Considering that I only post about this once a year, you might not have any context behind this and have no idea what I’m talking about. If that’s the case, then there are two pieces of prerequisite reading to get caught up: my restaurant reviews of the Capital Grille in Costa Mesa, California and Bello by Sandro Nardone in Newport Beach, California. If you don’t know how to read, the simple summary is that I go to a high-end restaurant together with my Twitch moderator once a year to treat him to a nice dinner on the anniversary of him becoming my mod.

This year, Phummy asked me to take him to THE RANCH Restaurant in Anaheim, California. For those who read my most recent blog post, that’s the reason I was staying at the JW Marriott, Anaheim Resort—so I could be in relatively close proximity to the restaurant (and because I enjoy going for walks around the Anaheim Convention Center, Disneyland Resort, and Anaheim GardenWalk areas).

As a side note, for those who are paying extra close attention, this blog post is a bit late for a few reasons. First, we had our dinner last Friday, but I didn’t have a chance to get around to blogging about it until today because I recently had some extremely packed weeks of work, so I’ve been spending the last several days balancing it out by playing video games (which is rare for me now), watching movies (which is even rarer), and just relaxing in general after doing only core work of critical or time-sensitive importance. Second, our actual anniversary is in the middle of Phummy’s final exam week at his university, so we decided to wait for him to wrap up so he can focus fully on excelling in his academics.

 
Upon our arrival at the restaurant, the hostess confirmed our reservation and brought us to our table. While walking us there, she asked if we were celebrating a special occasion. Phummy, of course, confidently informed her that we are celebrating our anniversary, and ended it at that. I, of course, have to clarify that we are celebrating a work anniversary and that we are not a gay couple. The hostess found that very amusing.

After being seated, a couple of other staff members asked us whether we were celebrating anything special, upon which we repeated the process of Phummy proudly declaring that we are celebrating our anniversary, and me needing to stipulate that it is a work anniversary. Everyone who spoke with us seemed to find the dynamic very amusing.

Not long afterwards, Phummy let me know that, when he booked the reservation on the restaurant’s website, he put a note in the “special request” section to make the experience as romantic as possible for us. If you haven’t noticed by now, Phummy finds great enjoyment in intentionally making the “anniversary” term confusing or misleading for people in hopes that they think we are a gay couple.

After speaking with us, it seemed like all the staff members were very on board with joining Phummy in trolling me and really emphasizing just the “anniversary” part of “work anniversary.” What I think happened was that the hostess and staff saw Phummy’s special request, but when we walked in, we didn’t look anything like a romantic couple, so they held back under the belief that there had been some kind of error or misunderstanding. However, after confirming directly with us about our “relationship,” it seemed like every staff member enthusiastically committed to Phummy’s joke.

 
While we were deciding what to eat, we were brought out some complimentary bread. There were seven orbs of five different kinds of bread arranged in a flower shape. This is the first restaurant that I’ve ever seen do something like this, and I appreciated their creativity. The bread quality was also pretty good, though I didn’t have that much of it because I didn’t want to fill up my stomach too much with carbs.

I accidentally came into this dinner not hungry because there was a bit of a mix-up. Phummy originally told me that the dinner was on Saturday the 23rd, but then later said that apparently the reservation actually went through for Friday the 22nd instead. I confirmed the schedule change and updated it in my calendar, but I guess I forgot to update it in my brain. I accidentally ate some free dinner at my hotel’s restaurant on Friday with my elite status vouchers, and only after finishing two entrées did I remember that I was supposed to meet up with Phummy. Thus, my meal at THE RANCH was actually my second dinner of the day.

Our waiter asked if we wanted to order any drinks. I told him that I don’t drink alcohol, but gestured over to Phummy to see if he wanted anything. I then found out / remembered that Phummy is not yet of legal alcohol drinking age in the United States. So instead, we both ordered mocktails.

I ordered a hibiscus and jalapeño mocktail. It was quite strong and intense, and it gave a nice kick every sip.

While delivering our drinks, the waiter asked what kind of work anniversary we were celebrating, i.e., what we do for our jobs. This is a bit of a complex question, considering that my main job is being the Director of Corporate Operations at Tempo, and my secondary job is being a business consultant, and Phummy doesn’t work together with me in either of those. I told our waiter that, and then further elaborated that Phummy is a Twitch moderator, which in normal people terms, is functionally similar to being a personal digital media assistant. Our waiter was very interested in this, so he stood at our table for a few minutes while I fairly thoroughly explained everything.

Then I looked over at Phummy. His drink was already empty.

The waiter asked Phummy if he wanted another one, to which he confirmed.

For our appetizer, we got a Robbins Island Tasmanian Wagyu Beef carpaccio with white alba clamshell mushrooms, black truffle, wild arugula, and pecorino romano.

This was good, but the beef was sliced comically thin. And yes, I understand that the entire point of carpaccio is to cut the fish or meat into thin slices, but this beef carpaccio was so thin that it basically just ripped apart from its own weight when I tried to pick it up.

The greens supplemented the meat flavor very well. I took some of the vegetables and placed them on top of the carpaccio, then rolled it up as best I could; this made for some satisfying and well-rounded bites.

While we were having our appetizer, the waiter came back with Phummy’s second drink. I don’t quite remember exactly what all the components of the drink were, but as you can probably tell, it was a citrus-based mocktail.

The main menu had a lot of nice beef options, but was fairly limited in seafood. I’m still trying to avoid red meat where possible in order to reduce saturated fat consumption, lower cholesterol, and maintain heart health (and because I just like seafood better anyway). Thus, I was tentatively deciding on getting pan-seared halibut. However, there was also a special farm menu that day with a few additional options.

I ended up ordering pistachio-crusted Colorado lamb chops with whole grain mustard spätzle, green garbanzo beans, red spring onions, ramp chimichurri, and lamb jus as my main entrée. Yes, lamb is still red meat, but lamb is not as common as beef, poultry, or fish in the United States, so when there is a high-quality lamb dish at a restaurant, I will usually get it.

This lamb was great, but interestingly, I actually enjoyed the spätzle as the most notable part of the dish. The texture and doneness level of the pasta was perfect, both when eating it on its own as well as when combining it with a bite of lamb.

For my side, I got some grilled asparagus.

Separate from both the main menu and the side farm menu were a few special unlisted dishes, one of which was a filet mignon. Phummy is a fan of filet mignon, so that’s the dish he ordered; it came topped with a bone marrow compound butter sauce crust as a supplement, as well as with an included side of potato fingerlings.

For his side, he got lobster mac and cheese, composed of house-made pasta and Vermont white cheddar.

I ended up not being able to finish my lamb chops and asparagus, so I asked for it to be put in a to-go container. I technically could’ve finished it if I really pushed myself, but I wanted to still leave a little bit of room for dessert.

Phummy and I each ordered one dessert, but when the waiter came back, he had three plates. One of them was a complimentary celebratory dessert on the house—a Tahitian vanilla bean crème brûlée with seasonal madeleines. They wrote “Happy Anniversary” on the plate with chocolate from a piping bag.

My dessert was a hazelnut crunch bar with praline crunch, chocolate crémeux, caramelized hazelnuts, Valrhona Caramélia chocolate mousse, caramel sauce, and vanilla ice cream.

Phummy opted for the Milky Way, made with República del Cacao chocolate, malted nougat, and salted caramel ice cream.

While he was consuming it, we had an interesting discussion about the trademark implications of naming their dessert the Milky Way, and whether it would constitute infringement under the standards of likelihood of confusion. My conclusion was that, yes, the fact that they named this the Milky Way would indeed likely fall under infringement territory.

After we finished all three desserts, the waiter brought out our check. To further commit to the anniversary joke, he wrote “Happy Anniversary!” at the top of our receipt.

Here is a photograph of the main dining area of the restaurant.

While stopping by the restroom, I noticed that the door to a vacant private dining area was left open. I peeked inside and snapped a photograph.

On our way out, the hostess gave us one final departing “happy anniversary!”

This is what the restaurant looks like from the outside. The left door leads to the restaurant, while the right door leads to the saloon.

Thinking back, I probably should’ve checked out what the saloon looks like while I was there, even if it was just for a few minutes. The entryway was delineated with stanchions though, so I guess it is possible that they were having a special event there and we might not have even been allowed in as non-ticketed guests.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

The restaurant offers valet parking, but they also had a free self parking option in an adjacent lot right on the opposite side of a nearby fence, easily within walking distance.

I am about 98% sure that both Phummy and I drank regular house filtered water and not bottled water. However, I was charged for four bottles of water at US$10.00 each. Usually, the way to know for sure that you are getting paid, premium water is that they will bring the glass bottles directly to you and leave them on your table, and they definitely did not do that for us. Thus, I’m pretty sure that I ended up inadvertently paying for a different table’s luxury water supply. Having an excess US$40.00 on your bill isn’t really the best feeling, but I’m over it at this point; I had a chance to audit the check before remitting payment, so I bear a lot of the fault for not catching it before handing over my credit card.

If you’ve read my previous restaurant reviews, you may have picked up on the fact that I am very much against the United States’ tipping culture, and I will usually only add on around 15% in gratuity to my bill. However, I still assess this on a case-by-case basis, and when I notice that the staff is going noticeably beyond what I think is the standard of service, I am happy to tip more generously. Every single staff member we encountered at THE RANCH was stellar, and I could tell that they genuinely wanted to give Phummy a fun, memorable experience. Thus, my ~26% gratuity isn’t me being a hypocrite; I just thought they deserved it in this instance. Also, technically, considering that I paid an extra US$40.00 for water that I’m pretty sure we did not get, if you recalculate that as if it was extra gratuity, then I guess tipping US$130.00 on a new US$306.00 subtotal is… over 42%.

Overall, I thought the food was great, but I am undecided on the value for the cost. For comparison, this is right around the price point of last year’s Chef’s Table, and I thought the experience with Chef Frankie was a league or two above THE RANCH with regards to ingredient quality, dish preparation, and portion size. The service was top-tier at both locations, but was just different; Bello by Sandro Nardone focused on chef-to-diner personalization, while THE RANCH had a broadly supportive and attentive staff.

If you’re interested in dining at THE RANCH but are concerned about the price point, I think one thing to keep in mind is that you can be a lot smarter about assembling a good meal without spending as much as I did. I think our waiter noticed that I didn’t really mind what the price was of anything, so he did a great job upselling us by describing add-ons like drinks and supplements in a very appetizing way, and reminding us about side dishes. If you’re not getting what is basically the most expensive dish in every single category, then I imagine your bill will be much more manageable than this.

Phummy is already thinking ahead to next year’s anniversary dinner and figuring out what kinds of unique and special things we can do for it. I guess I have to wait patiently for another eleven and a half more months to figure out how he plans on trolling me next…

Chef’s Table is an upgraded experience that comes with an additional US$118.00 supplement. Because I purchased the unlimited premium dining package add-on prior to sailing, my upcharge was lowered to $59.00 (consisting of a $50.00 base price and a $9.00 mandatory 18% gratuity). The extra fee isn’t cheap, especially considering that all your basic meals are already included in your standard fare, but if you compare the quality of the food and service to other fine dining establishments on land, it’s actually not bad.

Chef’s tasting menus like this are usually rotated by season. Because my previous cruise was during the winter and it’s spring now, I was looking forward to seeing how they changed up the menu. Unfortunately, the course list was exactly the same as it was on my previous cruise, which was a bit disappointing. Upon the conclusion of my meal, I did some research about how frequently they change up the menu, only to discover that… they don’t. Apparently this menu is highly standardized and remains the same, year-round and fleet-wide.

I feel like this is a huge missed opportunity to hook the foodies into spending more money every time they’re on a Royal Caribbean cruise. Yes, having delicious, high-quality food is probably the most important facet of attracting customers, but if they want to monetize food enthusiasts as repeat customers, I feel like adding in at least some kind of novelty value every season would be a big plus.

So, if you already read my blog post about my previous Chef’s Table experience, then this one will probably feel like déjà vu. Regardless, I still decided to do a full post about it again because there are still some thoughts I had throughout this meal about the limited differences it did end up having compared to the one I experienced on Quantum.

I don’t drink alcohol, so in lieu of the wine pairing, I requested a non-alcoholic pairing instead. On Quantum, they had a designated non-alcoholic pairing prepared, and when I brought it up, they even asked if anyone else at the table wanted to pass on the wine and make a substitution too.

However, this time on Navigator, it felt like the non-alcoholic pairing was an afterthought. The waiter’s facial expression made it look like he was incredibly confused that I didn’t drink alcohol, and at one point during the dinner, he even asked me “would you like another one?” as if I was supposed to be ordering the mocktails myself rather than there being a pairing.

On Quantum, the waiter immediately took away my wine glasses, but on Navigator, I had six empty, unused wine glasses sitting in front of me for over half the meal, and the waiter only thought to remove them after the first three of six courses were already done. Additionally, because this was a circular table, it felt a lot more cramped. The rectangular table that was used on Quantum had more efficient usage of space because there was very little unused space on the table, but on a circular table, the entire center of the table is unreachable, so you end up having all the wine glasses really close to each other and your eating area is just basically a pie slice.

The meal started with some bread.

At this point, I noticed that there were 13 people at the table—six couples, plus me solo. I started having a sneaking suspicion that the capacity of the table was supposed to be 12, but because I was a solo diner, they squeezed in another couple so that they didn’t end up with 11 in this session and “miss out” on a spot if there is no other solo diner who signs up. That would give a partial explanation of why we all felt so cramped and had so little space.

The reason I found this out? They ran out of bread. They prepared 12 portions of bread, even though there were 13 people. I got my own blossom of bread, but the man sitting next to me didn’t get one and had to share one with his wife. He ultimately got his portion… after course number four.

After an unusually long wait, we were served the first course, scallop carpaccio with yuzu vinaigrette and crispy quinoa. This was very consistent with the previous scallop carpaccio I had on Quantum; it was cut extremely thin, so I rolled them up into tubes with the quinoa and some vegetables inside so that it had more substance per chew.

After finishing my dish, I looked up and noticed that the woman across the table from me hadn’t received one. I wondered if this was another case of the kitchen only making 12 instead of 13, but after someone else also noticed and asked her about it, she said that she had an allergy and requested a substitution. Considering how long we had to wait to get our first course, I figured that it would be plenty of time to prepare her substitute dish as well and serve everyone at once. A while after everyone at the table finished their scallop, the woman finally got her alternative dish.

I also finally received my “first” drink of the non-alcoholic beverage pairing. I say that this is the “first” because the actual first one I got was supposed to be in substitution for the welcome champagne. This one was the first drink of the actual meal.

For the second course, we received smoked tomato soup with garlic focaccia croutons. As you can see from the photograph, it was just focaccia and not croutons.

The smoked tomato soup was served plain at first, and then the chef came out to add the cream and basil sauces into the soup.

I remember from Quantum that I really enjoyed the earthiness and smoky flavor of this soup, and this is actually one of the dishes that I thought Navigator did even better. The flavor was much more intense here, almost as if the Quantum version of soup was diluted. I still had some of the bread left from before, so when I ran out of focaccia, I dipped the bread into the soup to clean my bowl.

The third course was Maine lobster salad with hearts of palm, pineapple, cilantro, and vanilla dressing.

I liked the Quantum version of this a little bit better because the Quantum’s lobster was prepared in a more pure and simple way, while this one had a lot of sauce, some of which was already soaked into the vegetables. With that being said, liking the more plain version of lobster is just a personal preference (mostly because I just really like the flavor of lobster itself); everything about this dish was delicious, including the sauce.

My next mocktail was a pineapple and coconut drink. It looks like a fruit slushie and I think it visually looks extremely sweet, but in reality, it was actually quite moderate in sweetness. That meant that it was easier to discern the flavors of the fruits themselves, which I thought made the overall flavor profile of the drink much better.

Our fourth course was roasted branzino with grilled zucchini, peppers, lemon confit, and pesto.

This was another dish that was very consistent between Quantum and Navigator. The fish was cooked very well, and the vegetables and citrus complemented it well. I noticed that the sauce here was a bit stronger than the one served on Quantum, but that was fine, as a majority of it was pooled in the moat of the plate and diners could personally decide how much to use.

A significantly noticeable difference between the dining experience on Quantum and Navigator was the skill of the sommelier. On Quantum, it was easy to tell that the sommelier was experienced and confident in the way that he explained and served the wine, but on Navigator, the sommelier made some questionable choices that even I, as someone who never drinks alcohol, found to be quite obviously unusual.

I don’t know if this was just him being nervous, but he was very fidgety with the wine bottles. I believe a reasonable expectation you can have of your sommelier presenting the wine is to hold it steady with a folded liteau so that there is minimal body heat transfer, and so the diners can still see the label on the bottle. The sommelier for our dinner seemed to really like touching the bottle with his bare hands, and not just touch it, but really get in there and massage it like he was loosening some cramps.

For one of the wines—specifically, the Leviathan Red Blend California—the sommelier poured it into a decanter first. Remember the pineapple drink I had earlier? It had a little too much in the glass, so some of it overflowed and ended up forming a puddle on the table. Do you know where the sommelier decided to place the decanter on the table so that people could look at it (after cradling it and massaging it too, for a bit)? Directly on top of the puddle. A blind man literally had a statistically higher chance to place the decanter on a dry spot of the tablecloth than this sommelier.

Here is a picture of the sommelier serving the wine to my next-seat neighbor. Hmm, I wonder why he still has so much bread left. Oh wait…

The fifth course of the evening was filet mignon.

Prior to serving it, our waiter (who, if it wasn’t clear, is the same person as our sommelier) went around the table collecting doneness level preferences. Most people ordered their steak medium rare, while the other half ranged from medium to medium well. During this process, he told an elaborate story about how it is worth trying steak cooked medium rare, even if you usually like it more cooked, and he shared some anecdotes about how he is slowly convincing his wife to eat steak cooked closer and closer to medium rare.

He had started this quest by asking the person next to me, so by the time he had gone all around the table (and also finished telling his story), I was last in line to give my order. I asked for my filet mignon to be cooked rare. He asked “oh, so you want it still mooing?” This is obviously a joke, but with this guy, I literally could not tell. Just in case there was a miscommunication, I clarified, “no, I’d just like it regular rare, not blue rare” (because blue rare is often the doneness level at which you get “your steak is still alive” comments). The waiter then repeated his joke, asking, “yes, so you want it still mooing?” to which I replied “yes, that would be great.”

Fortunately, the steak came out properly rare, and it was delicious.

The filet mignon was served with a side of potato purée, asparagus, carrots, and baby tomatoes. The chef also came around and added some bordelaise sauce to the moat; I ended up barely using any sauce because the flavor of the steak and vegetables was so great on its own.

On Quantum, the filet mignon had a nice quirk where it was served with extra crispy potato chips pressed into the potato purée. I enjoyed that the Navigator version also came with a few potato chips on the side as well. The portion was small enough that it added a nice little diversity of flavor and texture without being considered too significant a component of the overall dish.

For our final beverage of the night, we got espressos—a regular salted caramel espresso for me, and an espresso martini for everyone else.

By this point, because the service had been so excruciatingly slow, we were about to hit the end of hour 4 of our dinner and it was almost 9 PM (we started at 5 PM). Because it was so late, most people didn’t dare take more than a sip or two of their espresso martinis out of concern that the caffeine would keep them up all night. Luckily, I have the blessing (or curse, depending on how you look at it) of being immune to caffeine, so I enjoyed my entire espresso. I thought it was extra great because I also really like salted caramel.

The espressos were served in conjunction with the sixth and final course, The World.

In theme with the slow service, they brought out our orbs of chocolate first, and then our waiter disappeared for a while. They were gone for long enough (and also did not give clear enough instructions) that the woman sitting two seats away from me started cracking open her chocolate orb with her fork. I had to stop her and told her to wait a bit longer, because there was a surprise coming.

The surprise, of course, is that the waiter comes out with some warm caramel sauce and pours it over your desserts to melt the outside chocolate shell and reveal the inside.

Inside was peanut butter ganache, Valrhona chocolate mousse, and salted caramel gelato.

On Quantum, I wasn’t able to eat much of this because it was so overwhelmingly sweet that it registered on my taste buds as bitter. However, I’m happy to report that the Navigator version was not excessively sweet. I was quite excited that I was able to taste all the ingredients this time, and in celebration, I finished the entire thing.

This was also time for celebrations. Two couples were celebrating anniversaries, so they each got a small slice of chocolate cake with a candle.

On Quantum, the Chef’s Table took place in a private room all the way in the back of Chops Grille. On Navigator, the Chef’s Table is actually inside the main dining room on the center floor. I wouldn’t say either arrangement was better or worse; it was just different. I guess this version on the Navigator is better if you’re the type who wants to brag to others that you’re having a nice meal, while the more private Quantum version is better if you don’t want to hear the quiet chatter and clinking of utensils on dishes from other regular diners.

Here are some photos I took from the perspective of our dining table.

This is what the Chef’s Table dining table looked like. While taking this photograph, I did not notice that one of the couples from the dinner was still there taking pictures, so that was amusing to notice after-the-fact while I was organizing my photographs. The couple there was very kind (as was everyone else at the table); I ran into this particular couple a few days later on the pool deck when I was out for a walk, and we had a great chat about their cruising adventures.

If you want to go on a fun scavenger hunt, you can zoom into the table to see where my seat was. It’s quite easy to figure out if you know that I am the only one who finished my entire dessert and drank my entire espresso.

Here’s another view of the Chef’s Table, but from the opposite side of the dining area.

After my second Chef’s Table, my assessment of the experience remains mostly the same as before. The thing that makes it special is the interactions and conversations you have with the other diners. There were some more shy diners this time compared to my dinner on Quantum, but after the alcohol got flowing, they got a whole lot more chatty.

If you want a high-class and elegant dining experience during your cruise away from the regular bustle of the main dining room or buffet, then I would recommend this experience for people who don’t have children to bring with them and have the budget or financial flexibility for the supplemental charge. My recommendation here still stands, even with the inconsistent service I experienced on Navigator compared to Quantum.

The base fare for a solo cruiser in an interior cabin was $1,156.00, but it came with a $347.00 discount as part of a sale, another $226.00 discount on top of that for a different promotion, and an additional $81.00 discount even on top of that for being a Nevada resident. (Apparently the resident discount applies to short-notice bookings for residents of states neighboring the port, which is a way to incentivize nearby people to book the cruise assuming that traveling the relatively short distance won’t be too much of a hassle for them.) With $155.82 added on for taxes, fees, and port expenses, my total base fare for this trip was US$657.82. I bought a bunch of add-ons so the grand total was closer to a thousand dollars, but for the base price, $657.82 is insanely low.

I’m a bit behind on blogging right now, and I’ve actually been back from this cruise already for one week. However, I’m taking a brief break from traveling and have a bit more time now, so I’ll be catching up soon. I used this extra free time to go through and organize my cruise photos, and I’ve decided to split it up into four blog posts (this one being the first one).

To start, here is a rundown of (most of) the food I ate on the cruise.

Like last time, I purchased a premium dining package add-on that allowed me to eat at any specialty restaurant for no extra charge (apart from the extra charge of actually purchasing the add-on, that is). Normally, all meals are included in your fare, but if you get this add-on, you get to go to more private and higher-quality on-board restaurants instead of the buffet or main dining room. This cost me $214.62 extra for the 7-night cruise, which is broken down into $181.93 for the package and $32.69 for a mandatory 18% prepaid gratuity.

Also like last time, I purchased The Key for $181.93 (this is separate from the dining package, and it is just a coincidence that they share the same base price, which was due to a pretty steep discount on The Key). The main perk of this is the fact that it includes on-board Internet access, but it also comes with a special welcome lunch and departure breakfast.

The welcome lunch on Quantum of the Seas was great—I had a nice, private window seat and enjoyed some delicious fish. The welcome lunch on Navigator of the Seas, however, was a bit… different. Instead of giving everyone a private table, they randomly grouped some strangers into larger parties. For example, rather than giving me a solo table, I was put in a group of nine at what is basically a really big family dining table. This is fine for something like the Chef’s Table where you’re intentionally opting into it, but it seemed weird for a regular meal like this.

Regardless, thanks to a handful of chatty people at our table, it wasn’t too bad. I got to know some new people, and many of them were intrigued at my mobile lifestyle of traveling non-stop and living out of hotel rooms most of the time.

As the main entrée of my lunch, I ordered some branzino with asparagus. Similar to last time, the fish came out looking sort of sad, but taste- and texture-wise, it was great.

For dinner on embarkation day, I dined at Izumi Sushi. I intentionally scheduled sushi night to be the first night because I wasn’t sure if I was going to get seasickness, so I figured that it would be best to try and get ahead of it and eat a lot of ginger from the sushi restaurant as a preventative measure.

As my appetizer, I had crispy rice spicy tuna, which was made from creamy tuna, masago, spicy aïoli, chili garlic oil, hot crispy rice, and jalapeño.

For my first main course, I ordered a poke bowl with seasoned tuna, salmon, avocado, sea salt, sesame chili oil, onions, scallions, masago, seaweed salad, and sushi rice.

I comboed that with my second main course, the assorted sashimi with salmon, yellowtail, and shrimp. It looked like getting the sashimi was much better value than getting the assorted nigiri in terms of portion size. Because the poke bowl came with plenty of sushi rice already, I fished some out and combined it with the assorted sashimi to have some build-your-own nigiri.

For dessert, I had assorted mochi ice cream. It usually comes with one piece each of mango, strawberry, and chocolate, but I requested for the chocolate to be replaced with a second piece of mango. It’s not that I dislike chocolate, but rather, I just find more consistency in liking fruity flavors instead.

This is what the entrance of Izumi looked like.

This is a shot of the interior of Izumi. I had a fairly late dining time, so it was pretty empty by the time I was there.

Next on my rotation was Jamie’s Italian. I dined there twice—one time for lunch, and one time for dinner on a different day.

On the day that I went for lunch, I started my meal with their ultimate garlic bread, which is made from warm artisan buttermilk buns, herby garlic butter, Parmesan, and rosemary.

For my main entrée, I ordered truffle tagliatelle.

I remembered from Quantum of the Seas that this pasta dish was borderline-inedibly salty, so for this one, I put in a special request with the waitress to minimize the amount of excess salt that was added to this dish. She passed along my preference to the chef, and it was very well honored; this came out at the perfect saltiness level, and it tasted great.

For dessert, I got some ice cream topped with fruits and caramel popcorn.

Jamie’s Italian was located inside the Windjammer Buffet in its own dining room along the edge of the ship. This meant that I got to enjoy a great view of the ocean through the floor-to-ceiling windows while dining.

On the day that I went to Jamie’s for dinner, I started with some crispy squid with a side of lemon and garlic mayo sauce.

For my main course, I had lasagne made from slow-cooked beef and pork, topped with herbs, baked in a Béchamel sauce with tomatoes, mozzarella, and Parmesan. I’m usually not the biggest fan of eating a ton of cheese, but the cheese in this dish wasn’t unpleasantly pungent like some other cheeses are. This was also specially made with low sodium, which made me like it more than I expected.

For dessert, I had a banana split with one scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream, topped with caramel popcorn and a caramel drizzle. This was incredibly delicious and possibly the best dessert I had on the ship. The caramel was torched in a way such that, combined with the banana, it tasted like a fruity crème brûlée.

Next is the big one: Hooked Seafood. Seafood is my favorite type of food, so I spent three of my dinners dining at Hooked.

Each dinner started with some cheesy bread.

The first night at Hooked, I selected fresh-shucked oysters with mignonettes as my appetizer.

That was followed by The Captain’s Platter as my main entrée, consisting of a four-ounce lobster tail, grilled halibut filet, and three jumbo shrimp. This was accompanied by some melted butter as the dipping sauce and some seasonal vegetables as the side dish.

Afterwards, I opted for a lemon tart for dessert.

The second night at Hooked, I started with some mussels steamed in a garlic white wine sauce.

For my main entrée, I ordered a grilled salmon filet. I got this because I figured the portion size of the fish would be larger, but it was about the same as what was served in The Captain’s Platter. The platter didn’t have an additional upcharge, so it seems like it is just categorically better, considering that you get to select the type of filet you want anyway, and you get the “bonus” lobster tail and shrimp as well.

For my side, I got some lobster mac and cheese. It was quite greasy and didn’t really have much lobster in it, so I would’ve probably been better off trying the coleslaw or corn on the cob instead.

For dessert, I got a cherry tart topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

For my third and final night at Hooked Seafood, which was also the final dinner I had on the cruise ship before debarkation day, I ordered some baked oysters as my appetizer—half Rockefeller and half leeks and white wine. I’m glad I got to try this for the sake of variety, but I much preferred the fresh oysters and drunken mussels instead.

My main course this day was the surf and turf, which came with a lobster tail and steak. I’m still working on improving my heart health and minimizing my consumption of saturated fat, so I’ve been avoiding red meats where possible. With that being said, I figured that, even though filet mignon isn’t as low in saturated fat as cuts like the round, it’s lean enough that I could enjoy a surf and turf for one of the days.

For my final dessert at Hooked, I got a coconut cream pie, made from coconut custard and topped with whipped cream and toasted coconut. It also came with a few dollops of caramel and a few dots of chocolate sauce.

This is what the interior of Hooked Seafood looked like.

And finally, the last specialty restaurant I went to, which rounds out all the available options, was Chops Grille, Royal Caribbean’s popular American-style steakhouse.

Upon being seated, I was brought some bread: one piece of onion bread, and one piece of pretzel bread. It came with a side of butter, but I opted to just have the bread on its own because I didn’t feel like clogging my arteries that day.

For my appetizer, I ordered a pan-seared crab cake topped with fresh herbs and served alongside some chipotle aïoli.

For my main entrée, I ordered a hand-cut nine-ounce filet mignon cooked rare. According to the menu, their filet is sourced from the Midwest. I requested the sauce on the side in the moat of the plate and only used a very small portion of it, considering that I like the actual flavor of the beef and don’t want strong sauces to overwhelm or detract from the flavor.

For my sides to go along with the steak, I asked for half portions each of Yukon gold mashed potatoes and grilled jumbo asparagus.

To conclude my meal at Chops, I got some key lime pie as dessert.

And finally, the last thing I ate on the ship before disembarking was an Eggs Benedict with crab cake and avocado, along with a side of hash browns. This was part of the special à la carte breakfast that came with The Key, and luckily, I had a private dining experience this time and didn’t have to share a large family-style table with strangers.

Overall, I’d say that I liked the food on Navigator of the Seas a little bit more than the food on Quantum of the Seas. However, that comes with a few caveats. I enjoyed the Italian food on Navigator more because I learned from my mistakes on Quantum and asked for the sodium reduction. Additionally, I just really like seafood, so the fact that there was a dedicated seafood restaurant this time basically by default made me like Navigator’s food more. I did enjoy the creativity of Wonderland on Quantum of the Seas, but that was somewhat gimmicky and didn’t contribute as much to the overall perception of core food quality.

There are three things not pictured in this blog post:

The first is the food from Café Promenade. This is the late-night option for people who want something to eat after the buffets and main dining rooms are closed, and I usually only came here when I had intensive workouts at the fitness center and needed some extra calories before ending my night. I usually just got some pastries or pizza from here, and they weren’t particularly notable or special (the pizza tasted like generic grocery store frozen pizza).

The second is Johnny Rockets. Navigator of the Seas has a Johnny Rockets Express on the pool deck that usually sells burgers à la carte for an extra charge, but because of my premium dining package, I was able to redeem one combo (a burger, fries, and beverage) for free every day. I only went here a couple of times, and I guess I ended up forgetting to take a picture of my burger every time. The burgers and fries here were the equivalent of what you’d find at a decent fast food restaurant on land. It was worth it for me because it was inclusive in my dining package, but otherwise, it’s around a $15 additional supplement, which I think is way too high for the circumstances (specifically, the fact that you can get other good food elsewhere on the ship for no extra charge).

And finally, the third is the Chef’s Table. I had it last time on Quantum of the Seas and enjoyed the experience enough that I booked it again for Navigator of the Seas. It usually costs an extra $118 per person, but with my unlimited dining package, I was able to get it for a discounted $59 upcharge (composed of a $50 base price and a $9 mandatory 18% gratuity). I will have a dedicated blog post on the Chef’s Table coming up soon.

I am often fairly selective with restaurants that I blog about. I understand that online reviews can have significant influence on the success of a business, and even though I maintain that I am just a casual blogger who likes to write about my life, the reality of the situation is that my blog posts end up on the front page of search engine results for restaurants with surprising frequency. Thus, when I write reviews, I usually only write about chef’s tasting menus or omakase experiences such that someone else can go to that same restaurant and replicate my same experience. I avoid writing about à la carte restaurants because a bad experience could be attributed to myself doing a poor job at assembling a meal from the menu options, so for those kinds of restaurants, I usually do “food photo dumps” where I just share pictures but don’t go into too much detail.

With that being said, I do really want to stick with the idea that this is just the personal website of some random Asian guy from America. I don’t want to hold myself to too high of a standard for my blog, because I want this to be a fun and enjoyable way to leave a record of my life online, and I don’t want to fall into the trap of not releasing content because I don’t think it meets an arbitrary, meaningless standard.

The fact that I had to give that introduction probably foreshadows how I feel about this restaurant. However, I do think it is important to note that just because I did not have the best experience does not mean that you also will not have a good experience. As of today, Hayworth has stellar reviews online, and when I went in-person, I did not see any signs or receive any requests from staff that may have prompted those skewed reviews (i.e., nobody asked me to leave a positive review). Surely, that many people can’t be wrong, so make sure you’re only taking my opinion as one data point, rather than just trusting me entirely.

So with that out of the way, this was our meal.

 
For our starter, we ordered some warm challah knot bread topped with poppy and smoked sea salt.

At first glance, the texture seemed nice and it looked very flaky, but upon biting into it, I realized it was very dry. It was not flaky at all; instead, it was quite crumbly. It reminded me of when I was younger and my mom would tell me to buy dinner rolls at the grocery store, but I forgot to look at the expiration date on the packaging so I ended up accidentally grabbing a pack that expires tomorrow, and my mom would try and make up for my mistake by microwaving the bread, but that would only just make it worse.

The bread came with a side of whipped chicken schmaltz. My heart isn’t healthy enough for me to be eating globs of saturated fat, but I still gave it a taste—not only because I wanted to see what it was like, but also because I was curious if the fat would help soften the bread.

No, I did not like it. And no, it did not help the dryness of the bread.

For my beverage, I asked my waitress to ask the bartender to surprise me with their best non-alcoholic drink. She asked me to narrow it down a bit, so I let her know that I like fruity flavors. She came back with a mixed berry mocktail.

This was extremely intense in flavor and extremely sweet, as if it was overloaded with syrup. That wasn’t functionally a problem for me, though; I thought the flavor itself was good, and I had no problem sipping some of the drink and then following it up with a sip of water to help dilute it and make the taste less overwhelming.

For our second appetizer, we got steak tartare made from hand-chopped filet. This was prepared tableside as cart service.

As you can probably tell from the photographs, there were a lot of ingredients added to the steak and egg yolk. The server was at it for a while.

You might have noticed a strange blue ingredient mixed in with the beef. We asked what it was, and the server revealed that it was… Takis Blue Heat Rolls. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love when restaurants make innovative, experimental dishes and add new twists to their menu. But I feel like there is still some kind of threshold somewhere that should not be crossed. I’m wondering whether putting blue Takis in beef tartare exceeds that line.

I’m someone who loves beef tartare for the flavor of the beef. Unfortunately, this beef tartare had way too much going on for my preference. It had too many additions that masked the flavor of the beef, and then to top it all off, the blue Takis were so strong that they masked the flavor of the additions. Ultimately, it sort of just tasted like a mess.

My friend consigned this dish after trying only a little bit, so I ended up eating an overwhelming majority of it. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t dislike it so much that I would let it go to waste, so I finished it all. Throughout the process, I was secretly hoping that some magical culinary miracle would happen where my tastebuds would suddenly become taste-blind to the Takis and then a completely new flavor profile would emerge, but alas, the entire thing just kept on tasting like Takis.

I don’t regret having this, because now I can say that I went to a restaurant and they crushed some Takis into my beef tartare, and that just sounds absolutely hilarious. However, I definitely would not have this again.

For my main entrée, I ordered two pasta dishes. The first was cavatelli with brown butter whey, Grana Padano, soft herbs, and black pepper.

This was my favorite dish of the dinner. It was a bit too salty for my preference, but it was still delicious. The texture of the cavatelli was perfect. The overall flavor profile had a great combination of traditional savoriness with an unexpected kick of light earthiness. I think a lot of what made this dish great was the sauce, so the shape of the cavatelli was ideal for absorbing and retaining the sauce.

The second pasta dish was a disaster. It was beef tongue agnolotti with crème fraîche (which was comically written as “créme fraiché” on the menu), chicken jus, chili crisp, and duck fat crumble.

I’m someone who has tried the most expensive cuts of A5 Japanese wagyu, but even then, believe it or not, my favorite cut of beef is… tongue. There is just something about beef tongue that is very delicious to me. Maybe it’s because I’m tasting my food, my food is tasting me, and thus, great balance emerges into the world. However, there is a caveat to that.

I like to categorize beef tongue into two broad groups: Korean-style 혀 and Mexican-style lengua. Of course, there are many more ways to cook tongue than just those two variants, but basically, the key difference for me is whether it is sliced and seared or diced and braised. I still like the diced and braised style of cooking tongue, but I really like the sliced and seared way. Sliced-and-seared tongue is usually lightly or minimally seasoned, and because of the method of preparation, the flavor of the tongue gets to speak (or lick) for itself. And the best part of it all? The texture is chewy, bouncy, and snappy, and when seared perfectly, sometimes even comes with a light crisp—this all makes for a very fun eating experience.

Unfortunately, this agnolotti was prepared the braised way. Doubly unfortunately, whatever marinade they used was repulsively salty to the point that the shredded beef tongue in each piece of agnolotti tasted bitter. To top it all off, the sauce was also way too salty, and it was just covered in grease and fat.

My friend ordered a 20-ounce prime New York strip steak. When I asked him for a review of it so I could include it in my blog post, he shrugged. I sampled a small portion of it, and my assessment was, “this steak is steak.” He agreed with my analysis. There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about it… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also isn’t preferred over being notably high quality.

The strangest thing about the steak, though, is the fact that it came with a side of kettle-cooked potato chips. I think it might have been better if it came with a well-balanced set of thick-cut fries and mixed vegetables as the sides, but I guess these potato chips definitely added to the memorability of the steak.

For dessert, we got a sticky plum pudding to share. The portion size was satisfyingly larger than expected, and the flavor profile seemed good, but this was way too sweet for my preference.

Here are some photos I took of the interior of the restaurant. This first picture is of the bar area; my friend ran into some unexpected delays and was about 15 minutes late for our reservation, so I waited in this bar area for our table to be assigned and prepared after he arrived.

This is what the dining area looks like. It is empty in these photographs because I took this right before departing and we were some of the last people there finishing our meals, but even just an hour before this, the restaurant was absolutely packed and bustling.

This is the exterior of the restaurant. The sign says they were established in 1976, but this particular location took over the spot and celebrated their grand opening only a couple months ago, in February.

This table to the right shows how much we paid. My friend and I split the bill half-and-half and processed each of our respective halves separately on the mobile payment device, so he might have tipped more than I did; I used my own numbers and scaled it up accordingly just for the purposes of this breakdown.

It’s probably needless to say at this point, but I do not think Hayworth is worth the money. If I had shown up for a quick lunch and ordered only the cavatelli with the berry mocktail, then I guess I would’ve given this restaurant a glowing review, but overall, the dishes were hit-or-miss (with way too many misses).

The service was remarkable. All the staff seemed not only well-trained, but also just socially savvy and intuitive people who genuinely enjoyed working at Hayworth and interacting with customers. Another funny element related to that is, throughout our meal, I think we ended up speaking with and getting checked on by four or five different people. Near the end, my friend started joking about how it seemed like management was basically just throwing the entire kitchen personnel roster at us. If this restaurant was rated on service alone, it would be top-tier.

However, unfortunately, I think their style of cooking is a bit too crude and primitive. The way the dishes were far too salty, fatty, and/or sweet made me think that this kind of preparation would be satisfying for hunter-gatherers who are chasing after those biologically carnal dopamine hits that signal high-calorie survival foods. If you’re looking for more refined dishes where the individual ingredients are left to speak for themselves, then I don’t think Hayworth is an optimal choice for a multi-course dinner.

Feuille is the French word for “leaf.” This restaurant picked it as their name because they specialize in creating innovative dishes with vegetables. To clarify, it wasn’t a vegetarian restaurant, but they did avoid red meat throughout the whole tasting menu and instead used only seafood and poultry.

There were two options for the tasting menu: the discovery menu and the signature menu. At a lot of restaurants, the tasting menus have different items and follow a different flavor storyline. However, upon reviewing the two course lists, I realized that the discovery menu was just a shorter version of the signature menu. The discovery menu was HK$1,288 per person; the signature menu was only HK$400 more for what seemed like quite a lot more food. Thus, I ended up going with the signature menu.

The first appetizer was lamiaceae seed kombucha. I’m usually not that big of a fan of kombucha because it just tastes like I’m drinking vinegar and I don’t particularly like vinegar, but this kombucha was much milder than expected. It gave a nice, refreshing kick to start the meal, and it wasn’t so sour that it made me pucker.

Next was mustard seed and sea grape atop a shiso leaf. I think the leaf was dehydrated, because it had a very brittle texture to it, and it tasted “leafy,” but had less of the iconic shiso flavor than I expected. Overall, it felt like I was eating a miniature garden, which was fun.

Afterwards was a yeasty pastry with sobacha and comté. This tasted like a deeply earthy and satisfyingly nutty bread.

The menu said the next item had pointed cabbage, watercress, and nutmeg in it, but it was difficult to identify exactly what I was eating. I imagine those vegetables were mixed into the light, creamy substance placed atop the carb that served as a base for this bite.

Next was a creamy substance with a consistency in between custard and soup, made from chives, corn, and hazelnut. There was a small dollop of caviar included in the center.

The best way for me to describe all these grain and seed dishes is that they captured and extracted the essence of the entirety of each vegetable that they used as an ingredient.

Vegetables usually have a lot of natural water content in them, but all these dishes tasted like the vegetables were dehydrated so that you only capture the true crux of the vegetable flavor without it being diluted or watered down. On top of that, some vegetables come with an element of bitterness, but for all these dishes, it was as if that bitterness was pinpointed and surgically omitted. And finally, each flavor profile tasted more “complete” with all elements of the vegetable, rather than just the part that is sold in mass market (i.e., there was a perfect amount of flavor from what would basically be considered the entire plant, rather than just the popular vegetable portion).

Although Feuille had a wine pairing (four glasses for HK$688 or seven glasses for HK$988), they did not have a non-alcoholic pairing.

When I browsed their à la carte drink menu, there was one mocktail that caught my eye as something that is locally significant: 涅盤遊記, or the Voyage à Nirvana. This was made with lapsang souchong—a smoked Chinese black tea—and monk fruit.

This flavor profile and combination was very new to me, and it was not something I recall ever having tried in the past. It was quite a bit more strong and intense than I expected; I accommodated by just taking small sips to enjoy it throughout my entire meal, and then just drinking water as my primary beverage to go along with it.

Before the next set of courses, the waiter brought out some dough and set it within view on the corner of the table. This dough was going to become bread that I would eat later on during my meal, but it was freshly made so the yeast hadn’t risen yet. While we were waiting for it to finish rising, it was placed on the table so I could keep an eye on it and monitor its progress as a form of entertainment.

While that bread was in progress, the waiter also brought out some other bread that was already ready to eat. This was labeled on the menu as Feuille bread. I didn’t see any leaves on it, so I imagine it was just their signature bread that was named after the restaurant.

This was some great bread. The outside was crispy, crunchy, and firm, but not so much so that it was dry. The inside was very soft. The contrast in texture made the bread more interesting to eat, and the seeds sprinkled on top added an extra depth to its flavor that I liked.

The bread was served with a side of dill pil-pil sauce topped with edible flowers. There was a creamy element to it, but it was extremely light and refreshing, almost as if they had used a slightly thicker fat but then somehow extracted the fattiness from it and only left behind the texture.

I used a generous portion of this sauce with each bite of bread because it was so crisp and light. The best way for me to describe this flavor profile is as if I was eating a gourmet plant, but the only parts of the plant that hit your taste buds are the parts with brighter notes. It wasn’t bright in the sense of it being citrusy or anything; it maintained its core earthy identity, yet it had a very bright twist.

I had a lot of bread left over after finishing all this dill pil-pil sauce, but that was fine; I was already expecting future dishes to also come with great sauces, and I was anticipating finishing any leftover sauce by using this bread as an absorbent.

This is the point in the menu where things are a little fuzzy in my memory, considering that I am writing these blog posts after the fact and it’s already been almost three weeks since I actually had this dinner. I’m trying to cross-reference some of these dishes with what the menu says, but I have a suspicion that they didn’t follow the course list exactly.

The first thing that confuses me is what this is. The waiter briefly explained it to me, but I don’t quite remember what he said. This tasted very intensely of seafood, so I think it might have been something from the sea that was dehydrated and flattened.

Next was some kuruma prawn. This came with a little more of the dill pil-pil sauce that was served with the bread. The prawn had a perfect texture—firmer on the outside, and unbelievably tender on the inside.

The menu listed two components under the kuruma prawn dish, so I am guessing that these were supposed to contribute to the overall flavor profile of the prawn. The first was tomato water.

In the same spirit as how I described the vegetables above, this tomato water tasted like they took only the pleasant essences of tomato and got rid of everything else. I have no issues eating tomatoes as part of a dish, but I don’t often just snack on tomatoes like I would for different fruits like apples or oranges because, for some reason, I seem to sense the sourness of tomatoes far more acutely than the average person. This tomato water had absolutely no sourness to it, so it was as if they had, again, zeroed in on any undesirable elements of the dish and zapped it away.

The second component to go along with the kuruma prawn was celery. I am fairly certain that this was the celery dish (albeit, very unconventionally prepared)… but I think this might have also been the wild fish dish, which is listed as its own separate plate to be served along with algae and romanesco. You can only barely see it in the photograph, but the wild fish was under the sauce.

Next was Sai Kung’s spiny lobster with pumpkin and marigold. I liked this clean switch from green vegetables to orange vegetables; it served as a clear progression in the flavor storytelling, both in a visual sense and with the way it tasted.

The lobster was hiding underneath, so I lifted its cover and took another photograph from a different angle. Similar to the prawn from earlier, this lobster had a perfect texture—a balanced firmness and softness on the outside, along with extreme tenderness on the inside.

I’ve never had this kind of sauce to go along with lobster before, and I liked it much better than the general clarified butter that usually accompanies lobster. I felt like the pumpkin in particular was neutral enough that it didn’t really interfere with or alter the flavor of the lobster.

Next up was their fungus dish, a delicate pastry topped with a heaping portion of black truffle.

They brought out this plate to show it to me first, before taking it back to the kitchen to finish preparing it for my consumption.

I thought it was going to come out much more different, but the only final touches they seemed to have made were to cut it in half and add a small pool of sauce to the side, which the menu says is derived from shaoxing wine.

I like black truffle, so I was glad to see this on the menu. As expected from high-quality truffle, this had a mild, deep, earthy, nutty flavor that was enhanced and complemented by the sauce and the pastry underneath.

It was time for the main entrée.

This came with an optional supplement for some A4 wagyu striploin; diners could either replace the provided main entrée with the wagyu for HK$388, or they could add it on as a separate, second entrée for HK$488. I ended up passing on this, not only because the standard entrée was something that is not common in the United States and I wanted to try it while I had the chance to in Hong Kong, but also because I already had a lot of food high in saturated fat so far during my trip, so I wanted to be conscious of my heart health and not overdo it on highly-marbled red meat.

So, the main entrée I got was Shiqi pigeon served with Kyoho grape and arugula.

I really appreciated the creative presentation with the pigeon leg, though I’m sure it has spooked some people in the past if they are not as adventurous with their dining habits. Also, it’s not often that you get to eat poultry cooked medium-rare in the United States, so I savored the opportunities in which I was able to do so in Hong Kong.

This is probably the best pigeon I’ve ever had in my life. I guess that’s not really a difficult title to earn, considering that I almost never eat pigeon, but regardless, this pigeon was prepared very well. I’m the type of person who eats steak rare or blue rare and loves beef tartare, and that preference for seeking out that distinct texture of raw or undercooked meat extended to pigeon as well.

I’m not really a huge fan of eating chicken feet, so I assumed I probably wouldn’t really like pigeon feet either. The part of the foot that was on the opposite side of the string grip was the only section I left alone, though; I chewed the skin and meat directly off the thigh, which had a stronger flavor than the fleshy part of the breast.

Next came a beetroot.

Of course, the actual part I was supposed to eat wasn’t the entire beetroot. Instead, the inside was carved out and had a creamy substance made from beetroot, juniper, and roses.

I don’t think this was intended to be a dessert yet, but it had a nice natural sweetness to it, which signaled the beginning of the winding-down process of the culinary adventure. I like when foods are used as containers like this; although the beet wasn’t soft enough to eat and was only there to serve as a cup, it had absorbed some of the cream and gotten softer, so I scraped that part and ate that too for a stronger beet flavor.

This was the final confusing area of the menu. The course list said that the next dish was made from rosella, chocolate, and magnolia. I am guessing this was supposed to be a two-part item, but it didn’t really match the description too closely.

This first item was a frozen treat sprinkled atop edible flower. The texture was like eating aerated ice cream that was flash frozen using liquid nitrogen. That brittle texture paired with the flower petals made for a fun chewing experience.

This second item was a complete mystery. As you can probably tell, it was a vegetable-based “chip,” for a lack of a better way to describe it. It had a combination of a floral/fragrant and an earthy aroma.

Apart from that, I have no idea what it was made from. I guess one possibility is that the chocolate, which was missing from the prior serving, might have been reimagined somehow in a flowery way and served like this.

Remember the dough from earlier? Partway through my meal, the waiter came back to check on it, and after confirming that it had risen enough, he brought it back to the chef to turn into actual bread. I didn’t realize it, but this was actually part of the dessert—the bread was baked to accompany some black banana and vanilla ice cream.

Funny enough, even though there were some absolutely incredible seafood dishes as part of this tasting menu, this bread and ice cream ended up being my favorite dish strictly on a metric of how much it triggered my “wow, that is delicious” radar.

I usually don’t like black (i.e., overripe) bananas because I think it tastes like fermentation gone brutally wrong. One of the reasons I never drink alcohol, beyond just the fact that it is bad for your health, is that I think it tastes horrific; when I taste black bananas, I sense some of that alcohol flavor in it (along with a splash of acetone). With that being said, going along with the theme of the rest of the food items at this restaurant, this black banana and vanilla ice cream tastes like it precisely extracted only the good part of black bananas while completely cleansing it of all the chemical tastes of real black bananas.

To make things even better, the bread was cooked with some kind of nut lining the bowl. Because the nuts themselves were also cooked, there was an incredible Maillard reaction that gave it somewhat of a charred flavor, but without any bitterness. It tasted like the bread also absorbed some of that flavor, because the softer, inside part of the bread had a nutty element to it as well.

All of these elements combined—the soft, hot bread; the hard, warm nuts; and the smooth, cold ice cream—worked together to make this a truly orgasmic dish.

And finally, for the last dish of the dinner, I received a custard with cauliflower and coconut.

Because this came out at the same time as the other dessert, I tried sampling it with the bread. However, I realized that the chef had controlled the flavor profile of the bread and ice cream combo to such perfection that this custard made it seem underwhelming. So, instead, I had this standalone and on its own, which made both dishes much better.

The last bite, provided after the conclusion of the meal, was pâte de fruit. It was flavored with orange, which I guess is not too difficult to guess just from the fact that it is also the color orange, but I think there might have been some other fruits mixed in as well.

On the back of the course list, there was a map that showed the location from which each of the main ingredients of the dinner were sourced.

Here are some photographs of the dining area.

Considering that I was aiming for a bedtime of around 10 PM HKT during my trip (which is the equivalent of 7 AM PDT), I booked a reservation for the earliest time slot they had for dinner, which was 6 PM HKT. I was the first person to show up that day, so I managed to get some shots of the restaurant with no other customers having arrived yet.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

If you’ve followed my blog with at least a little bit of interest, you most likely realized that I like experiencing new and different things in basically all aspects of my life, including with food. Thus, I get pretty allured when a restaurant does something novel with their dining, such as adding in their own special twist or coming up with experimental and/or uncommon dishes.

If you’ve followed my blog, you might have also noticed that I am very descriptive and precise when sharing what I’ve eaten at restaurants. Even though I am not a good cook and I have no formal culinary background, I can usually figure out what I’m eating just based on the broad background I’ve built. Even if the menu or course list is inaccurate or has mistakes (which, believe it or not, happens more frequently than you’d expect), I can easily identify that and fix it before writing about it on my blog.

The reason I loved Feuille so much is that it threw me off a lot in both of those aspects. I don’t actively seek out vegetarian restaurants (or restaurants that do fine dining with a focus on vegetables) because I find vegetables to be somewhat boring. However, Feuille took vegetables and made them fun, exciting, and delicious. On top of that, while eating these innovative dishes, I had a very hard time figuring out (and remembering) what they were made of and how they were prepared, as is probably apparent by the unusually vague and confusing way I wrote my review in this blog post.

Another thing I appreciated about Feuille is their philosophy. The waiter told me about how they try to minimize waste by using as much of the whole ingredient as possible, and how they make their logistics more efficient by sourcing ingredients from as local as possible. I think that consuming (or at least utilizing) the entirety of an ingredient is how we are “meant” to interact with the world around us. Restaurants end up having a shocking amount of perfectly usable food products discarded as waste, so it is intrinsically satisfying to me when an effort is made to optimize this.

This is obviously a pretty high price for a single meal, but if you analyze it within the context of fine dining, I think that Feuille offers extraordinarily high value for money. The food was top-tier, the experience was captivating, and the service was functionally flawless. If you are seeking a meal within this price range, I highly recommend Feuille.

The restaurant was arranged as multiple bar-style tables wrapped around the kitchen area in curves. I was seated at the final spot of one of the center tables. Obviously, this kind of table arrangement isn’t really conducive to privacy, but I feel like I lucked out by getting as private a seat as possible, while also still being in the middle of the action so I could watch all the different areas of the kitchen with a simple turn of my head.

When the host brought me to my seat, there was an envelope already there waiting for me.

The envelope contained two items: the course list for the tasting menu, and a mission statement describing what VEA aims to do with their food.

The tasting menu started with some savory snacks. The first was a delicate pastry-style dish topped with greens and served with a side of a creamy sauce.

The sauce was served in a small music box that played an instrumental melody on repeat that diners could listen to while eating the first snack.

The pastry was already great, but the sauce somehow still made it significantly better. The sauce tasted like it captured the deliciousness of an extremely rich and fatty cream while somehow keeping it light and eliminating any greasiness.

There was a little scroll tucked into the music box. Upon unraveling it, I found the lyrics to the tune to which I enjoyed the snack.

The second snack was another delicate pastry, but this one was topped with some prawns.

This was also served with some sauce. Just like the first snack, the prawns were amazing on their own, but the sauce elevated it to perfection. This was after I was very impressed at the first sauce and my expectations were already raised pretty high, and this sauce still somehow blew them away.

This was quite a large portion of sauce, and I think one sauce bowl was intended to serve two people dining as a pair. I was dining alone for this meal, but I ended up getting a full bowl anyway. That was great news for me considering how much I loved it; after finishing the prawn pastry, I proceeded to finish the rest of the leftover sauce with the side spoon I was given as if the sauce was yogurt or pudding.

While eating the snacks, the waiter came by to finalize my selections for any modifications I wanted to make to the tasting menu.

The first modification was to decide whether I wanted to replace one of the courses with fish maw, Oscietra caviar, and quinoa for a supplemental cost of HK$1,280. What I appreciated was that there was a replica of what the different special dishes were like so that diners could visually see what they would get prior to committing to a large upcharge.

Although I’m a big fan of caviar, I saw that there was already a caviar dish on the tasting menu, and HK$1,280 was quite a large additional fee (especially considering that it is a substitution and not just a bonus dish), so I passed on this supplement.

The second modification was to decide whether I wanted to replace a different one of my courses with 28-head dried abalone pithivier and sweetbread for a supplemental cost of HK$2,030. As you can probably guess, I opted to pass on this one as well, though I did like taking a look at these replicas too.

And finally, the third modification I had to decide on was whether or not I wanted to add on a beverage pairing. I noticed that they had a spirit-free cocktail pairing curated by their executive mixologist. Usually, non-alcoholic pairings like this are more abridged compared to their alcoholic pairings, but the one at VEA had seven drinks listed, which I thought was quite a lot. That sounded like pretty good value, so I ordered the spirit-free pairing.

The first drink of the pairing came out soon afterwards, which had elderflower, yuzu, cucumber, and soda.

For the first of eight courses, I was served Kristal caviar with spring peas in a smoked coconut sauce. Usually, caviar is used as a way to enhance a dish, but to my absolute joy, this was a dish where the main element was a generous portion of caviar.

This was my favorite dish of the dinner. The caviar, as expected, was delicious. The spring peas were small enough that the shape went nicely with the caviar and the roundness of both items made for a fun textural experience. The peas were firm enough that they had their own variant of a “pop” when I bit into them. The smoked coconut sauce was a bit of a phenomenon on its own, because it tasted both rich and mild at the same time; all the positive aspects of coconut were emphasized and strong, while the somewhat “watery” flavor you sometimes detect in coconut was completely absent.

The next drink of the non-alcoholic beverage pairing had prickly pear, apple, cardamom, lemon, and cinnamon.

That went along with the striped jack served with pumpkin and two-year preserved turnip.

It’s a little bit difficult to tell from the photograph, but this was basically a sphere that was assembled with slices of fish and vegetables. It made for an easy eating experience, as I was able to layer one slice of each together and get a well-balanced and refreshing bite each time.

The third drink came in a tall glass and was made with dried plum, Chinese vinegar, and ginger beer. The outside of the glass was affixed with a sugary cinnamon powder.

This was my favorite drink of the night. Just based on the ingredient list, I wasn’t expecting to like this due to the presence of vinegar, but this was not sour at all. The sugary cinnamon on the outside was also amazing, and every modicum of etiquette and class went out the window as I rubbed the lower portions of the glass on my lower lip to get more of the powder per sip (even though powder placed on the bottom of such a tall glass is mostly just assumed to be decorative).

As the next dish was being prepared, they brought out another replica of it so I could see what was coming up.

Here it is in cooked form: sea cucumber in tiger prawn sauce with a few spritzes of aged Shaoxing wine.

The server recommended that I cut the sea cucumber into small pieces ahead of time. I’m glad she suggested that, because it was a great idea—it allowed the sea cucumber more time to absorb more of the amazing tiger prawn sauce and made each bite juicier. The sea cucumber itself had a perfect balance of tenderness and bounciness. I couldn’t really tell what element the Shaoxing wine added to the dish, but that subtleness is probably what was intended.

The next beverage was peony tea with quince and rhubarb.

For the fourth course, I received rough scale flounder with some white turnip in a Longjing tea sauce.

This was a classic, straightforward whitefish dish with nothing too fancy or crazy. The sauce was mild (but still tasty), the flounder was tender, and overall, this checked off all the boxes for what you’d want in a light and clean whitefish dish.

The next beverage was a genmaicha with Paragon white Penja pepper.

This concluded the first half of the tasting menu. Upon entering the intermission phase, I was given a roll of haw flakes to munch on while preparing for the two main entrées.

I took this opportunity to check out the washroom. There was limited space in the restaurant so it was a bit cramped and I couldn’t get a good angle for the photograph, but I think this is quite literally the most luxurious public washroom I have ever been to in my entire life.

Upon returning to my seat, finishing my haw flakes, and catching up on reading the news on my phone, the brief wait was over and I was presented with my first main entrée: Yunnan mushroom congee with preserved turnip. If you remember from before, this is the dish that I could have replaced with fish maw instead.

This mushroom tasted like it had multiple different flavor profiles at once. While chewing, I sensed a bit of nuttiness, savoriness, earthiness, and sweetness at the same time (though I’m not sure which of those were from the mushroom itself and which were from other ingredients in the congee). For a lack of a better way to describe it, it also tasted “meaty,” and if a vegetarian wanted to eat a meat substitute, I think this mushroom would act as a great alternative.

The second-to-last drink of the spirit-free pairing had tangerine, monk fruit, dark plum, liquorice, and Prunellae Spica.

In a similar fashion as the previous dishes, another replica was brought out to show the core ingredients of the next upcoming dish.

To go along with the second main entrée, I was given a small cup of tea. This was just some bonus tea and was not part of the beverage pairing.

As the grand finale, I was served Aveyron lamb with carrot purée and angelica root.

This was the dish that otherwise would have been replaced by the abalone had I opted to order the supplement instead. I actually really like lamb and would consider it my favorite kind of red meat, so it especially would not have made sense for me to swap it out.

The lamb was milder than I expected, and extremely tender. The root vegetables and the sauce were also proportionally mild, so it did not overpower the lamb.

The final beverage of the spirit-free cocktail pairing was strawberry mango tea. It was prepared inside an infusion vessel, and more specifically, The Porthole by Crucial Detail. This probably had the most “basic” flavor profile out of all the beverages, but because of its refreshing and familiar fruitiness, I would still rank it as my second favorite drink of the night.

Each segment of the kitchen had a different course that they specialized in preparing, depending on what kinds of equipment were present in that section of the kitchen. By the time my dinner was soon coming to an end, it was already getting pretty late, and the section of the kitchen right in front of me transitioned from making appetizers to making dessert. I got a nice view of one of the cooks intricately preparing my next dish.

The tasting menu’s first dessert was cucumber and green apple sorbet with stinky herbs. I was spooked when I saw “stinky herbs” on the ingredient list because I didn’t know just how stinky the stinky herbs would get, but they weren’t actually stinky at all, which I assume was a consequence of proper preparation.

The smaller orbs below the sphere of sorbet were actually orbs of cucumber and apple, rather than more sorbet. I enjoyed that textural contrast, as having that soft crisp made the chewing experience more fun.

The second dessert, and the final course of the tasting menu, was black truffle cheesecake with soy sauce toffee.

The truffle was mild and delicious, and the cheesecake had all the positives of the cheesecake flavor you expect, but without any of the heaviness or greasiness. The toffee was also quite special; it tasted like an elevated version of toffee, with the saltiness of the soy sauce enhancing and making more prominent the caramelized flavor caused by the Maillard reaction.

And with that, the eight-course tasting menu came to an end. I was given a mignardise along with the check.

I don’t know if this was just a special thing they were doing that day because it wasn’t mentioned on the course list, but a server came up to me and asked me if I was interested in some durian ice cream as if it was a bonus. Of course, I eagerly agreed; durian is not a flavor that you see often in the United States, so I wanted to have it in Hong Kong while I could.

This was more of a multi-faceted durian dessert than it was just durian ice cream. As expected, it had a bit of that iconic durian stink to it as I brought it up to my mouth, but as I bit into it and chewed, it got replaced by custardy sweetness.

Here is a photograph of a different section of the kitchen. The area with the ovens was furthest away from me, which I guess is a good thing, because that meant my seat maintained a comfortable temperature throughout my meal.

This is the VEA sign by the entrance.

On my way out, the hostess stopped me to give me a little goodie bag to bring home (or in my case, to bring back to my hotel). I opened it after my train ride back to my hotel in Admiralty and found a Chinese hickory nut marshmallow chocolate chip cookie inside, which I enjoyed as a late-night snack before going to sleep.

I’ve eaten a lot of nutty cookies, and I’ve also eaten a lot of chocolate chip cookies, but I don’t often get to have both at the same time. This cookie combined the best of both, and it tasted great. On top of that, the addition of marshmallows added a second dimension of sweetness that complemented the sweetness of the chocolate.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

This is one of the most expensive meals I’ve ever had on a per-person basis (though I guess a decent chunk of it was from the mocktail pairing, which I thought was great, but I still would’ve had no problem just having only water throughout my meal).

With that being said, for me, I think it was worth it. The portion sizes were satisfying, the selection of dishes fit my personal preferences perfectly, the service was fantastic, and I felt great about all aspects of the meal in its entirety.

Although the fish maw and abalone supplements might be alluring to some, I would not recommend them (though keep in mind that this suggestion is coming from someone who did not actually try them). If they were strictly additive to the eight-course tasting menu, then people who really love fish maw or abalone might be able to justify getting them, but keep in mind that they are replacements. They are quite expensive, and they are replacing dishes that are already very delicious and fit well with the flavor storyline of the overall tasting menu.

If a ~US$330 meal (which excludes the beverage pairing) is within your budget, then I highly recommend trying out VEA. It offered all the components of a top-tier tasting menu, both in terms of the food and the overall experience, and everything about it either fulfilled or exceeded my expectations.

I had the luxury of just being able to tag along with my friends without putting in the effort of planning anything; they did all the research, picked the restaurant, and handled the reservation. Unfortunately, one downside to this was that the reservation was put in for 8:30 PM local time, which is the equivalent of 5:30 AM Pacific time, without me having an opportunity to ask if there were any earlier available time slots. I stay up pretty late and usually sleep after 5:30 AM PT anyway, but note that this dinner started at 5:30 AM PT. This made for an extremely drowsy dining experience.

The dinner lasted about three hours, which is lengthy, but not particularly unusual for a teppanyaki experience like this. In fact, I’d argue that the longer it is, the better it is, because watching the chef cook in front of you can be an entertaining and enlightening experience.

With that being said, about one-third of the way into the dinner, I was already mentally asleep. You might notice evidence of this from the fact that, for the first handful of dishes, I took a lot of photographs of the chef preparing the food, but for the later courses, I just have pictures of the dish. I didn’t do this intentionally and didn’t even notice I had done that until I was going through and organizing the photos I had; I was just so sleepy that my brain wasn’t working and I was just on literal auto-pilot of snapping a picture of the food and then putting it in my mouth.

There were a few different options for the teppanyaki menu. Because I like trying out limited-edition or seasonal options, I went with the spring special seasonal menu. It seemed like everyone else also got it, so I’m not sure if this was one of those situations where everyone in the party had to pick the same option and the decision had already been made for me without my input, and my personal selection didn’t matter.

Communication was tricky for this dinner—I showed up exactly on time, but the rest of my group was early, so it looked like I was late, and I was seated all the way at the far edge of the bar-style table in the last remaining chair. Thus, I was basically only able to chat with two of my friends directly next to me, and everyone else was too far away. Funny enough, even communication with the waitress was near-impossible; I have no problem understanding Chinese accents, but this waitress also had a United Kingdom accent layered on top of it, which I do have a major problem understanding. In my sleepy state, it felt like I was splitting brain cells in half trying to understand what in the world she was saying.

With all that context out of the way, here is what the seasonal menu consisted of.

To start, we received firefly squid with kinome vinegar miso. The squid had an amazing, intense flavor that I liked a lot, but somehow, I liked the sauce even more. The squid was plentifully drenched in it, but it was mild enough that it complemented the squid well without overpowering it.

Next was some seasonal sashimi.

This was great taste-wise, but unfortunately, the portion size was comically small. Each piece of sashimi was cut so small that by the time I recognized that it was high-quality fish and was enjoying it, it was already fully shredded in my mouth and ready to swallow.

For my beverage, I noticed that the only way to get water was to pay for bottled water, so I figured that if I was going to pay money for a drink anyway, I might as well get something unique and flavored. I browsed through the non-alcoholic section of the beverage menu and picked one that I didn’t recognize so I could try something new. I don’t remember what exactly it was, but it tasted like a more earthy variant of plum.

At this point, all our orders were in and all our food was inventoried, so the wait staff started bringing plates of raw ingredients out from the back so the teppanyaki chef could cook everything in front of us on the grill.

While all this was coming out and being put on display, I got my next dish, Hokkaido sea urchin. This was a supplement to the spring special seasonal menu for an additional HK$300. Considering that sea urchin is my favorite kind of seafood, I of course had to get the supplement.

Flavor-wise, it was very good. However, even though this was intended as a sashimi dish, I wish that they had still included a small portion of rice along with it. I think sea urchin goes very well together with rice because the individual grains of rice give a lot of surface area to “spread out” the sea urchin, thus engaging with a larger part of your tongue and taste buds.

While I was eating the sea urchin, the chef started preparing the first entrée.

We were served sautéed surf clam with caviar and Japanese hollandaise sauce.

This was my second-favorite dish of the meal. This was an absolute explosion of umami and flavor. The sauce had all the good parts of a creamy sauce without actually being that creamy or fatty. The caviar added a nice saltiness to it. The slice of zucchini added a subtle element of refreshing vegetable without diluting any of the umami.

While we were eating our surf clam, the chef started grilling our shark fin, which was to be served in creamy chicken soup. For those who did not want shark fin, there was a substitution available for grilled fish maw, but all seven people in my group picked the shark fin.

Shark fin is illegal for me back at home. The United States passed the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. Prior to that, Nevada passed Senate Bill 194, also sometimes referred to as the Wildlife Trafficking Prevention Act, in 2017.

I have had shark fin before in the United States when I was a kid and before it was outlawed, but I didn’t remember what it was like. So, of course, I seized the opportunity to try it legally while in Hong Kong.

The soup and shark fin were delicious, but upon research, it seems like the shark fin doesn’t really have a standout flavor on its own, and the flavor came mostly from its ability to absorb and retain the flavor from the creamy chicken soup.

A lot of people apparently love shark fin for the texture, and I can confirm that the texture is definitely one-of-a-kind. It was a very fun eating experience, but not so irresistibly incredible that I would become a regular consumer of shark fin.

Next was my favorite dish of the dinner: grilled mantis shrimp with soy sauce butter. Similar to the surf clam, this was an absolute explosion of umami and flavor.

My guess is that the innards of the mantis shrimp were removed, mixed together into a smoother consistency, seasoned, and injected back into the shrimp as the orange paste that is visible in the photograph. I tried to confirm exactly what was done with it with the waitress, but I couldn’t understand her United Kingdom accent.

Next was grilled amadai in basil-flavored clam consommé soup.

The fish was very tender and the soup complemented it well by balancing the fish and seafood flavor with vegetable undertones, but the most intriguing part of this dish was the texture of the fish. As you can probably tell from the photograph, there was a crispy layer on top of the fish that almost tasted like miniature shrimp had been attached to the skin. This added a very fun additional element to chewing the fish.

The next dish was broiled ezo abalone with sea urchin sauce and bamboo shoots.

By this point, I was basically falling asleep while upright. I do recall that this was delicious, but I don’t remember much more beyond that.

After the abalone, the menu had a second supplement option of grilled Australian lobster with Barilla Genovese and tapenade sauce for an additional HK$298. Although seafood is my favorite kind of food and I love lobster, I opted to pass on this supplement because I was already still residually full from overindulging until bloatedness for the past few days.

Labeled as the main entrée, the long string of seafood dishes was followed by two different cuts of beef: A4 Kumamoto wagyu sirloin and A5 Takamori “drunken” wagyu tenderloin.

I appreciated that they had two different kinds of wagyu beef. Having only A5 can get overwhelming and you often find yourself quickly reaching your limit due to how rich and fatty it is. Having some A5 wagyu and then rounding out the rest of the portion with A4 wagyu made it so we were able to eat a larger and more satisfying and fulfilling portion of wagyu without it feeling too heavy.

It’s just barely out of frame in the photograph, but of course, this was served with salt. I ate each bite with some onion, a bit of wasabi, and a heaping pinch of salt; all that worked together very well with the wagyu to really extract its amazing flavor.

As the grand finale, we all got to pick a rice dish. The options were grilled eel kabayaki, foie gras teriyaki, snow crab and salmon roe, red sea bream and sakura shrimp, or seared Hokkaido flounder fin and salmon roe.

This was prepared all together and presented to us inside the clay pots in which they were cooked.

My friend sitting next to me opted for the seared Hokkaido flounder fin and salmon roe donabe, which came with an extra HK$150 supplemental cost.

I went with the grilled eel kabayaki donabe. Interestingly, even though I liked it, I noticed that, for some reason, it wasn’t quite as top-tier as the other dishes were. I sampled some of my friend’s Hokkaido flounder fin and thought it was much better and comparable in quality to the excellence of the other dishes served that night.

For dessert, we were allowed to pick from four different options. I went with the homemade matcha warabi mochi with vanilla ice cream.

At this point, I was on the verge of collapsing and crashing my head onto the table in sleepiness, so I took this opportunity to stand up and walk around and take pictures of some of the other desserts as well.

This was the strawberry soup with homemade vanilla ice cream. The menu labeled this vanilla ice cream as homemade while it didn’t include that designation for mine; I don’t know if it actually was any different, or if it even makes business sense to have two different kinds of vanilla ice cream on hand to serve for two different desserts, but I guess the texture did visually look a tiny bit different.

This was the custard cream sakura crêpe with homemade sakura gelato.

The final dessert, which isn’t pictured here, was almond blancmange with orange compote.

I really do not function well at all when I have not gotten enough sleep, and by the conclusion of the dinner, it was almost 9:00 AM PT. I wish I could give more insightful thoughts about my experience, but one of the areas in which I lose function with lack of sleep is my memory. With that being said, I had as great of a time as I could have possibly had, with this level of sleep deprivation in mind.

My friends paid the full bill for this restaurant so I don’t have exact numbers on hand, but the spring special seasonal menu was HK$2,280 per person, which is a little bit under US$300.00 at current exchange rates. That is quite expensive, but fine dining in Hong Kong seems to be pretty expensive in general. Also note that this is a teppanyaki restaurant, so there was also a material performative element to it as well in the sense of being able to watch the chef prepare your food in front of you.

Overall, if you are well-rested and are interested in having a splurge meal, I think Teppanyaki Mihara Goten is a spot worthy of your consideration.

If I’m making the effort to pick out and go to a high-end restaurant in another country, I will usually get the more expensive item and get the “full” dining experience. However, for this meal, I opted to go for the smaller celebration menu for two reasons.

First, at this point being fairly deep into my trip, I was eating a substantial amount of food every day, so my hunger level was very low. I specifically liked these tasting menu formats of dining because I was able to try smaller portions of a lot of different dishes, but even then, it still added up over the many days I was in Hong Kong. Second, I preferred some of the specific individual dishes on the celebration menu over the experience menu. I will make references to these distinctions occasionally throughout my blog post.

The meal started with bocaditos, which are a collection of small bites. The first was tuna with fermented chili inside a miniature cup made out of nori…

… the second was ebi (shrimp) and celtus (stem lettuce) atop potato cake…

… and the third was morel with some cordyceps flower and squid ink.

Although I know what all the individual ingredients were, all three of these small bites were unfamiliar in terms of overall flavor profiles. I remember all of them being pretty savory, and I enjoyed all three bites.

After taking away the plates from the bocaditos, the waiter brought me a small cup of tea to sip on while I waited for my next course.

The second course of the meal was sourdough bread.

This was great bread with a very soft inside, though I would’ve preferred for the outside to be a little bit less crispy, as some of the jagged edges were sharp enough that it felt like it was cutting the inside of my mouth.

I got to enjoy this entire loaf by myself because this is one of the restaurants that I went to alone; other tables that dined as pairs had to share a loaf between the two of them. That ended up being extra fantastic for me, because that meant I had enough bread to use to dip into the leftover sauces of my future dishes, in addition to enjoying a reasonable portion of it with the olive oil that was served as part of the bread course.

There were two different kinds of olive oil served with the bread. One was milder and brighter in flavor, while the other was deeper and a bit more bitter.

Apparently these were extremely high-quality olive oils, but unfortunately, I don’t really know much about olive oil and generally only use it for cooking. I thought they were both fine. I finished the full portion of both olive oils along with the bread, but I did so mainly because I know that olive oil is good for heart health and I’m still working on trying to lower my cholesterol.

Each course list had an alcoholic beverage pairing that cost an extra HK$880 for the celebration menu and HK$1,150 for the experience menu. I don’t drink alcohol, so I asked if they had a non-alcoholic pairing, but they did not.

In substitution, all that my waiter could recommend for me was some sparkling tea instead. I wanted something that was as authentic to Hong Kong as possible, so I ordered a bottle of Mindful Sparks Sparkling Dragon Pearl Jasmine Tea. According to Mindful Sparks, a local Hong Kong brand, this tea’s floral notes accompany savory dishes well, so it ended up being a good pick, as the celebration menu had a lot of savory dishes.

The first main dish was buri with asparagus, Ossetra caviar, and local herbs. If you’re not already familiar, buri is mature Japanese amberjack, also referred to as yellowtail. Buri is the older version, while hamachi is the younger (and often farm-raised) version that you may have seen on sushi restaurant menus already.

Interestingly, on the menu, the emphasis on this dish was the asparagus, i.e., asparagus was the headlining ingredient rather than the amberjack. That was unexpected, but not unwarranted; this is probably some of the best asparagus I’ve ever had, and it was very pure and clean in flavor.

If I had gone with the experience menu instead of the celebration menu, this dish would have been ishidai instead. Ishidai is striped beakfish, and it would’ve been served with the same Ossetra sturgeon caviar with sweet peas in a ponzu sauce.

The experience menu would’ve also come with a bonus dish that would have been served at this point in the meal, hotate. Hotate is Japanese scallop, and this rendition of it would’ve been made with seaweed and a dill emulsion served in Salicornia buttermilk.

The next dish, which was offered as a HK$580 supplement to both menus, was the carabinero which is a type of red prawn. It was served with some Kaviari Kristal caviar, which was scooped and plated tableside.

I am pretty sure this is literally one of the best dishes I have ever had in my entire life.

The prawn was intensely flavorful with an unbelievable umami and a strong natural sweetness, and I literally cannot remember having eaten a prawn with more flavor than this. On top of that, even the texture was perfect—the outside felt like you had maximized the “bouncy firm” element of it, while the inside was probably some of the most tender prawn I’ve ever had.

I think Kristal caviar is now my new all-time favorite caviar. Like the prawn, the caviar also had a very intense flavor profile to it; the only way I can describe it is if each caviar pearl had the flavor content of three “regular” caviar pearls compacted into one. There is a running joke online about how people who enjoy caviar don’t actually like it, but are only pretending to like it because it makes them look more sophisticated and classy; I want to clarify that I actually do genuinely like caviar, and as a caviar enthusiast, this was incredible caviar.

The menu said that there was panna cotta in the dish, which I imagine was the orange cylindrical cream atop which the caviar was placed. I couldn’t really identify specifically what it was made of, though based on the color, I imagine there was some sort of seafood (possibly sea urchin) blended into it.

I’m not sure what the sauce was made from either, but the menu listed takana as an ingredient; there was obviously no leaf mustard directly on the dish, so I’m wondering if the sauce had some leaf mustard as a component. This is probably some of the best sauce I’ve ever had too, and after consuming as much of it as possible along with the dish, I soaked up the leftover with the soft part of the sourdough bread and finished the rest.

People who are addicted to hard drugs should consider taking hits of carabinero and caviar instead, as the pleasure from eating this probably exceeds the pleasure anyone could possibly get from taking drugs. Though then again, I guess carabinero and caviar might be quite an expensive thing to get addicted to…

The next dish was monkfish with mekabu, broccolini, and salsa roja. This was a very well-balanced dish with a very mild spicy kick to it.

You would think that eating something like this after the carabinero dish would make it seem underwhelming, but in fact, it had the exact opposite effect. After my taste buds were done being absolutely ambushed with overwhelmingly delicious flavor, it was nice having a well-rounded dish like this monkfish coming next. To make it more relatable, I think it is comparable to if you just finished eating a satisfying and filling portion of Japanese A5 wagyu, and you’re rounding out your main course with a high-quality, tender, lighter filet mignon to counteract the heavy wagyu fat and cleanse the residual fattiness from your mouth.

I had some leftover salsa after finishing the monkfish, so again, I took some of the soft part of the sourdough bread I had left and soaked up the sauce for my last bite.

If I had opted for the experience menu instead of the celebration menu, this monkfish would’ve instead been replaced by a lobster dish served with sundried tomato parsnips and white kombu.

Next up was the main entrée. I picked pigeon de Racan topped with a whisky coffee sauce served alongside red cabbage and rice puffs.

If I had selected the experience menu, this would’ve instead been Argentina angus beef with sansai, artichoke puree, and chimichurri. For both menus, there was an option to upgrade the main entrée to a Mayura full-blood wagyu for a supplemental cost of HK$480.

I preferred the standard pigeon that came with the celebration menu instead of the beef dishes because pigeon is not a dish that is served often in the United States, so I wanted to try it out while I had the chance to do so in Hong Kong. In addition, as a secondary reason, I have been trying to avoid red meats where possible in an effort to reduce my consumption of saturated fat and lower my cholesterol levels. I won’t intentionally skip something I really want to try for the sole purpose of minimizing saturated fats; however, in this situation, because I actually wanted to try the pigeon, I figured this was a reasonable time to pass on the steak.

I enjoyed the pigeon. Usually, having a texture be “rubbery” is usually a bad thing, but this pigeon had a somewhat rubbery texture in a good way. The “bouncy” texture of the meat made it fun to eat. I also liked that it was sauced relatively lightly so that the pigeon flavor was able to shine through.

The final dish prior to dessert was arroz caldoso with king crab and mussel. This was also finished tableside, with the sauce being scooped in right before serving so that it doesn’t make the rice soggy.

This was prepared with a special rice: Yi O rice from Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. I’m not really a rice expert so I don’t think I can pinpoint any specific differences between this and other high-quality rice, but what I can say was that it was definitely delicious.

Andō had a special menu called “Field to Table: The Yi O Rice Menu” for HK$1,888. I saw this on their website ahead of time and was actually planning on getting that instead of either the experience or celebration menu. However, after I arrived, I found out that they have a very limited quantity of Yi O rice so they only run the dedicated Yi O rice menu on Mondays, and I was unfortunately there on a Tuesday.

The arroz caldoso was very savory and deep in flavor. The broth went well with the rice and seafood, and it evoked a nostalgic feeling for me. I don’t remember ever eating things like this as a child, and I for sure never had anything homecooked that was this high in quality, but this still tasted very homey and cozy to me.

I portioned out my sourdough bread perfectly, as, at this point, I had one last bite of bread left to use to wipe up every remaining drop of the broth and enjoy this dish in its literal entirety.

And finally, for dessert, I was served an herbs sorbet flavored with Japanese strawberries, atop some pink peppercorn and almonds. This had a nice, balanced, smooth sweetness to it, and it was a refreshing conclusion to my very rich and savory meal.

If I had opted for the experience menu instead, this would have been replaced with a citrus yogurt with orange, grapefruit, pomelo segments, and honey lemon served alongside some 62% dark chocolate with sea salt, cocoa nibs, and dark rum sponge cake. Although I like citrus flavors, I strongly prefer fruit over chocolate (and especially over dark chocolate), so I liked the sound of the celebration menu’s dessert better.

To conclude my meal, my waiter brought out some mignardises. They were good, but because of how otherworldly impressive the other dishes were, the mignardises were actually not too memorable.

Each table had a small lamp, which was very helpful for taking well-lit photographs. The back of the course list had a nice art print of fish.

I was seated in the corner, so I had a very private and peaceful dining experience, and I had a nice view of the rest of the restaurant during my meal.

Near the beginning of my review of One Harbour Road at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, I commented about potentially being seated in a distant corner due to being underdressed, so they wanted to “quarantine” me out of eyeshot of other diners. The same situation applied in this restaurant as well, where I showed up with basically the absolute bare minimum attire you could wear to a smart casual restaurant, while everyone else seemed to be dressed up a bit more. Similar to One Harbour Road, there isn’t a guarantee that this is what they did, and even if they did, I don’t mind at all because the privacy enhanced my dining experience, but it’s definitely a possibility.

This is what the entrance to the restaurant looked like. I wasn’t aware of this prior to showing up, but apparently, they are a Michelin-starred restaurant.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

I tend to be consciously considerate when dining alone at fine dining restaurants, specifically with regards to the fact that they are basically only making half the sale on me as they would with regular diners who usually come as pairs. With that in mind, I will usually opt to order pricier menu options where reasonable.

Because I got the lower-priced celebration menu instead of the experience menu, I was more inclined to add the carabinero supplement, and I am very glad I did. HK$580 is not cheap, but considering that I will remember this as a dish that made it onto my lifetime favorites list, I think it was worth it for me. I might not have felt the internal pressure to get the supplement if I had picked the more expensive menu, so I’m glad that the celebration menu existed.

The tea was also pricey, but not too crazy. The non-alcoholic beverages actually weren’t even listed on the drink menu, so I basically ordered it blind without knowing how much it cost or what the portion size even was. When the waiter brought out a literal entire glass bottle of sparkling tea for me, I was concerned that I had somehow inadvertently ordered like US$100 of tea, but less than US$30 for a 750 mL bottle of very good tea didn’t seem like a rip-off.

If this price point is within your budget and you enjoy deeply savory and umami dishes, I would recommend trying out Andō. They took the depth of flavors of their dishes to a level that I don’t often see in other restaurants, and I think that each bite will really push your dopamine release to peak highs.

Several years ago, I selected Marriott as my hotel brand of choice due to the large number of brands under their portfolio, the reliability of finding a Marriott-family hotel pretty much anywhere and even out in the middle of nowhere, and the fact that the highest tier of their elite status seemed better than other hotel chains. However, my friends are not quite as loyal to a singular brand as I am, so they select hotels on a case-by-case basis. For their stay in Hong Kong, they selected the Langham.

Shortly before leaving, one of my friends told me that she saw signs around her hotel about a Michelin-starred restaurant nearby and asked me to try it out and review it. I personally don’t care much about the Michelin Guide, and if anything, I often avoid Michelin-starred restaurants because earning the star often prompts restaurants to attract more customers and raise their pricing up accordingly. That’s great, but sometimes, restaurants cannot scale up their service offering proportionally, so I’ve noticed that Michelin-starred restaurants are too often a hit or miss.

With that being said, because my friend specifically requested that I try out the restaurant near her hotel, I decided to use the search feature on Michelin’s website for the first time ever. Unfortunately, that did not go well, because their default sorting options are not very conducive to actually finding the restaurants that have stars on the first try. If you fiddle around with the filters, you can eventually figure it out, but if you don’t have a prior knowledge of the different kinds of distinctions, then it can get tricky.

After struggling with the website for a bit, I managed to finally get it to zoom in near where her hotel was. However, I did not know this at the time, but there was a limit on the number of results, and that filter did not prioritize showing the top-awarded restaurants first. In fact, I have no idea how it selects which restaurants to show, but it does not show all the pins when you first go to an area, and you have to scroll through the results or narrow it down yourself to curate your own results.

So as to not drag on the story for too long, I will spoil it: The restaurant she wanted me to try was a Michelin 3-star Cantonese restaurant called T’ang Court. It wasn’t just near her hotel; it was in her hotel. Comically, this restaurant was not in the first page of results when searching for restaurants near the Langham.

Instead, the only pin that showed up near the Langham was Udatsu Sushi. Because there were literally no other results within a few blocks of the Langham on the first page of results (even though I had zoomed in pretty tight around the Langham), I assumed that Udatsu was the restaurant she was referring to. The best part is that Udatsu doesn’t even have a Michelin star; it was simply Michelin-selected. I didn’t know that at the time though. I booked a reservation and tried their omakase dining experience.

So now with that long story explaining how I ended up at Udatsu wrapped up, here is what my dinner was like.

There were two omakase seatings available, which is normal for omakase restaurants—they often do one early in the evening when they open (usually around 5 PM), and then another one later on at night (usually around 8 PM). However, the unusual thing about Udatsu was that their two seats were at… 7:00 PM and 7:30 PM.

This is the first time I have ever seen a staggered seating system like this at an omakase or chef’s tasting menu restaurant before. Staggering people’s meals like this seems like it would cause undue hassle on the chef and kitchen staff due to not being able to complete each course in its entirety before moving onto the next. Half the customers are always going to be behind, which means that they can never fully “wrap up” a course one-by-one before moving onto the next.

The only thing I can think of is that this system might relieve entry pressure, i.e., the wait staff getting everyone seated and getting drink orders in all at the same time. With that being said, making the entire remainder of the dinner service more difficult just in exchange for releasing a bit of stress right at the beginning seems inefficient to me.

The omakase was prepared by Head Chef Hiroki Nakamura. He leads operations in the Hong Kong location, while Chef Hisashi Udatsu is primarily stationed in Tokyo, Japan. The restaurant’s website says that Chef Udatsu visits Hong Kong often, but it seems like he was not in town during my visit, as I did not see him at the restaurant.

Not long after being seated, I received a piece of seasonal herb roll as the opener.

Next was an abalone and bamboo shoot spring roll. This one has an interesting story to go along with it…

I am usually a very diligent chewer. I think chewing your food thoroughly and for a long time is an important part in extracting as much flavor as possible from the dish. Sometimes, certain dishes have interesting phenomena where the dominant taste in the flavor profile slowly changes as you chew for longer.

A side effect of chewing a lot is that big chunks of food don’t often get past you. However, a piece of abalone in this spring roll somehow managed to dodge my teeth without me knowing. When I went to swallow, the abalone got stuck in my throat where only half of it went down. For the medical or culinary enthusiasts out there who are more familiar with the biological mechanics of consuming food, the exact thing that happened was that my upper esophageal sphincter closed on the piece of abalone.

I tried getting it down by drinking some water, but that did not help. I kept trying to gulp it down, but it was very securely stuck in my throat. For a good minute or so, I kept on struggling with it, and it wasn’t going anywhere. By this point, the waitresses noticed that something might be going on.

The abalone had been stuck for so long at this point that I think my body was starting to send more urgent signals telling me to do something about it faster. I started having a small coughing fit, but that still didn’t help.

The waitresses were getting more worried now, but there was a communication barrier. They asked me if I was okay in English, to which I of course gave the most literal possible answer of “not really, there is abalone stuck in my throat.” Then they started asking me something in Cantonese, but I don’t understand Cantonese; in a desperate attempt to get through to me, they started speaking to me in Japanese, but I don’t understand Japanese either.

I realized that I wasn’t going to solve this elegantly, so I just decided to take drastic action. I grabbed my handkerchief, prepared my stomach, and then made as dramatic of a gagging motion as possible. That, of course, also made me make a gagging sound, but it worked. My esophageal sphincter released and pushed the abalone back into my mouth. I calmly finished chewing it, swallowed it again, and was fine. I quietly sat waiting for my next dish.

The waitresses seemed incredibly confused that I literally just looked like I was about to die, and then I was suddenly sitting there as if nothing had happened.

Anyway, this was a good spring roll. It was very lightly fried, and the abalone had a good flavor that was enhanced very well by the salt and wasabi.

Next was smoked fatty tuna. This came out in a little glass container with the smoke trapped in, and the lid was opened at my seat.

For some reason, I thought this was smoked wagyu, even though it clearly said it was smoked fatty tuna on my course list. That made for an interesting surprise when biting into it because I was expecting a beef flavor and got tuna instead, but otherwise, this was delicious.

While we were eating the previous two dishes, Chef Nakamura was busy preparing the slices of fish for our nigiri.

Before nigiri service started, we received a vegetable hand roll.

The first small set of nigiri consisted of baby snapper…

… gurnard…

… and golden eye snapper.

We took a quick break from nigiri to have uni (sea urchin) gunkan.

Next up was a specialty dish: Itoshima’s shungiku and tiger prawn mochi cake.

Afterwards, nigiri service continued with lean tuna…

… medium-fatty tuna…

… and seared fatty tuna.

To break up the nigiri again, we received Japanese trout and sakura leaf soup. The fish was incredibly tender and basically fell apart in my mouth just by gently rustling around my tongue a little bit.

Our second-to-last piece of nigiri was what the course list called “double shrimp” nigiri. The outside was kuruma ebi (Japanese tiger prawn), but there was also a small piece of amaebi (sweet shrimp) tucked inside between the top layer and the rice.

I have obviously had a lot of kuruma ebi and amaebi before, but only separately; this is the first time that I ate it together. I wouldn’t say that it was a completely new flavor profile or anything, but the best way for me to describe it was that it was “high impact” shrimp, i.e., it was very shrimp.

Following the “double shrimp” methodology, next was “double sea urchin” with seaweed tempura. I guess this is technically still considered nigiri, as all of it was served atop a pillow of rice.

This was my favorite item of the dinner.

Sea urchin my favorite food, so it was amazing getting this big of a portion of high-quality sea urchin at once. It had a high amount of natural sweetness to it, and I was actually able to tell apart the taste difference between the two different kinds of sea urchin.

The seaweed tempura also added a nice depth of flavor and texture to the piece. It was fried to the perfect level such that it was firm on the outside, but the original seaweed was thick enough in layers that it had a satisfying bite to it and it didn’t just crumble apart.

The final main dish of the omakase was tuna futomaki. The chef basically made a roll filled with a ton of different kinds of tuna all at once.

The roll was then cut in half, and each half was intended to serve one couple. Because I was dining alone, the chef asked me whether I wanted the larger piece or the smaller piece; I of course picked the larger portion.

At this point, I realized that the “special thing” that this sushi restaurant does is mix together very high-end cuts of certain fish in slightly different varieties as combination dishes—they did it with tuna too after having done it with shrimp and sea urchin. Futomaki in general is already supposed to be a thick roll, but it is usually primarily centered around one kind of fish or meat with the other components being vegetables and toppings.

I think most other Japanese restaurants want to preserve minimalism and purity in their dish preparation, so I don’t recall something like this ever having been done at other high-end sushi restaurants. With that being said, I like restaurants that innovate and create unique culinary experiences, so I’m glad I had an opportunity to try out these “double” and combo dishes.

There was such a wide variety of tuna in this that it was a bit more difficult to pinpoint each different type like it was possible with the double shrimp and double sea urchin nigiri. I don’t think there is a better way to describe this apart from saying it is very tuna.

At the time of eating this, I didn’t know what the greens were, but I expected them to be a little bit bitter, presumably because it looked like grass. However, after I bit into them, they had a very clean and mild flavor that I really liked. Later, I did some research and discovered that it is likely menegi, or young green onion shoots, which is common to use to garnish highly fatty fish.

After those three wilder dishes, we toned it down with some simple and straightforward miso soup.

Remember how I said that each futomaki is cut in half, and each couple receives one half to split between themselves? Because I was dining alone, I didn’t have anyone to share the futomaki with. When I was asked whether I wanted the bigger or smaller portion, I assumed that the other piece would be served to a staff member in the kitchen or something.

However, while I was sipping on my miso soup, the chef asked if I wanted the other portion of my half of the futomaki as well. Of course, I said yes, so I ended up with a second piece of the tuna futomaki.

The second to last item, which served as a transition from the main entrées to the dessert, was tamagoyaki.

And finally, to conclude the meal, I was served a plate with three small desserts.

I liked the funny anthropomorphism art that was around the dining area. Somehow, this blended in with the walls enough that I didn’t notice it at first, but once I did see it, it was one of those things that you just cannot unsee. It was very uncharacteristic of and very amusing to see in a high-end dining establishment, and I found it very enjoyable.

Here are some photographs taken outside. Udatsu Sushi is part of FWD House 1881, a hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui.

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

I did not receive an itemized receipt for my meal, and instead, was just given a total amount to pay. Because of that, I didn’t realize that I had been overcharged an extra HK$86 until I had already left and did some calculations after-the-fact. I didn’t order any supplements, so my guess is that the extra fee was for the cost of glass-bottled water, as I noticed that many high-end restaurants in Hong Kong don’t serve regular water and their still water is bottled water only.

The meal was great overall, and I especially liked the unique combination items. However, I think the value for money wasn’t quite there. Even with being able to eat both halves of the abalone spring roll and both halves of the tuna futomaki due to dining alone, it still didn’t feel like a satisfyingly filling meal. Some omakase restaurants will ask if you want some extra scoops of sushi rice at the end in case you are still hungry and want to fill yourself up a bit more before leaving, but I was not offered that at Udatsu. Los Angeles isn’t exactly known for being cheap, and the cost of living in Hong Kong isn’t exactly considered to be low, but still, I found this difference to be surprising.

Interestingly, there is an Udatsu Sushi in Los Angeles too, and it is quite a bit cheaper than the Hong Kong equivalent—US$225.00 base for the omakase, a 20% service charge of US$45.00 in lieu of gratuity, and 9.75% combined California state and Los Angeles county sales tax of US$21.94, for a total of US$291.94.

If money is not an issue for you, then I think Udatsu Sushi Hong Kong will make for a peaceful, soothing, traditional Edomae-style omakase dining experience that still adds in a couple fun twists with the menu. However, if you are budget-conscious, then I think you’ll be able to find some luck getting a comparable experience at some other omakase restaurants too for a lower price.

As my reservation was approaching, I got on the MTR and rode a train over to Wan Chai. From there, it was a quick half-kilometer walk up north towards Victoria Harbour before reaching the correct building. Afterwards, it took a bit of searching, as there are multiple entrances and multiple different establishments in the same structure, but after asking a few staff members for some instructions, I was able to find my way to the Hyatt.

Upon arrival, I was promptly greeted and seated at a small table in a very private and peaceful area of the restaurant. I was given two menus—one for food and one for drinks. I was also provided with a small bowl of candied walnuts to snack on while I was making my decisions on what I wanted to eat that day.

I am a fan of tasting menus because I like the idea of someone who knows food better than I do (i.e., the chef) building a multi-course meal for me. Thus, I specifically wanted to try either the seasonal set menu or the signature menu.

The seasonal set menu was appealing to me because I like trying limited-edition dishes, while the signature menu was appealing because it was named after the restaurant and namesake items are usually the restaurant’s best offerings. I ultimately went for the One Harbour Road signature menu.

A little bit earlier, I mentioned how I was in a very private area of the restaurant. There was a structural pillar near me, and the only other table in this area was a large family-style dining table with a glass revolving server in the center. I was very pleased to be in this corner because I wouldn’t have to interface with other diners, and I also knew that my intense photographing of all my food wouldn’t be disruptive to others.

With that being said, later on, I realized that there might be a different reason I was seated in the corner. This restaurant had a “smart casual” dress code, but it seemed like everyone else in the restaurant had voluntarily dressed up much more than smart casual. I traveled to Hong Kong with only plain black t-shirts, so I didn’t have a collared shirt to wear.

Smart casual can be flexible, especially in a place where tourism is high, so I figured I would just give it a shot and wear my regular black t-shirt without going shopping for more clothing. On top of that, my appearance definitely looked more intentional. There were no graphics on my t-shirt, I had dark black pants that looked like a mix between jeans and dress pants, I was wearing black leather boots, and everything was form-fitting. My outfit looked specifically as if I was purposely going for a smart extra-casual all-black look.

With that being said, in comparison to other diners, I definitely looked underdressed. I had a very funny after-the-fact realization that maybe the hostess seated me in this far back corner in order to quarantine me away from the well-dressed patrons and try to stop my t-shirt from being an eyesore in their dining experience.

That is completely reasonable, and I am glad that they seated me anyway and didn’t even make me rent a dress jacket from them in order to meet the dress code. If this really was why I was put in the corner, I also appreciate their social awareness and their efforts in preserving the higher-class dining experience of other customers. As I mentioned before, it fortunately ended up being a win-win situation for the both of us.

My point is, if you also plan on dining at One Harbour Road, I definitely recommend dressing up a little bit and not wearing a t-shirt like I did…

My seat had an amazing view of Victoria Harbour, the Tsim Sha Tsui skyline, and the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

In addition to the One Harbour Road signature menu, I also added on a non-alcoholic beverage pairing.

My first drink, which accompanied the appetizers, was Lyre’s Classico Grande, Glera from New South Wales, Australia.

While the deluxe appetizers were coming out, I was served a small bite as the amuse-bouche. I don’t remember what this was, but it had a moist, spongy texture to it.

The first appetizer was preserved egg with young ginger.

Next was crispy suckling pig topped with foie gras mousse and caviar (pictured on the left) and crispy Spanish quail leg with spicy pepper salt (pictured on the right).

By this point, I wasn’t impressed. I think it was because of the extra crispy and fried nature of the items, but this didn’t really taste gourmet. I liked the flavor of the suckling pig, but the quail leg basically felt like I was eating a slightly more premium fried chicken cooked extra-crispy.

Next up on the non-alcoholic beverage pairing was LYSEGRØN Sparkling Tea, with notes of sencha, green tea, and citrus, from Copenhagen, Denmark.

Next up was the lobster course. This had two components to it: deep-fried Boston lobster claw with shrimp mousse and spicy pepper salt (pictured on the left) and braised Boston lobster with minced pork, egg, and spicy-sour sauce (pictured on the right).

This was strange. Again, because the lobster claw was fried, it didn’t really taste gourmet. The braised lobster was covered in so much sauce that I could barely tell that the lobster was there at all, and it was almost like I was just eating spaghetti’s cousin.

This is a bit sad to say, but my favorite component of this dish was the broccoli, due to it being the only part that wasn’t fried or overseasoned.

After the lobster, I had double-boiled chicken and pork shank soup with matsutake mushrooms and bamboo pith, all served inside a young coconut.

This is where things were improving. This soup had a deep, rich flavor that relied primarily on the ingredients to shine, and less so on external seasoning or flavoring.

I also liked the fact that it was served inside a coconut, and I think that added a subtle enhancement to the flavor of the soup. By the time I was done, the soup had softened the coconut, so I gently scraped some of it off the outer shell and enjoyed a small layer of the coconut flesh as well.

The menu said that there was an upsell to get this with fish maw as a supplement; I did not go for that option, and just got the regular preparation of the soup.

By this point, I got to watch the sun set and it was getting darker.

Next on my non-alcoholic beverage pairing menu, selected to go along with all the main entrées, was van Nahmen premium cherry juice from Germany.

The next dish was steamed giant garoupa fillet with cordycep flowers and Sichuan peppercorn atop soy sauce.

This was my favorite dish of the dinner. It had a clean, straightforward flavor. The vegetables were refreshing, and the soy sauce was diluted enough that it added a tasty soy sauce flavor without making the overall dish too salty. I also really enjoy the type of spice that comes along with Sichuan peppercorn, so in addition to submerging it in the soy sauce and under the fish to extract as much of the flavor as possible, I also took little nibbles of it to add a sharp kick to every other bite of fish.

After the fish came out a braised whole South African premium dried abalone with vegetables, pomelo peel, and oyster sauce.

Unlike the soy sauce, the oyster sauce was not well-diluted. I have a feeling that I would’ve enjoyed this abalone, but I couldn’t really taste it because of the sauce. I think if they had provided the sauce as a drizzle on top (rather than as a sauce bath), the abalone would be able to speak for itself and serve as a great dish.

Finally, the last main entrée of the meal was fried rice with scallops, barbecued pork, beetroot, green beans, egg, and preserved vegetables.

This was an extremely premium-tasting fried rice. I don’t know if this is just me, but I often associated fried rice with just throwing together a bunch of different leftovers before they go bad so that you don’t have to waste food. However, this fried rice tasted like it was made with high-quality ingredients and was crafted as gourmet fried rice.

One thing that I found particularly notable about it was the pork flavor. I am not really a fan of bacon; I think it is just very low-quality meat, and its high saturated fat content directly conflicts with my efforts at consuming a heart-healthy diet to counteract my hereditary high cholesterol. With that being said, this fried rice tasted like it had ultra-premium bacon in it, even though it was just regular barbecued pork. I think the way it was prepared extracted a bacon-like flavor from it without adding in the other negative aspects of bacon.

The final beverage of the non-alcoholic pairing was a house special—homemade cold brew dried rose bud and jasmine dragon pearl tea.

The previous three drinks in the beverage pairing were decent, but none of them really stood out as perfectly complementing any of the dishes. This cold brew tea, however, fit extremely well together with the dessert courses. The plain, unsweetened flavor of the tea synergized well with the sweetness of the desserts.

The first dessert was chilled mango pudding.

The next two desserts were deep fried fermented beancurd pastry with lotus paste (pictured on the left) and baked pineapple puff pastry with milk custard (pictured on the right).

I was already feeling pretty full by this point. I am guessing that this had something to do with the fact that an unusually high number of items I was served at this restaurant were intensely fried. I can eat a lot of food if it is prepared with refreshing ingredients and minimal seasoning, but once things get too fried or too salty, it’s as if my stomach sort of tries to block out any more from entering and signals that it is too full.

Both of these were heavily fried again. I did end up finishing both, but it became a bit of a struggle near the end.

By the end of my meal, it had gotten dark, so I was able to see the buildings lit up in the distance.

Here are some photographs I captured of some other areas of the interior of the restaurant:

And this is what the elevator lobby looked like:

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

Overall, I thought that this meal was not worth the money I paid. If I’m paying a base price of over US$200.00 for a meal, I expect that meal to be very high-quality or otherwise have some degree of novelty or innovation to make it stand out. Unfortunately, the dishes at One Harbour Road were a hit or miss, and it had too many “miss” dishes in my opinion to justify a high price point.

Furthermore, I don’t know if this makes it better or worse, but I feel like a lot of these dishes would’ve turned out great if only they had just slightly adjusted a small component of the preparation process (e.g., braising or grilling instead of frying, reducing the amount of sauce, etc.).

In case you are curious, if I had gotten the seasonal menu instead of the signature menu, this is what I would have been served instead:

• Smoked threadfin with ginger and spring onion sauce
• Honey-barbecued pork
• Braised sliced pumpkin, taro, winter melon, caramelized pineapple, and strawberry in hawthorn sauce
• Braised fish maw and fish head soup
• Steamed blue cod fillet wrapped in lotus leaf, shredded Iberico pork, and preserved vegetables in soy sauce
• Steamed Australian scallop, prawn, and crab meat in sea urchin sauce and egg whites
• Braised e-fu noodles with sliced abalone, black mushroom, and vegetables
• Lotus seed cream with dried longans and sago

Looking back, I definitely should’ve gotten the seasonal menu instead, as it seems like there is nothing in there that is fried. On top of that, the seasonal menu was cheaper: HK$1,428 instead of HK$1,738. I don’t know what my thought process was at the time that I made the decision to get the signature menu (or if there was even a thought process at all), but I assume I just wanted the namesake tasting menu and put all my trust in the chef to prepare something excellent.

Based solely on my experience at this particular dining session, I cannot recommend One Harbour Road’s signature menu at its current preparation style and price point. I think they might also be charging extra-premium pricing, not only because it is part of a Grand Hyatt and they want to portray themselves as luxurious, but also because they have been designated by Michelin as a selected restaurant.

With that being said, it’s very possible that a different tasting menu would be much better, which is why I clarified that I can’t recommend the signature menu, rather than not recommending the entire restaurant.