Lei Garden, Causeway Bay

For a year or two I've wanted to try Lei Yuan (Lei Garden) because it got quite a good review from the Michelin guide. However I was fully aware that two of the restaurants were Michelin starred whilst another two were Bib Gourmands but Causeway Bay was not on the list of six (in the 2009 book anyway). However not having my trusty guide in hand we decided to try this branch anyway.

Why was I so attracted to eating here? Maybe because we've been rejected twice by the branch at IFC without a booking. This time they did ask us about a booking but as we were rather early they had quite a lot of empty tables. It was eerily quiet, we were not the only ones there, the small hall had at least five tables being occupied when we were seated but you could hear a pin drop - the room did start to get louder around 7. Whilst there was not a single moment where I was made to feel inadequate with my dress code, jeans and a t-shirt I did feel that the occasion required a suit. Before I start listing what I ate I just need to advise you - ask for a menu! There was a tiny little menu in a circular 'device' but I'm sure that wasn't the actual one but before we had time to ask for one we were ambushed by the floor manager keen to help with an order. He was very nice though but I just wished we had asked for a menu! This brings me onto the service. The floor manager was very pleasant and accommodating but the other waiters seemed efficiently bland, they did their job but like robots, I was just looking for a genuine smile.

This is going to be a challenge but I'll try my best to tell you what I actually ate! We were enticed to order a soup, my dad educated me on it and I think it's a red bean soup boiled with fish and pork - sorry for the rather vague description. We also ordered the Sha Cha Chicken, Heen Choi in a clear broth and a small steamed Snapper, though I'm not 100% sure what type of Snapper (fish) but it was 11 ounces.

We were served the chicken first which was very good. The meat was tender and moist and was complimented very well with the Sha Cha sauce. It was a bit of a wait until the fish and greens arrived. The snapper was delicious, what I come to expect from any good Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong serving any sort of snapper, however it might have been a second undercooked as it stuck slightly to the bone. The Heen Choi was cooked just right so it was not chewy at all but retained that freshness you expect from well cooked Chinese vegetables, the broth complimenting very well with the taste of it all. The boiled rice however was slightly too dry i.e. a bit overcooked, though still acceptable. The soup was fantastic! Ok I haven't drunk much soup besides my dad's but it was definitely amongst the best I've had.

At this point I'm just thinking, please don't break the bank. I was apprehensive that my dad had chosen to order without a menu and my fears were realised when the bill came back at $780~. OK, it doesn't break the bank but if you know my dad you'll know to even charge him £20 per person for a meal is a tough job but $780 is over £30! And in Hong Kong he's expecting to pay more around the £10-£15 region. I personally was expecting $5-600 but when I come to think of it we did order soup and fresh fish. My dad quietly accepted but I have a feeling he won't be coming back! I, however, thought it was a very good meal and that is the impression I got from my dad until the bill came but at $7-800 I think it might not be worth a revisit because it's more than double the price of what we usually pay in Hong Kong - if there is a next time we'll definitely think twice before ordering seafood and soup.

So my verdict is, Lei Garden serves traditional Chinese cuisine to a decent standard, I highly doubt you'll get a dud of a meal but at the price band it is at I think it's not somewhere you'd want to go every day. Try the more famous branches but be sure to book.

Hoi Tin Garden Restaurant, Yuen Long

I always enjoy choosing between the many different Cantonese restaurants to get some breakfast dim sum. Hoi Tin has been one of the regular places I go to because it's one of the closest to my flat and serves decent  dim sum, it's also nice that the place is generally clean. But on this occasion we were severely disappointed.

We ordered, wait is there even any point? That's because we only got two dishes out of five. The first two came swiftly but after waiting another twenty minutes we found out that the kitchen was in disarray and other diners orders were also in a mess. Ok I guess that's understandable so we waited, and waited, and waited. All the other tables around us managed to get there food but not us! We complained a few times but they didn't know how to respond besides going into the kitchen again and again with no response. After 90 minutes of waiting we had enough and left. Not before my dad paid the bill, which I think really should have been discounted because two dishes for $50~ is a rip off for HK prices. Nobody came to tell us why or offer us something else, we were just left there to wait.

I'll probably give Hoi Tin another chance but we'll definitely steer clear of the place for a while. If this is any consolation the things we did get, the chicken and mushroom rice pot and the shiu mai, actually tasted quite nice.

Nice Invitation, Yuen Long

My first meal in Hong Kong 2011! Yes guys I'm back and in Hong Kong and yes the restaurant is called Nice Invitation. This is actually the eighth consecutive year I've gone to Hong Kong for the summer so most of the places I'm reviewing will be of places I've already tried. Oh and btw I live in Yuen Long so you're going to see a lot of Yuen Long even though most tourists probably won't even go there!

I'm sorry I'm not actually sure about some of the dish names but I'll do my best to describe them. We ordered Tung Choi with Fish Sauce, some sort of Chicken clay pot dish which had shiitake and pork crackling (we ordered it because of the rather odd name and because we thought the pork crackling was fish stomach, which we love). My dad also randomly ordered Fish Maw with Abalone and Duck's Feet, I'm just stating the ingredients but it's a pretty well known dish.

The Tung Choi was very nice, it's actually pretty sad to think about how an average Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong is as good as a good Cantonese restaurant in England. The chicken clay pot was interesting, a pretty weird concoction but rather tasty. The chicken, though mostly bone, was very tasty but I just wished there was more sauce. The fish maw/abalone/duck's feet dish (lets just call it FAD - creative ain't I) was pretty poor. It was a speciality dish which they serve per portion but the fish maw was chewy, the abalone tough and the duck's feet rather tasteless and they charged $68 per serving! To make it even worse they didn't even serve it on China, it was on these cheap plates. We also ordered two bowls of boiled rice btw.

The service was pretty average, the general consensus is don't expect service in Yuen Long. It's more local based so the regular customers get a lot of attention and chit chat whilst the "foreigners" get the basics. However the waitresses kept chit chatting amongst themselves next to our table which was a bit irritating.

The meal came up to about $300. I don't have much to love or hate about the restaurant in general, it was a pretty standard Cantonese meal with nothing out of this world but everything generally made decently, though the FAD was very disappointing.