My blog posts from my trip to Hong Kong are coming to an end, and I saved the best for last. Out of the many different restaurants I went to, most of which were tasting menus and other curated dining experiences, my favorite one from my Hong Kong travels was Feuille, located on the fifth floor of The Wellington in Central.

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.

Signature tasting menu	HK$ 1,688.00
Voyage à Nirvana	HK$   128.00
Still water	HK$    38.00
Service charge (10%)	HK$   185.00
Total	HK$ 2,039.00
Converted to USD	US$   260.63

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.

My second-favorite restaurant I dined at during my visit to Hong Kong was VEA, located on the 30th floor of The Wellington in Central. I found this restaurant because I was looking for some spots with local and regional food, and I saw that VEA aims to honor Hong Kong’s heritage by way of sourcing authentic Chinese ingredients. They then add a French twist to integrate an element of innovation and uniqueness to their dishes.

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.

Tasting menu	HK$ 2,280.00
Mocktail pairing	HK$   580.00
Still water	HK$    60.00
Service charge (10%)	HK$   292.00
Total	HK$ 3,212.00
Converted to USD	US$   409.99

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.