For one of my dinners during my visit to Hong Kong, I decided to try a tasting menu at Andō, a Spanish-Japanese fusion restaurant founded and led by Argententinian-born chef Agustín Ferrando Balbi. I had two options for what kind of menu I wanted to get: the celebration menu for HK$1,688 or the experience menu for HK$2,488.

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.

My trip to Hong Kong was split into two “segments.” For the first portion, I went to restaurants and did tourist activities together with friends. We didn’t literally travel together—we took separate flights and stayed in different hotels—but after we all arrived in Hong Kong, we spent a lot of our time together. For the second portion, my friends left for mainland China while I stayed behind to continue exploring Hong Kong before flying directly back to the United States.

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.

While on my trip to Hong Kong, I wanted to try as many authentic Cantonese or Cantonese-fusion restaurants as possible. After doing some research, I found a restaurant called One Harbour Road at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong that was highly-rated and frequently recommended online. They seemed to have a decent number of reservation slots open, so I was able to get a short-notice booking for a dinner on one of the days when I didn’t already have plans.

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.