Magnolia (Closed)

是日公司飯局，來到上環的Magnolia.　週四晚上六時多到達，已包場的關係，當然沒有其它食客。場內分上下兩層，下層有一個大sofa area可以稍作休息和等候入座，上層則是用餐區，有獨立的房間，私隱度很高。侍應先送上welcome drink, 是很淡的柚子汁配合了vodka.　筆者很愛vodka, 但則不大欣賞這杯雞尾酒。果汁非常淡，看似加了很多水似的，混合酒後更只有苦澀味，一點果香也沒有，令人失望。Welcome snacks是一些 crackers，餅乾夠脆，加上雞肉醬的咸香和濕潤，也算是不錯的餐小吃。先來餐湯，是海鮮雞肉湯。喝一口，也挺足料，湯內有大量雞肉絲和蟹肉，很濃味，但鮮味則稱不上。湯內沒有去骨，蟹的碎殼也有不少，不夠貼心。再來蝦沙律。試一口，沙律菜挺新鮮，配上sauce　後也很開胃。奈何蝦肉有點霉，非常失色。再來是薯蓉，味道偏甜，感覺很膩。雪菜肉絲青豆豆豉配白飯，有點令人難以致信。西餐廳的secret menu中竟然有中菜，味道亦是典型的中菜，水準非常普通，但驚嚇度十足。栗米小蛋糕。蛋糕牛油味不重，帶點脆身，內裏有數位原粒栗米，味道一般。燒排骨，肉也嫩滑，醬汁也夠濃，只是醬汁稍為酸了一點點，否則也不錯。炸雞翼，出奇地味道不大好，一方面雪藏味很濃，二來香料不夠香，只有丁點香草是不足以令雞翼入味。最後的核桃蛋糕，上層的核桃很硬，下層則過分水狀，最外層的酥皮一點酥香也沒有，牛油味欠奉，只有淡淡而很厚的麵粉層，真的令人吃不消。以這個價錢來說,應有更好的選擇. continue reading

I somehow got on Magnolia's mailing list, and last year around my birthday they sent out a special Chinese New Year deal. If you bought 20 seats (redeemable at any time in the following 18 months), you got a discount AND if you were one of the first 10 people to do so you got 10 free bottles of wine and free takeaway for 8. The email was sent out at an odd time and I noticed it as soon as it arrived, so I jumped on the deal, and managed to snag all the freebies. Go me!Anyway, 10 of the seats and the free wine were consumed last year, but my time was running out and it was time for a return trip.Magnolia works like this: you show up at 8:00pm, and there's a complimentary drink (I couldn't tell if it was alcoholic, but I'm guessing no since they're BYOB) and complimentary hors d'oeuvres. We got some good cornbread w/ a cheese spread, some seafood thingies, and something else (sorry, I was mingling and didn't take pictures to aid my memory). At around 8:30, the party moves upstairs, into three rooms with 10 seats in each.Once seated you get a soup and a salad course. The soup was seafood gumbo. There was plenty of seafood and I liked the gumbo. When I make gumbo at home, it is spicy, but this wasn't at all really. Really good: B+The salad was Caesar salad with two tiny crab cakes on the side. The salad was straightforward, but very well done: a judicious amount of dressing and crisp greens. I totally did not dig the crab cakes though: cold, soggy, with no real excuse for taking up space. Overall: OK: C+Greens: the greens were liquidy and bitter and soggy. I'm a mere Texan, so I may be trashing something that's wholly authentic here, but I'm guessing not. My wife makes some mean collards and she's from California (note: these weren't collards, I'm just making a comparison)... there wasn't much flavor here. Poor: DI take it these are mashed sweet potatoes. I'm sorry, I was answering the phone when they brought in all the main dishes and thus I missed the naming of names. Very buttery and yummy, though on the cold side (I will address this issue more at the bottom). Good: BI love catfish. My parents aren't real chef-types so growing up we had frozen catfish which they just deep-fried... but man was it good! Now that they're older they cook less and we go to a soul food place down near my high school... it's totally off the chain. I say this only to go on to say: Magnolia does terrible catfish. It's limp. It's cold. It has no crisp. It has no flaky fish texture. It has no flavor. It reminds me of chicken tenders at the cafeteria in elementary school. Poor: DSoupy, mushy veggies in a pot: okra, corn, and tomatoes. It is what it is. OK: CThe red jambalaya didn't do much to distinguish itself from plain rice. It wasn't bad in any way, and I liked it as an accompaniment, but it pales in comparison to literally all the other jambalaya I've ever had ever. It's not even got that sort of liquidy paella thing, and the rice struck me as mushy and overcooked, like maybe it had sat in a rice cooker for too long. OK: C-Chicken... dish? I won't gamble on a name here. It was mostly chicken and tomatoes. A little on the sweet side and a little simple in construction, but I thought it was good overall. B-I don't solely belly-ache. Honestly. Take the ribs for instance. This wheel's on fire, rollin down the road... AbFab. Amazing. They're really tender, they just melt in your mouth. Saucier than the dry South Texas thing I'm used to, but definitely not in a bad way. Everyone loved the ribs and could not stop talking about them. Excellent: A(Note: not to take away from the excellent ribs here, but I do encourage you to try the ones at Roundhouse, which I'd rate A+.)I'd had some cornbread as an appetizer (really top notch), so I didn't feel the need for much more bready stuff at dinner. But I thought these muffins were fine. BAbove is some grilled fish. This is where I want to take some space and just say how awesomely accomodating Magnolia is. Last time I came I brought a vegetarian friend and they made him veggie versions of every dish with animals in it. This time I had a pescatarian friend and they made her replacement dishes for all the meat dishes we got. That's the sort of thing that goes a really long way with me. Plus this fish was pretty good (I got to try some). I literally could not... OK, so I had a bite or two of the pie. I am not a sweets person and usually by the end of dinner I am full anyway. So I don't really know what pecan pie should taste like. This seemed pretty good, and everyone else seemed to manage to eat the whole thing. (How???) B+A few words on food temperature: all of Magnolia's food is much better when it's piping hot. I know this because two of my friends canceled at the last minute, and I took home their portions as takeaway. Coming out of the microwave, many of the things I thought were tepid, bland, or just OK, were noticeably better. Somehow in the process from kitchen to serving dish to plate, the food just loses too much heat and it's like you're eating a poorly executed Thanksgiving dinner, where the potatoes are cold and the gravy's all congealed (if you're American, you know what I'm talking about). Concluding thoughts: Look, I like Magnolia. I think there are good people who run it, who are totally nice and accomodating. The hors d'oeuvres, soup, salad, and dessert are spot-on. But between (a) the coldness, which definitely hampers, handicaps, or destroys the potatoes, catfish, and veggies and (b) the task of cooking 30 portions of each dish all together, the main part of the meal figuratively falls apart. Except the ribs, which only literally fall apart. The experience is a fun one, and I'm not regretful I bought 20 seats lo those 15 months ago. But it's only OK. C+ continue reading

A friend booked this private kitchen for her birthday. She shared the menu with me, and I was excited. It's been a few years since I was last in NOLA, and I'm a huge fan of the Creole and Cajun flavors. The process is also unusual -- you show up at 8 pm and mill around in a common area downstairs while they pass the appetizers around. You're allowed to bring your own wine -- free corkage -- and they pour it for you. You have a view of the open kitchen (which you walk through to go upstairs). The decorations on the walls are a little weird -- I counted six kitchen weighing scales up on the wall.On to the food. First, some bread with a pesto-cheese spread. Very nice, but was that because we were hungry? Then a platter of crab legs -- nothing special. Finally some tiny jalapeno muffins which had no taste at all -- not spicy, not muffiny, nothing. But we were onto our second glasses of wine, so it didn't really seem to matter.At 8:30, we proceeded upstairs. Our pary of ten had its own private room -- dimply lit, long table. Door closed. We sat. More wine was poured. We waited. First came the chicken-seafood gumbo. Over-spiced, no kick. Disappointing. Next, again after a wait, a small platter of crawfish (flown in to HK?) salad. The crawfish was friend in batter so it was crispy, but again -- I'd eaten a tastier cousin at a cha chaan teng the previous night. Again a long wait, and then the main dishes appeared all at once -- the idea was to share, family style. There was a big bowl of white rice (which I did not taste), another of jambalaya (bland, sticky, short on sausage -- call it low-quality chow faan), chicken curry (tasteless), mustard greens with bacon (I guess no one's flying in any collard), a saucer of REALLY CREAMY and thick mashed potatoes (heart attack central?), and a HUGE stack of ribs in bbq sauce. I'll give them this -- the ribs were soft and fell off the bone easy. (Later, though, a friend complained that he only took one rib because the one he'd got was mostly fat. I actually like the fat, so I didn't care about that.) The sauce was also good -- not overpowering, not too sweet. There was also corn bread, which was soft and fluffy but unremarkable. It was small so I ate mine all at once (two bites). My wife, though, said she saved half of hers to end the meal with, and when it was cold, all she could taste was BAKING SODA. More on this below.And finally, AGES later, slices of pecan pie. Clumpy crust, unsweet filling, but really nice crunchy pecans. We finally left at 11. It might have been a good evening, but it took TOO LONG. And if the food isn't up to scratch, what's the point of dwelling? But the worst was to come. Later that night, I started bloating. I couldn't sleep at night, for reflux. I was bloated all the next day. I met my friend, and he too had a similarly uncomfortable experience. All I can guess is, the ribs must have been tenderized with baking soda. Who knows what else had baking soda in it -- the curry, the soup, the so-called jambalaya? My goodness, we paid 500 + tips for this?? Never again. continue reading

Magnolia split into 2 floors with the open kitchen at the bottom floor where the reception and entrance is. 2nd floor has plenty different sizes of dining room, with brick red wall, a high ceiling and chandeliers casting a somewhat murky light. There was no wine list but free corkage, and the dinner was a set menu for all diners at HK$500 each. Cuisine: American Food rating: 4/10*Service: 5/10 Ambiance: 5/10Price: HK$500pax* Food Rating: 6/10 is equivalent to 1 Michelin star, 8/10 to two Michelin stars, and 9/10 or 10/10 to three Michelin starsBlack bean soup (3/10)The soup was thick, perfectly separated from its greasiness. The black beans were fully cooked and blended well with all the species and the chillies gave some heat to the dish.Soft cell crab (4/10)Crab was deep-fried nicely, crispy yet juicy. The texture of soft cell crab maintained, though if wasn’t serve hot enough.Ribs (5/10)The ribs was very good, entirely avoiding the chewiness, it was very moist and tender. The meat melted inside your mouth with the spices blended within. Pumpkin mash, stir-fried rice (4/10)The pumpkin was made into pure with plenty of think cream, seasoned fairly with a hint of sweetness. The fried rice was sticky and full with authentic spices. Service was fine, but if the waiters have explained what we were eating would be preferable, since menu was not offered. Paying HK$500 for home made cooking seem quite a lot to me. For sure, this is American cuisine, because the portion were extremely large. Give me a thumbs up if you like it! continue reading

so, my birthday celebrations begin. the bunch kindly celebrates with me every year, and i keep them entertained by finding a nice n special space to sit everyone in. this year it is magnolia.now if you read the other long article about mognolia, it is mentioned that there is nice living room kinda thingy and you are facing a kitchen area. when i first got there, i thought the dinner was an event where we also had to do the cooking. lol.luckily we got the couch and the lot was happily enjoying their appetizers with the wines and champagnes we brought. no cover on byobs, bravo!!! (the 12 of us drank 10 sth bottles i think. imagine if they charged us for each bottle...)as appetizers, they served little crab claws, some cheese thingy in spoons and crostini with this cheese dip thing:the claws were slightly too tiny and they clung onto the shell quite tight. nth too remarkable. but the cheese dip thingy was nice!!! esp with the anchovies/pesto like paste at the very bottom of the chunky... i can eat this stuff all day long....now everyone sat in the "living room" until eight sth, and they brought us upstairs to our dining rooms. long tables in private rooms. not exactly cozy, but you do get the privacy. additional point for the very sufficient air-con - usually these rooms would be extremely stuffy.so the food comes... not sure if they serve similar stuff everytime, but i'll show some of the things we had which were worth mentioning.somewhat like a very thick minestrone, less on the sourness and more on exotic flavors and herbs. when this was served, we sat for a while wondering whether this is a dip for sth or a soup... pretty intense flavor, nice!There was also this salad with soft shell crab. a tad too salty.now this is DOPE!!! i dont care how much butter they used in making this but i tell you i will continue downing these no matter how full i am. scent, flavor, texture, nothing to complain. ribs. think magnolia is famous for this? they are nice, being cooked to the point where the meat is also falling off (as mentioned in other reviews) and the choice of ingredients they use to marinate is remarkable too... yet, given the nature of cooking ribs, i find this an "easy" dish despite the nice flavors. not sth you'd die for when it can be prepared at home.the meal ends with a nice slab of pecan pie (apart from my birthday cake). when you fork into it, you might feel weird coz the texture seem really soft and you'd think this might have been sitting around for quite some time. but itz all good. there is not alot of pecan pies around town where you can benchmark this one against, but one the whole it is fulfilling.service-wise is ok, just that they have to walk up and down whenever you summons someone. don't expect lightning speed service. price-wise... call it value and efforts for money?on the whole, a nice night, a nice gathering, a happy group, all well-fed and plump. thanks to all who joined the dinner, special thanks to you who makes a cake every year, special special thanks to you who stopped by hk and made it to my celebration, and super special thanks to my beloved who organized the dinner. continue reading