This is my first private kitchen experience here in Hong Kong. My family took a trip out to Sai Kung and my brother was raving about this place so we made a reservation. A few initial observations: - The owner/chef (Katherine) was extremely nice. We had a tough time finding her restaurant and she came out to the main street to find us and lead us there. Seriously, what restaurant (let alone an owner) would do that? Thumbs up. - The place honestly looked like a real restaurant and not what I imagined of a private kitchen. I guess the main difference is the license they have since I don't think they allow too many walk-ins. - It says "No MSG" on their menu which was a big plus in my book. Anyway, onto the food. There was 5 of us so we ordered the following: 1) Abalone with chicken soup: Soup was extremely light but I felt I didn't really taste much abalone. I did see 1 abalone in the soup but it was quite tiny. Not a bad dish to start things off. 2) Stuffed crab shell with apple sald: This was pretty tasty. Kind of felt like eating crab cakes because of the texture and density but still a pretty good dish. Apple salad was ok. 3) Fish head soup with noodles: Soup was flavorful and quite tasty. Might have chosen a thicker noodle to go with it but the vermicelli was decent. 4) Tong yam soup with noodles: When you eat the noodles (a little thinner than udon) they actually taste really nice with the soup. Sadly the soup when you drink it was too salty for me. 5) Hainan chicken and rice: Chicken was pretty good (smooth and light) although nothing special. Rice I thought was quite fragrant. The letdown for me was mainly the sauces. After eating the Hainan chicken in Singapore I truly feel the chicken's taste can be elevated by the sauces. In this case I thought the sauces didn't do all that much. 6) Chocolate seafood pasta: The owner Katherine showed us her fresh homemade pasta dough (the chocolate taste comes from infusing Coco Puffs cereal powder with the dough) and let us smell the difference after she had passed it through the pasta machine (which was slightly more fragrant). We let her choose the sauce and she went with the olive oil based sauce. Overall I thought this dish was tasty but I'm not sure how the chocolate makes it better besides just being 'unique'. Service: This is where I thought they really shined. Katherine was extremely attentive and spent time to explain every dish to us. She also spent the time to spread her food knowledge which I thought was very interesting. This really made the meal pleasant for me. Although none of the dishes I thought were a home-run the overall quality of food was still quite high. For me the service really brought the meal up another notch. Also there was clearly no MSG in their food (as advertised) which was a big plus for me since I hate that dry mouth feeling after a meal out. …Read More
