Bongopuppy的个人专页

This is just a very popular restaurant, with lots of expat customers too. We came here out of a Michelin recommendation online. They recommended only 3 Vietnamese restaurants in Hong Kong and this one has an accolade among the three.Probably very minimal decoration, which can only be described as rough. No problem. I have been to many footstalls and road side restaurants in Hanoi and HMC. Some also have no decor. Let's move onto the food.They are very busy on a Friday evening, even though we arrived around 8.45pm. Good sign of nice food, yes?But I have never tasted such dishes in Vietnam, where the food are clean and flavors are clear. This place serves dishes that are best described as muddy in taste. But, worst of all, they taste nothing like any place I have been to in Vietnam.The rice sheet rolls with shrimp inside are unfortunately marred by a very tough roll. They also stuck on the plastic plate they were served on.The Cha Ca, a fish dish, was a piece of bland fried fish accompanied by a serving of rice vermicelli. and an unidentified dipping sauce. I loved the restaurant in Hanoi called Cha Ca La Vong. The Cha Ca there is a dish of fried fish cubes served in a wok over an open flame table cooker, in an oil bath with turmeric and heaps of dill herbs, accompanied by rice vermicelli to soak up the sauce. Cha Ca La Vong should know what they are doing, having invented the dish and has the street named after them. What they serve at An Choi is not even a shadow of that dish. It was just a different dish altogether.A dish of snails in a creamy sauce, turned out to be the common sea snails of Hong Kong but this sort of preparation did not bring out their taste. Largely left untouched.Beef rolls in some kind of seaweed or leaves. Can't tell. Not impressed.We ordered many dishes and frankly, none of them tasted remotely of anything in Vietnam and it is better just to forget them.Staff are very friendly. …查看更多

This is the newest hip place in Hong Kong and it is at soft opening as of this writing.They have done it. Headed by Chef Jamie, formerly of Mr. Wolf in Central. And top professionals from the leading venues in Hong Kong for the Maitre D and the bartender. Best Negroni. There is a front porch which is very useful for smokers. The layout is very nice. The charcoal grill is in plain sight. The dishes it produces are wonderful. Obviously Melody aims for a higher spending crowd than Wolf but the dishes are still very reasonably priced. Especially compared to the fine dining restaurants in this town. The European dishes are basically a cross between Henry at the Rosewood Hotel and European fine dining like Ecriture. But at significantly lower price points. Turbot, lamb, beef, and many other dishes benefited from the creative use of the charcoal grill. We had too many dishes to remember each of them. There is a music room around the back which is quite nice for a small concert. …查看更多

Came here for breakfast. Nicely surprised that there is a nice place to sit around before the office opens.Ordered their English breakfast. Which includes one coffee.Baked beans - Worse than canned ones. Can't put my finger on what went wrong exactly. The sauce tasted stale. Beans had no texture. What a mess. Portobello mushroom - okBacon - OK.Fried eggs - OK Crispy fried potato cakes - as it they had on some sort of chewy armor. No good.Sausage - no idea what sort of sausage this was but it was not good tasting. It really should have been the star of the dish and it all comes down to the quality of the sausage, which was clearly absent. Two fries eggs on thick toast. May be some kind of French baguette. Toast was completely soggy. It even had clear grill marks on it. May be a left over from the day before? Fried tomato - cold. Not much taste. Coffee - the worst. Tasted like some weird Chinese herbal medicine. This place looks quite nice when I walked by at 8. 30am. Didn't know breakfast can be so appalling. …查看更多

相比其他高級下午茶地方，Dalloyau是我比較喜歡的。他们的龍蝦沙律的組合很好。乳酪三文治也不错。咖啡方面味道較淡，但與食物也算配套。這是一個日式的法國餅店，下午茶時亦有意粉等供應。吃到一半，後面有一桌客人離開。員工們立即用殺毒噴霧遠距離大量大噴座位，整间餐廳立即充滿了非常刺鼻的氣味，我整個鼻腔都被侵入。令我立即想起多年前飛機降落泰國和印度之前及起飛之後的有殺無放過的野蠻行為。以後都不乘搭這類航空公司，也以後不敢光顧這餐廳了。噴了後，桌上的食物也不敢碰，胃囗也沒有了。奇怪的是，香港好像並沒有其他餐廳這樣做！評分方面，是當衛生問題或是服務问题呢？兩者都是。但是不應惡評待應生們，因為大可能是管理系統的問題！…查看更多

Bought two chicken pies for takeover. Heated them up in the usual way within half an hour. The pasty was very bland. But the filling. The filling. It tasted nothing like what one would expect. It probably wasn't spoiled. But it was just awful. One bite of the filling, that was it. Dumped it out. A while later I realized the only way to get this taste out of my mouth was to have a mouth rinse.How would I describe it?The color of the filling was grey. Certainly no indication it was made of a bechamel or cream sauce. One would be reminded of the "chicken tail" or the Parson's Nose on the chicken, minus the chicken taste. May be the taste is rancid? The shop was nice. Service with a smile. But this chicken pie was just in tolerably awful.Just tasted their egg tart too. I must say I am not much of a fan of the Hong Kong style egg tart, when compared to the Portuguese Pasteis de Nata. But that's not the point I am making. The pastry was obviously layered, but it was powdery. Very strange. I don't know if it is something to do with the oil they use. …查看更多

Little Napoli serves the real Neopolitan pizza. They are the entire opposite to the American pizza, which most of us are brought up on. So do come here with an open mind as it is a different dish altogether and not to be compared. The Little Napoli pizzas are excellent. I try to eat it on the small dining table up front, just as it comes out of the oven, not sliced, not shared, with a knife and a fork. When I had my first pizza in Naples nearly 40 years ago, I was shocked. How can this city claim to be the inventor of the pizza, and yet almost everything about this pizza is wrong in some ways compared to the pizzas I know? The truth is, the Neopolitan pizza is an entirely different dish. It is fine dining with the best ingredients. Not intended for munching in a hurry. Of course I also enjoy the American pizzas and Roman pizzas. They are just entirely different. These fine ingredients are some of the best local produce in and around Naples. Such as - Mozzarella Bufula DOP (from water buffaloes, government certified as being of protected origin) Fior di latte (fine cheese from other cow species) Tomato from the Vesuvius volano region. Basil from Campana. Many more. Many conform to the modern Italian concept of "slow food", of sustainable origin and to be carefully cooked.Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (VPN Association) prescribed the standards that must be observed before a pizza can be called Neopolitan pizza. These excellent ingredients are not spoiled by being baked hard into the pizza dough and are somewhat soupy. They are kept fresh, not browned.The pizza has a soft bottom crust but a puffy, lightly charred crust on the border. So you can choose to eat with the thin or the thick. …查看更多

Came here for dinner. Place was full and there was a line waiting outside. Looked promising.I have been to Vietnam a few times and do like the taste very much, and tend to avoid Vietnamese restaurants in Hong Kong because none I tried so far came close. May be the odd pho place. This is a Black Sheep group restaurant and their restaurants tend to be quite good. One is the New Punjab Club. So we had a reasonable level of expectation for Chom. To be on the safe side we ordered some of the signature dishes (those with a red mark against it on the menu.)However, as the evening wore on, nothing here tasted Vietnamese at all. To be fair they were mostly boring, not offensively bad. Except that one or two stood out to be exceedingly poor.I doubt there were any Vietnamese among the kitchen staff, or at least the menu designer may not have been to Vietnam. If they think that people general don't know what they are eating, and the hip laid back atmosphere is all that matters, then they definitely got it right in Chom. The crispy spring rolls were over dark but somehow managed to be not crispy. Not remembering what the menu said, it was impossible to tell what the filling was. The still wet lettuce used as a wrap made it worse.The chicken wing weren't better or worse than a hundred other generic western diners. The Kaffir Lime Chicken Cabbage salad was simply awful. It had a very small amount of hard fried bits that one cannot identify as chicken. It had no distinctive taste at all. But the worst to come was the fish Cha Ca Hanoi. It was made of the usual low cost frozen sole fillet. But it is a piece of limp cooked fish that had no taste, on a bed of vermicelli, with a small amount of dill scattered around, and the whole thing sits on top of some insipid liquid, much like how an old wrecked car would sit on a pool of slimy motor oil that leaked out over time. In Hanoi, the most famous place for Cha Ca is a hundred year old restaurant La Vong Cha Ca. In fact the street was named after it. Oil is heated in a pot at the table, with tumeric and a large quantity of dill, then cilantro, spring onion, peanuts and chili. A generous amount of deep fried fish cubes are cooked together in the pot. It is a landmark restaurant in Hanoi. What they call Cha CA at Chom is an annoying insult. I had some hopes for the braised and shredded beef, having seen the beef on its own in the cooking area. But the dish came with the beef sitting on a very large quantity of vermicelli, and served wrapped in a large piece of wet and limp lettuce. The lettuce easily broke, and I had to wash my hands right afterwards. There was no hint of any characteristic Vietnamese herbs or spices. The beef was simply done a disservice. It is a wonder why Hong Kong does not have better Vietnamese restaurants. The hundreds of pho places can be good, if they don't for some reason adulterate the clear broth served in Vietnam into a dark broth heavily scented with cloves. That is just not the way they serve it in Vietnam. …查看更多

Easily the best Italian dining experience in Hong Kong and beats many restaurants in Italy for sure. Really a special place that I would come back again and again.Cozy is not the word. But it is private, as the set up is like a sushi bar with about 12 seats. Chef is Italian. Very knowledgeable about Italian food and we carried on a fascinating conversation.He said he tries to be different by offering an uncompromising Italian taste. Too many very skillful Italian chefs in Hong Kong but he said somehow they all modified their cuisine towards Hong Kong taste. First course - eggplants Parmagian. Sure does not sound like much but delicious. The eggplant was twice cooked. First fried to intensify the taste and then slowly cooked to softness. Tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese go on top and baked until very browned on top. The whole thing is like a lasagne but fairly thin, a bit crispy on top. He has a keen sense of timing and browning. As he also achieved in the lamb chops for our main course. The pasta course was carbonara. Chef said the surprise is, carbonara is a modern dish that didn't really became popular until the 1980s, and was probably invented in America. His remembered having it when young, and cream was used. For our lunch, no cream. Al dents pasta. Quite filling The torta was fabulous. With fresh whipped cream. It was past 3.30pm as we were finishing up, and we went on to percolate coffee. Love the percolator method. Haven't had that for a long time. The top was opened and we were looking at the color and oily feel of the coffee coming up. It just felt like as if we were cooking together. I would say Segreto is worth trying for taste as much as Da Domenico. Probably at a fraction of the price and very interest chats with a knowledgeable chef. …查看更多

Well, my evening was just about spoiled by being a few minutes late. Was stuck in traffic on Queen's Road Central, so I phoned up to say we are near but expect to be a few minutes late. The receptionist said well in that case you can't order the dinner but only the light refreshments! Spoke to the manager and was told after some discussions that if I arrive no more than ten minutes late we would be alright! What is this? A restaurant or a concentration camp? The manager explained that they didn't want guests to take too long as there restaurants will have to finish by 10 due to the pandemic rules. I said we will finish as quickly as the kitchen can manage it.So, after the lady receptionist said I couldn't order the dinner at 7.28 pm a few blocks away (alongside the Landmark), the manager asked me to selecthe main dish while on the phone. So I said pigeon for me and the fish for my companion.Arrived 7.35pm.Anyway, the staff gave good service. On arrival, the waiter informed me the chef would like to give us a pigeon pie to try out. May be that's their olive branch for being so draconian and so full of themselves? Alright, let's see.Here is an even tempered review of some of the dishes. Two Michelin star. So let's take a look at that level of expectation.Abalone on some pastry tart with some green mashed veg. The abalone slice tasted OK. But the tart was not very relevant.Scallop moussee on a piece of simmered daikon, with some chrysantemum petals.  No scallop taste. The diakon was normal Japanese. The dashi was normal Japanese.Green dough sheet wrapped around sushi and rice, horseradish cream - The green dough sheet sort of takes away from the sushi.Minced chicken meatball on a stick, with sansho pepper. Nothing special. Not distinguished from the same in many Japanese restaurants.But their French / European cuisine was much better.White asparagus with a miso and brown suger (?) puree. The puree was interesting. The asparagus was OK. Things started to look a bit better.Lobster with barley (?)  and a lobster sauce - Best dish of the evening. By far. The sauce was excellent.The pigeon pie came. It was huge. Full of foiie gras. The pigeon was red, hardly cooked. The pastry looked nice and brown but really not good. We said let's each have a quarter of this dish.  Unfortunately the pigeon tasted like nothing.And when we finished that slice of pie the waiter asked if we were ready for dessert? Ah, so it was not a "gift" nor an olive branch after all. It was a sneaky change of main course. I wasn't going to have another pigeon dish anyway, but my companion wondered what happened to the fish main course.Dessert was good. Not Michelin star good, but good enough.That's it.And we finished our meal at 9.35pm, before most of the other tables who got there before us. So much for the petty worries for themselves and not thinking for their guests. Big minus on service.…查看更多

The service is really friendly.The set up of the space is nice. Not spectacluar. Kind of gotten lost between a real roudy Japanese place vs. a high end luxe diining. Whatever.Their special winter sparkling sake? Taste awful.The chicken? Well, I am not sure what specie of chicken they use. But it is not tasty. Not bad. But not great either.Price is reasonable.Chicken bones skewer - Quite toughChicken thigh meat - excellentCream cheese with nori - soy sauce and wasabi - yes, really nice.Chicken wings - a hundred places in Hong Kong who can do this as nice or nicerPork belly with shisho - niceChicken hearts - best of the eveningGinko - well, ginko.…查看更多

Very nicely designed casual place. Decor color scheme is nice.Service is great. Nice people, and at just the right amount of being attentive.I disliked one dish and they let me change it.The good thing is that dishes are served without over long explanation. They do their best to recommend dishes.The good dishes -Garlic prawns. The oil, garlic and chili flavors are nice. Shrimps are OK.Braised ox cheeks. Very tender and tasty. Classic red wine sauce with mashed potatoes. Just great.Less great - Not a fan of the black risotto with seafood and pork. Rice was too soft. May be more suited to Hong Kong taste but is not the same.Suckling pig - Well, I did not know that deboned means shredded. I particularly dislike pulled pork. Stringy and dry. Pulled pork came with a piece of crispy skin on top. They were kind enough to let me change it.All in all, a very good experience.…查看更多

We came for their roast chicken, as recommended by many friends.My starter, the pate, was very good indeed. Tightly packed meats with foie gras, firm pastry and a jelly. Very much in the classic style.The chicken? Well, not bad. Not quite as good as expected. Comparable to the one at Belon. Just a different approach.Using "Three Yellow" chicken, a local produce. Well,  good decision. Live chicken is always good. Just different from, say, a poulet de Bresse.The chicken was first presented whole, looking perfectly browned with crispy skin. Then it is returned to the kitchen. We thought it was to be carved right away. But it took a long time for the carved pieces to re-emerge.  Judging from the blood in the leg socket when the carcasse is examined, this is their approach. When first presented, the chicken was perfectly roasted outside but the thighs remained rare. Back in the kitchen, the thighs (and presumably the legs) were taken off and they were then cooked further. The carved bird was then brought back out.At Belon, a green stuffing (presumably herb and a neutral tasting cream cheese such as ricotta) was used between the breasts and the skin, to protect it against the heat, so the breasts will take almost as long as the thighs to cook.I think the results are quite similar. Frankly I think the Belon one has a slight edge. But their chef has left, and some may think to give it a miss for now.At 988 dollars a bird that is a bit on the steep side. This is somewhat made up for by an accompanying rice and veg.The dining room looks nice and laid back.…查看更多

The cooking is quite good. Not memorable but good.I ordered off the only menu given to us, which is a set from which you can select up to 5 courses. I went with the standard 3 course that was $980 or something like that. Can't remember the exact price. I did not choose the dishes requiring a supplement.First we had three small pieces of amusebouce. A red beet root flan with stuff inside. Good. Can't remember what the stuff inside was. A small molecular skinless ravioli of olive. A piece of lardo on top of a loosely put together with potato julienee which was deepfried. A good start.The first up was a small dish of sliced raw scallop. I can't add an "s" because I can't be sure there is more than one. Paper thin slices lined the bottom of a plate which has an internal indentation to hold them. On it were black stuff that the staff introduced as truffle oil. In any case there was not much taste of truffle. Could have fooled me. This dish was bland and disappointing.The main that followed was a piece of rolled up fish, which was dover sole.  It was plated with dots of egg based sauce. However, the size of it was a small cyclinder the length of my thumb. It could have been a small appetizer. Then to the dessert. Mango puree jelly with some sort of a white Japanes mochi treatment on top. Not bad, but no wow factor here.That was it. Some of us order a spanish red prawn as an appetizer. And that required a supplement of 188 for each prawn. They did not rave about it and said to me the prawn was "alright".I really wish dishs do not shrink to such pitiful sizes. It really affected the experience. Come on, how much profit margin can you get if it drives customers away from returning?…查看更多

Brunch. Instead of buffet, you are given a menu from which you mark your choices. The waiter will being them to your table.The ambience is classic Repulse Bay Hotel. Can't be beaten. The service is old world and excellent. But those were the only good points.The big problem is everything came in small, mean sized little plates, little cups and the like. Alright, you say, they are the same as served in larger portions and you can order an unlimited amount.May be. But for me there is a difference between a proper portion vs a scaled down mini version. Eg proper soufflé vs a small sized one. Not the same thing.Take the Canadian scallops main dish. They were not plump large scallops in all their marine splendor. They were really small ones, sliced thin, and plated by spacing them out, with drizzled of sauces in a large circle to make them look bigger. It looked like a mean appetizer in a third rate restaurant.Eggs Benedict? No, sorry, one egg only. On tough brown toast? With a tired hollandaise which was browned under a grill which really was not to my liking. To make the dish look larger, a bunch of frizzy lettuce was strewn on top, taking away rather than adding to the dish. Wagyu beef, which came with a supplement charge, turned out to be dollops of beef rolls. And at $680, the offering fell very far short of adequate. …查看更多

This is a very smart looking restaurant. In its own way it has recreated an Italian trattoria in your dreams. It has that packed in, crowded, busy an loud thing that one associates with restaurants in Italy. But sort of combined with a David Tang China Club sort of treatment.The food? Well, the steak is not Italian. American beef. Not bad but different.Well, frankly, the Fiorentina steak, big, thick, bone in, cooked rare, is more a local color of Florence. Is it better beef than American beef. No. It is just different.To me, the menu reminds me a lot of Trattoria Sostanza in Florence. Especially the butter chicken. Definitely don't order that even if you don't eat beef. At Sostanza they give you two huge pieces of chicken. Here they give you two small shrunk pieces.It is not cheap. Not necessarily more expensive than the best steakhouses in town.Does it offer the same level of luxury than, say the steakhouse at the Grand Hyatt or at the Intercontinental? Well, it is just a different fun experience.…查看更多