Anything less than a SIX star would be unfair…read more
Ok I knew there was some sort of French restaurant down the Ladder Street (of course they didn't have a proper sign there). I knew there's a restaurant on Hollywood Road that my friends had been recommending to me. I didn't put two and two together, which was a nice surprise when I was there.
Stood at the front door for 30 seconds figuring out how to open the door, we found the button 5 seconds before it was too embarrassing. Pretty neat by the way, blended well with the rest of the street. Greeted by the staff leading down the stairs, "Obey the Giant" was there staring at you making you feel very excited already.
Oh and there was a mini sculpture from Koons, a skull by Hirst, a wall print of Le Fifre by Manet (which I suspected to be from Banksy), a graffiti by André, and the Princess Peach by The Invader. A few calligraphy graffiti by Tsang Tsou Choi 曾灶財 even. If you love arts, you will fall in love with this place already.
You'd have noticed how the restaurant and the menu were inspired by La Compagnie Generale Francaise de Tramway, the original company resided at this very same address at 1930s. They didn't oversell it though, so it was a nice touch to have.
We had a 5 course dinner menu to share and a daily special. Foie gras, slow-cooked eggs with crab cake, red snapper, etc. They were all way too good but as they keep rotating the dishes, it wouldn't be the most helpful telling you how they tasted anyway. Trust your servers' recommendations, if anything helps. (Looking back I don't even think I've ever rated any restaurant six stars just because of the food).
What was worth the extra start was service here, which was top notch to say the least. Both myself and my partner noted that they had two different servers to recommend to us the food and the wine respectively, and each of the dishes was served by a different server. We kept looking at the arts around us during the dinner, and a server came by and offered to give us a short intro to each of the arts (which we eventually didn't have the time, but that's beyond the point). We also casually chatted up with the last server who served us the dessert. He asked if it's any occasion we chose to have a dinner here, and we answered, "Yeah, not a biggie but just a cheeky celebration of [something personal]." He later, as a surprise, gave us extra set of sweeties with a candle and the "Happy [something personal]!" written on the dish. We went over the moon.
Will definitely come back, maybe to try their branch some time.
(And if the manager sees this review, please let me know if Le Fifre was Banksy's work!)