The last July weekend, Hakkasan, Queen's Walk......

02 Aug The last July weekend, Hakkasan, Queen’s Walk……

Posted at 06:02h in Fashion, Taste by Ca Dao 0 Comments

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Our last July weekend 🙂 The sun was out, and we needed something good to make up for the super tiring week that precedes, and so we made a reservation at Hakkasan Hanway Place.

For such a highly rated restaurant, it would be natural for us to arrive with great expectations, but to be fair, not all of those were met. Starting from the entrance, albeit having 2 people at the front door, the tall and heavy door downstairs which led directly into the restaurant was not at all manned and it gave the air of a close restaurant, standing in front of that large piece of glass we felt somewhat unwelcome…

We then were guided to our table, the interior design was quite interesting, and it did feel somewhat like a Chinese restaurant (not in a bad way, of course, I am only talking about the ambience and decoration). I particularly like the way the kitchen is designed to be visible as part of the dining area without the disturbance of noise and smells.

Moving on to the services, it really in no way felt to us like a Michelin starred place in terms of table service, and we are not usually strict on this point. Starting with the mismatched pair of chopsticks (i.e. the two chopsticks are of different size, different wood types, different shapes and different colours), to me this is worse that when they give you 2 salad forks. Though of course a mistake like this happens, considering the number of tables that needed setting up, and that I totally understand, but the irritation really came to me when I requested for a change of chopsticks (pardon my pedantic reaction but it would be hard to eat when the chopsticks are not even of the same type, leave alone our tradition of having a matching pair), the waiter gave me a surprised look and responded “They both look the same to me?”…to top it up, he never returned with the new pair, even after delivering the first dish himself, I had to ask for those from another person…That same “surprised waiter” was responsible for our table the whole evening, and apart from that “chopsticks matter” we felt an unwelcoming air coming from him throughout our time there, be it from lack of experience or from him having a bad day, the service ruined part of our Hakkasan dinner.

Though of course, the negatives stop there, what we ultimately came for – the food – was good, really good!

A dim sum platter: scallop shumai with caviar, har gow, prawn chive dumpling, and the interesting shimeji dumpling.

Golden fried soft shell crab: crunchy yet tender, perfect seasoning and not a bit oily despite having been deep fried. Every bit came together just right.

Stir-fry black pepper rib-eye beef with merlot: tender meat with some juice retained, deliciously rich flavoured.

Jasmine tea smoked chicken: elegant flavour, very palatable and neither too rich nor light. A well balanced dish that you can keep eating until your stomach reaches its max capacity.

Overall, it was with a mixed feeling that we left Hakkasan, the food was great, but I am not sure if it was good enough to outweigh the cold and inattentive service that they provided.

Dinner finished early, so we took a stroll along the river, trying to make the most of the last bits of sunshine.