a decent european menu.
The medium roasted lamb was as requested and tasted juicy and chewy, a decent dish, although it wasn't seasoned consistently across lamb, therefore some parts more was salty than others, but still reasonable and not irritating enough to complain. The Pasta with chunky beef was well cooked. This is a big compliment as most places cannot even cook pasta properly. the scallop salad with tomato was a well designed dish, fresh and tasty. The baked scallop with the freshness of the tomato is a good match. The presentation made the finishing touch. The choices of drinks is large enough to fit the status of a lounge restaurant of this calibre. It strikes me though that many of this places the staff is not well trained in offering advice to customers regarding the drinks that could go well with their choice of food. Offering the customer with an even greater dining experience for nitwits like me we would like to be guided through the story of the food and drinks of the menu, but that's a general complain to most of the restaurants. The restaurants should invest in their people, let them eat the dishes, let them taste the wine lists and teach them what dish should be accompanied by which drink in order to make a difference to the customer.
As I forgot to mention I started with a cupcake before the entrees. The cupcakes gives this place an extra dimension, the variety is big. The cake has a pleasant bite, moist and firm, which means they don't break that easy after one bite. The icing is not too sweet and its balance with the sweetness of the cupcake. The difference between regular cupcakes and good ones are if they lying for a whole day and still taste moist. And they do taste still nice after a whole day. Green offers the right combination to have a great afternoon or night of sweetness and coziness.

I would recommend to go with your friends on a lazy sunday for a lunch or brunch and order different cupcakes to share and enjoy the sunday with drinks and cakes. And at night time bring out a friend to have long conversations with decent and fine food to accompany it. I would rate it 3 pandas,

Green, worth to waste minutes of getting lost

Phu

ps: please spent some money on the errors on the menu card, a typo regarding the main meals, now it's headline stated entree....it doesn't look that professional and fits the rest of the environment