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2013-06-03
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I ended up here with my friend since the restaurant of our choice was closed. Hungry as we were and with our past dining experience in the TST branch, we decided not to look further and dine here. There was a buffet offer, 168 HKD per person plus 10 percent service charge.Both of us ordered a lot and it was great we didn't have to wait long for food to arrive, though the place was packed. However...The food was arriving in a completely mixed up order... First sushi, sashimi and the main dishes.
Both of us ordered a lot and it was great we didn't have to wait long for food to arrive, though the place was packed. However...
The food was arriving in a completely mixed up order... First sushi, sashimi and the main dishes. After that, appetizers and frozen yogurt, and then tempura veggies, soup, ramen and rest of the order. Also, we didn't get everything we ordered and there was plenty of stuff missing. But we didn't ask them to bring it out. The food we had already tried by that time was so bad that we decided it was better to keep our mouths shut: anything extra would've been a continued torture of our taste buds.
As I said, the place was packed so I guess they were just rushing with everything so the food would arrive fast, but...
All sushi dishes that reached our table were warm: both rice and fish were still warm and this was the first time for me to eat sushi as a hot dish. I guess they ran out of the ingredients and had to make extra rice for which there was no time to cool it down properly, but that's hardly an excuse for serving warm sushi.
I had salmon and mango temaki (hand rolls), tamago (sweet egg) nigirizushi, inarizushi and salmon nigiri (other stuff never arrived, so...) Tamago was dry and lifeless, inari was sloppily wrapped, salmon nigiri and temaki were edible but like I said, it was warm. Also, the fish was not fresh and was sliced quite messy.
I also had a miso soup which was ok (if you can make a mistake mixing boiling water with miso paste, then you're utterly beyond salvation), plus pumpkin tempura (luckily, sweet potato never arrived) which was hard and not particularly tasty. They served the frozen yogurt somewhere in between sushi and the soup and it wasn't very tasty either, but the peak of the dining experience was tuna gankan which was undoubtedly spoilt and that was the point when I realised that this just got to a higher level of testing the abilities of my digestive system.
My friend ordered similar dishes, but she had also ordered sashimi and, to her own regret, tuna nigirizushi. Salmon sashimi she had was cut into really thick and unappealing slices and the tuna proved to be so chewy and tough that she had to spit out the parts which were too much of a challenge for her teeth. It was a mess.
We also ordered orange juice which didn't have much to do with oranges at all so my friend decided to order some tea instead. The tea wasn't arriving for quite some time so she had called out two more times before she finally got a cup with an infused plain filter tea bag.
Not to forget, wasabi was dry and lifeless and we got only a minimal amount of soy sauce served with sushi.
Writing this review I tried to be as objective as possible. The disappointment with both the food and the service was enchanced by the fact that we already had some dining experience in the TST branch.
The food was edible, but tasted bad and was far from being presentable. The service was consistent with the food. I only wondered why the place was so packed. Is it possible that the dining standard in Hong Kong is that low or the price (such a buffet is quite a bargain in Central) beats the quality?
First, if you can't handle a Sunday night buffet, then don't do it. Diners like myself and my friend will never come back. Second, if you're already in the business, then do it right or don't do it all. If it's the Japanese cuisine, respect its philosophy and keep its characteristics. Its main characteristics are: presentation (the appearance of the food is as important as the taste itself), freshness (and seasonality of the ingredients), simplicity (too much flavors added will conceal the natural or essential taste of the main ingredients).
I'm sorry I had to write a review like this. Could be it's my crazy hope that the review will not serve only to divert potential diners, but that someone who might make a difference will read it, and do the things right.
張貼