I have been a patron of the restaurants of Hong Kong Intercontinental Hotel since 10 years ago. The Harbourside is the restaurant I dine most often. Over the past 4 or 5 years, the quality of food kept dropping while the price kept increasing by several folds. I wanted to write a review about their foods long time ago, but I kept waiting for them to improve until this time, I really have to comment on their foods. (Last year, I have talked to their assistant manager about their foods but the quality got worse)
We went there for the lunch buffet on a Wednesday. This time, I was astounded by the extremely limited variety of foods offered and the poor quality even though I have been very unhappy about their foods in the past year. No wonder the restaurant was only half full.
Of the approximately 12 hot dishes, 5 of them were different ways of cooking vegetables ((1) baked tomatoes, 2) baked sliced potatoes, 3) stewed eggplants, 4) sautéed mixed vegetables and 5) vegetable curry). There were 3 dishes of bean curds (two of them were steamed plain tofu and one was deep fried balls). The remaining hot dishes were fried rice, chunks of ox tongue, pork knuckles and chicken curry. The so-called curry did not look like curry. The sauce of the braised ox tongue looked the same as that of the chicken curry and the look was intimidating (I should have taken the photos). You can find better curry in any small and cheap restaurants than this. There was one dish of fish but they were dry and rough and had no taste.
As for the sashimi, the snappers were not fresh and the tuna has been refrigerated too hard. Only the salmon was Ok although some had tendons.
The roast beef was very dry and tasteless and of low quality.
Other customers were holding the plate walking around the buffet tables like me, having difficulties in choosing the foods they want because nothing was attractive.
I always hate their Caesar salads to be pre-mixed with dressing. In other 5-star hotels, Caesar salads are never pre-mixed and there is always a server who mixes the salad for you so that the vegetables remain crunchy and fresh, yet these hotels charge a much lower price than Harbourside!
The small amount of seafood are never appealing. The prawns never have taste, the Jade whelks always have sand (each piece I tried has sands) and the crab legs have no taste but very salty. That’s why I never want to eat their “seafood”.
As for their desserts, only the “Napoleon” was Ok although a bit too brown. The others were not fresh especially the cakes. Others were mainly different types of mousse.
For the poor quality of food, I would not go there even if they charge $200+, and yet, they charge $418 (Monday to Friday lunch before the 10% service charge).
I kept going back even though I became more and more disappointed by their food quality. But after this time, I have decided that I will not go back anymore! What a pity!
影片
