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2018-01-08
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Summary: Much better food than you'd expect - which is also the problem. I think they've priced themselves out of the market they're trying to cater to. Try the baked sardines!After watching two seasons of the UK Kitchen Nightmares, I’m surely as expert as anyone on how restaurants need to cater to local demand in order to survive. Tons of restaurants price themselves out of a market, not because the food is a ripoff, but just because it isn’t what the locals want. Multiply that by the cost of
After watching two seasons of the UK Kitchen Nightmares, I’m surely as expert as anyone on how restaurants need to cater to local demand in order to survive. Tons of restaurants price themselves out of a market, not because the food is a ripoff, but just because it isn’t what the locals want. Multiply that by the cost of a two story restaurant smack dab in central and you get why I’m worried about Aha.
I’ve been there two weekday evenings now and for both 30 min meals combined, there were a combined 4 customers not including me. I’ve never been for lunch but here’s the problem… it’s just not fast or cheap enough for me to consider it. The Vegan Curry and Baked Sardines were EXCELLENT (especially the baked sardines), but they both took at least 15 min to prepare with no other customers waiting. It’s possible that because it was dinner, some of the stuff was prepared from scratch, but there’s just no way I would wait that long for lunch with 10 people ahead of me.
Further, the prices are a little screwy. The vegan curry, which included 5-6 pieces of vegetables, five grain rice, and the curry sauce, cost HKD97, and the baked sardines, which included two sardines with spinach, cost HKD128. Honestly, taste-wise, they are totally worth the price, and in a upscale restaurant I’d say these were great values. The problem is, AHA is a takeaway/casual eating spot, much like Home which it replaced. I think it’s even more expensive than Home, which at least had a bit of buzz, and it still closed in less than a year. As a lunch-spot, even their bento boxes are over HKD110, which isn’t cheap for casual lunchers. As a dinner spot, this pricing works I think, but it’s not really a place you’d bring people to have a comfortable dinner: they buzz you to pick up your food from the counter after it’s ready, and it’s not the most welcoming setting, with sparse lighting and not much décor to speak of.
Here are terrible pics of the curry and sardines.
The curry was incredibly rich and I kept wondering how they got that consistency without cream… but of course it was coconut milk. Still delicious and flavorful, and I recommend it highly if you’re vegetarian or even if you don’t mind it missing meat.
I have to say a bit more about the sardines. They are sprinkled with breadcrumbs and sandwiching perfectly cooked sautéed spinach and mushrooms. Sardines can be finicky but they were cooked perfectly, and surrounded by a delicious tomato and herb puree. This is an interesting and well-executed starter, and I would be happy paying HKD128 for this at any tapas joint. The execution and flavors far exceed what I’d expect from this kind of place, and it made the horrible pizza I also had a bit more disappointing.
Here that pizza is - the less I say about it, the better.
Anyway, I’m sorry to say that while most of what I had here was delicious and worth the money (pretend that pizza never happened), the above-average pricing for a Central lunchtime crowd, lack of interest from a Central dinner crowd (due to its casualness), and clearly massive rent mean Aha is likely not long for this world. I hope they change their concept a bit so they can stick around, as they clearly have talented chefs. That seems hard to imagine though, given the investments made for the system in place, as well as the truly huge space they occupy. I hope i'm wrong, but if i'm not, I recommend you try those sardines while you can.
张贴
