Came here at Grandpa's insistence...something about them having incredible pigeon. Walked in for a late Mother's Day lunch. First flag raised is that the restaurant was mostly empty.
The table they gave us for our party of five was incredibly tiny. When I was eating, I needed to use a fork and a knife, and my left arm was hunched awkwardly against the wall, making eating quite difficult.
They began by leaving some hot towels for us to wipe our hands on. Second flag raised was that these hot towels were a grey, off-white color. Do I really want to clean my hands on something that does not look clean? Rhetorical question. The answer is no.
Then we got our menus. They had Mother's Day lunch sets. We opted for a la carte. The prices were ridiculous (in a bad way). Our family of four ended up ordering two meals for the four of us. We had the pork cutlet (can't remember how much this one was, but definitely over $120 HKD), and the roasted leg of pork ($120 HKD?). Grandpa ended up ordering the pigeon with Swiss sauce ($140 HKD) and the Russian Borscht ($58 HKD).
The pork cutlet meal came with two fairly average sized chops. They looked like a mix between a cutlet with breadcrumbs, and a pan fried pork chop. Perhaps the best way to describe the coating is almost like beer batter, but nowhere near as puffy or crispy. Disappointing. It came with a small serving of green salad. That was it. No drinks, no soup, nothing. Assuming it was $120 HKD, which is about $20 CAD, I could get twice as much of the exact same food, in bigger portions, and have more of it...in TORONTO.
The roasted leg of pork was three super-thin slices of roast pork and a small mound of boiled cabbage swimming in what tasted like the soy sauce one makes soy sauce chicken with. Good soy sauce chicken, but not what I was expecting with my roast pork. The thinness of the roast pork was like two or if I'm being generous, three slices of deli meat per slice. The pork was fairly tasty, but only because it was swimming in this Asian sauce. This meal served with a fairly large mound of rice on the side. The rice was decent.
They have two types of pigeon on the menu. The first is roasted, and the menu says it takes 20 minutes to prep. The second is the Swiss style, and the menu says it takes 30 minutes to prep. Upon confronting our waiter because our pigeon was taking so long, he said it takes 40 minutes to make. We told him what the menu says, and he said that's only what the menu says (as if to disregard the menu). He then said the roasted one takes 30 minutes and our Swiss one took 40. Upon receiving our pigeon, all I can say is that it tasted like a soy sauce pigeon. Utter nonsense for 40 minutes of wait time and a ludicrous price tag. $140 HKD translates to about $24 CAD, for my Canadian readers. Did I mention that this was supposedly a Swiss sauce? I know next to nothing about Swiss cuisine, but I find it very odd that a sauce named Swiss would taste like sweetened soy sauce.
The Russian Borscht was what probably upset me the most. Russian Borscht, Chinese style, is mostly cheap filler veggies (carrots, tomatoes, onions, cabbage) in a tomato broth. For $58 HKD, Grandpa got a single serving of this soup, and left 1/4 of it in the bowl. Clearly, it was not particularly good.
Did I mention that for these utterly ridiculous prices, this restaurant still charges 10% mandatory service charge?
I have great respect for restaurants that withstand the test of time, but unless they serve food that is up to snuff, they still deserve to be put down. read more