I dropped by for a sea salt chocolate cake and a cappuccino around 8-9PM
Let me talk about the good first. The sea salt chocolate mousse cake (HK$35 – I forget its full name) was interesting and quite edible. However, I think once is enough for this cake.
On cappuccino, the temperature was way too high it almost scalded my mouth. While the milk looked velvety, I missed the opportunity to try the drink at its peak. Once it cooled enough, all the nice foam was gone, leaving an OK portion of milk and coffee.
As it's quite late at night, I opted for a decaf. Not much I can talk about the coffee itself except it was roasted dark enough to punch through the milk even while it was still hot. I had espresso at Habitu’s Hutchison House a while back and it was not easy to finish the drink.
If you looked in its hopper of its grinder, you will see a "mountain" of ground coffee left in there. Who know how long they've been sitting there. Could be hours or, god forbids, days.
For a good café, you shouldn't see any ground left in the hopper at all. You should hear the grinder hum only when you ordered the coffee. So much effort was put in the coffee roasting and so much $$$ on the equipment, i.e. the commercial grade grinder and the splendid La Marzocco espresso machine, only to be wasted away by simple things that could have been handled more properly like grinding the bean ways before brewing. Such ground left in the hopper reduced any good bean to the lowly pre-ground status, IMHO. If you want to grind a lot at one time, why don’t you use a pre-ground bean from Italy. It saves cost, electricity and helped our environment and should result a roughly the same cup taste as all the aroma and goodies had long been evaporated from the leftover ground in the hopper. Please, grind the coffee just enough for the order and don’t leave any ground in the hopper.
Also, the coffee is definitely not fresh as it said on the website it was roasted in Italy!!! Adding insult to the injury on its coffee, one of the VP at Caffe Habitu is a judge for the World Barista Championship (WBC) in 2003 and a recent judge to the local barista competition. L
All these and I paid HK$35 for a cup of cappuccino. Don’t even think of comparing coffee from this Habitu to the cream of the cream café in HK like Crema Coffee, or the like such as Coco Espresso which uses locally roasted bean for its freshness.
Seriously, McCafe’s cappuccino tastes better in term of freshness, and the milk texture and temperature. For its stale bean companion, Epoch managed the temp much better and the milk texture was quite good.
Service was OK. Actually, there was not much of it as this is a semi self service place.
Without considering $$$ spent, I will give this café an OK. At this price range and the nice decoration, you will sure meet beautiful people here. However, taking into account the $$$ they charged and the level of the products they offered, I would need to deduct points.
The thing they fumbled wasn’t something that could not be changed. It’s more of whether they care to do it to justify the hard earned dollar we spent there. And it hurts to write this, really!
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