The relevant question is not whether Rules competes with London’s modern tasting-menu restaurants. It obviously does not. The question is whether the room, history, oysters, game, pies and old British puddings still add up to a serious meal.

On paper, it should. The menu is conservative, but not incoherent: oysters, potted shrimps, terrines, steak and kidney pie, steak and kidney pudding, braised meats, roast beef, fish, game, proper puddings and a wine list built for people who still enjoy claret-shaped dining.

The risk is equally obvious. You are paying for the room and the lineage as much as the cooking. If the kitchen misses, the whole thing can slide very quickly from heritage into expensive theatre.

Thomas Rule founded the restaurant in 1798 as an oyster house. Rules describes itself as London’s oldest restaurant, and the ownership history is unusually tidy. Thomas Rule & Sons ran it from 1798 to 1918, Tom Bell & Daughter from 1918 to 1984, John Mayhew from 1984 to 2022, and Richard “Ricky” McMenemy from 2022 onwards.

The handovers are part of the mythology. Shortly before the First World War, Charles Rule considered moving to Paris and met Tom Bell, who owned the Alhambra restaurant there. They swapped businesses. In 1984, Tom Bell’s daughter sold Rules to John Mayhew. In 2022, McMenemy, who had already worked at Rules for decades, took over.

The oyster-house origin still matters because Rules continues to sell the same basic story: oysters, game, pies, puddings, old London, and a dining room packed with paintings, cartoons, prints, velvet and wood panelling. The restaurant’s own roll call includes Dickens, Thackeray, H.G. Wells, Henry Irving, Laurence Olivier, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

The food is traditional British restaurant cooking with a heavy game-house bias. The structure is simple: oysters and cold starters; terrines, rillettes, potted shrimps and smoked salmon; pies, puddings, roast meats, lamb, fish and seasonal game; side vegetables; then nursery puddings, savouries and cheese.

Given the room, I thought I should at least try to meet Rules on its own terms. I asked the waiter what the most British things on the menu were. He recommended the cream of spinach and nettle soup, and the steak and kidney pudding.

The soup came first, in a dense emerald green. I was not sure what to expect from nettle soup, but Rules gave me a fairly quick reminder of how British food acquired its historic reputation.

There were some faint grassy and herbal notes, but the main impression was that nobody had introduced the soup to seasoning. After adding a fairly serious amount of salt, the problem shifted from seasoning to flavour and texture. The famous British palate was not making a strong opening argument.

The menu had both steak and kidney pie and steak and kidney pudding. The difference is mainly the wrapper. The pie comes with baked puff pastry. The pudding comes wrapped in steamed suet.

I chose the more British option, which was probably the mistake.

The pudding arrived with a broiled oyster on top. The filling had the expected minerally offal note from the kidney, plus tough pieces of steak and some button mushrooms. The suet wrapper was thick, pale and slightly soggy. Since it had been steamed, there was no browning and no real texture. With enough gravy, the filling was edible. That is not high praise.

The creamed spinach was uneventful. It was underseasoned and bland, although that was probably the least offensive version of the dish they could have produced.

I did not finish much of the pudding or the spinach, so dessert became the last chance for the meal to recover. I skipped the waiter’s recommendation of sticky toffee pudding and ordered the poached pear with chocolate mousse instead.

This was better. The pear came on a bed of brown sugar, and the dark chocolate mousse was rich, dark and hit fairly hard with alcohol. I finished the pear.

I was not expecting luxury fine dining from Rules. I wanted a dose of old London, somewhere in the general world of Wiltons, The Savoy Grill or Bentley’s. Instead, I got a fairly brutal reminder of why historic British food spent so long as a punchline. Don’t bother.

Total damage: 70 GBP/1 person

The founding group explains the concept. Yenn Wong of JIA Group, Alan Lo of Press Room Group, and wine importer Paulo Pong built Duddell’s out of Hong Kong’s overlapping restaurant, art and money circles. The pitch was never simply Cantonese food. It was a social room with a serious art programme and a kitchen good enough to carry the whole idea.

The address also helps. Duddell Street is one of those odd Central pockets that still feels like old school Hong Kong, best known for its granite steps and surviving gas lamps. The original Ilse Crawford interior leaned into that sense of lived-in polish: an art collector’s apartment rather than another glossy Hong Kong dining room. Mid-century furniture, warm tones, a garden terrace, enough softness to make the place feel human.

By 2025, though, the room needed work. Duddell’s closed for a full refresh by André Fu Studio, its first major renovation since opening. Fu recast it as a contemporary collector’s maison, drawing on Lingnan culture and the 1920s diaolou watchtowers of Guangdong. Sensible move. The old room had started to feel tired, and Duddell’s depends heavily on the room feeling current without losing its clubby identity.

The food is modern Cantonese, but not in the gimmicky sense. Under Chef Chan Yau Leung, the kitchen talks about reviving forgotten flavours and old Cantonese techniques. Chan has the right background for that. Before Duddell’s, he cooked at Fook Lam Moon in Hong Kong and Macau, ran Fook Lam Moon kitchens in Tokyo and Osaka, and led Guo Fu Lou in Central, where he helped earn and hold a Michelin star. He joined Duddell’s in 2022 and rebuilt the menu again after the 2025 renovation.

Duddell’s has changed chefs several times since opening. The restaurant’s identity sits as much with the room, ownership and art programme as with any single chef. Previous chef Li Man-Lung brought Ritz-Carlton Macau and Tin Lung Heen experience, but Chan is the current figure to watch. His cooking is disciplined, classical, and more interested in Cantonese continuity than show-off modernisation.

The art programme is still central. Duddell’s has rotating exhibitions, talks, screenings, performances and lectures, with parts of the programme open to the public. That matters because it keeps the place from being just another expensive Cantonese restaurant with nice chairs. The cultural salon positioning is the differentiator.

The meal started with the dim sum staples: har gow and siu mai. Both were properly executed, especially the siu mai with a generous slice of scallop on top. This is the kind of thing Duddell’s should be good at, and it was.

The steamed rice roll with dough cruller was more interesting. Adding daikon gave it a little lift and texture, enough to make a familiar dish feel adjusted rather than messed about with.

The mala lobster spring roll was the more overtly contemporary dish. Crisp, rich, a little punchy, but still recognizably Cantonese rather than fusion for its own sake.

The taro puff came with abalone instead of scallop. A small luxury substitution, but a good one. It fits Duddell’s well: not revolutionary, just more expensive and more polished.

Then Peking duck, served two ways. First the skin in wraps, which basically turns the table into a test of everyone’s burrito-making competence.

The second serving was the meat finely chopped, cooked with pine nuts, and served with lettuce wraps. Classic, tidy, and exactly the sort of thing that works well in a room like this.

Overall, I have been to Duddell’s countless times over the years. The food has always been consistent, although before the refurbishment the interior was starting to look dated. The menu has shifted slightly, and the room now has its polish back, but the basic proposition is unchanged: no-frills, reliable, high-end Cantonese dim sum in Central, with enough cultural dressing to make it feel like somewhere to bring visitors.

Total Damage: 2600 HKD/3 people

I’ve always held the belief that Singapore is the exception to the rule that the farther you get from Tokyo, the worse the Japanese food gets. Singapore’s Japanese restaurants keep on punching well above their weight. Two absolutely amazing meals this month at Hatamoto and Nikuya Tanaka.

I managed to get a reservation to 1887 by Andre. He’s a legend in Singapore, and I knew about his legacy from other restaurants that I’ve tried, but he had long moved on by the time I tried his successors’ restaurants. Boy did 1887 deliver in spades.

But each of those restaurants have their own posts, and my monthly roundup is a more casual place to talk about restaurants that I didn’t bother writing up, or what else is going on in my life.

I ended up at the Lobster Bar and Grill at the Shangri-La. The food wasn’t particularly amazing, but they had an a top notch Jerusalem Artichoke soup - best I’ve ever had, and great for the rare cold night in Hong Kong.

A buddy of mine just opened an Argentinian steakhouse in Hong Kong, and invited me to the soft open. An in-house charcuterie program, a chorizo flambe, absolutely perfect steaks and my defining mark for a good Argentinian steakhouse, a great chimichurri. What’s not to like? Give Don Pedro a visit if you’re in Hong Kong! Their whisky-finished gelato is deceptively strong too!

Heading back to Singapore, I had lunch with an old friend at a street-side pizza joint. They had an amazing vodka pasta that we added stracciatella to. Skip the burrata outer shell, just give us the soft, creaming stracciatella inside. Delicious!

Of course, when in Singapore, I’m going to get some chili crab. In this case, because I’m lazy, I had my crab picked and combined with the sauce and served with some deep fried mantou.

The other thing about southeast Asia is that they go all out on desserts. Given the heat, eating alfresco always requires a frozen dessert to cool me down, and the logan shaved ice delivered well.

The meal works best when you judge it as Chiba’s own counter: good sourcing, careful technique, a lively room, and a chef who enjoys explaining the details. It works less well when you judge it against the restaurant’s stated idea of protecting traditional Edomae sushi.

Mamoru means “protect” in Japanese. The restaurant uses the word literally. The pitch is preservation: traditional Edomae technique, direct relationships with Japanese fishermen and farmers, and a focus on ingredients that do not often appear outside Japan.

Chef Chiba is the centre of the restaurant. He is a third-generation sushi chef with more than two decades of experience, including fugu training, time at Sushi Iwa and Zorokuzushi in Tokyo, Sushi Kohaku in Hong Kong, and now Mamoru.

The room is run by Leading Nation, and it feels like it. It is slick, expensive, and more theatrical than the usual windowless sushi box. The entrance takes you through an understated door, past a dramatic wood-panelled hallway and an old bonsai, before opening into the counter.

The counter itself is arced hinoki. We later found out the arc came from the room’s previous life as a teppanyaki restaurant. It also has something rare for a sushi counter in Hong Kong: a view outside. Most counters shut the world out and force your attention onto the chef and the rice. Mamoru lets the city into the room.

We started with a cloudy sake. Crisp, umami-heavy, and much better than the one we had recently at Hana no Kumo not too long ago.

The first bite was a strange one: monkfish liver braised in red wine sauce, next to a firm oyster marinated in olive oil, bay leaf, red pepper, and a lot of garlic. It read more like Mediterranean antipasto than Edomae sushi. Not unpleasant, but it immediately made the restaurant’s “protect tradition” line feel a bit loose.

Two cuts of barfin flounder followed, served with yuzu radish and ponzu. This was more controlled. The point was texture: different parts of the same fish, handled cleanly, with enough acid to keep it bright.

Osaka surf clam came next, using both the skirt and the clam. Crunchy, clean, and exactly the sort of shellfish course I want early in a meal like this.

The octopus tentacle came with smoky yuzu pepper paste on the side. The paste had real kick. It pushed the dish away from the more restrained Edomae register, but it worked.

We had visited Sushi Saito not too long before, and the overlap in ingredients was funny. Same season, same greatest hits. The grilled scallop nori wrap felt like a replay. A good one. Sweet scallop, warm nori, enough fat and smoke to make the bite land.

Braised abalone with liver sauce followed. A classic omakase dish, and a strong one. No need to complicate it.

Firefly squid were at their seasonal peak. Chiba poached them, touched them with fire, and finished them with shichimi. Close to what we had at Saito. Good again.

The Hokkaido hairy crab was one of the better composed dishes of the meal. It came with a little bitter crab innard and pickled cucumber for crunch. Rich, clean, and balanced. A big hit.

Then we moved into nigiri. Horse mackerel came first, topped with shredded shiso. Bright and direct.

Grouper followed, cured before being pressed into nigiri. Firm, clean, and restrained.

Then Spanish mackerel.

Goldeneye snapper from Shizuoka came next. Chiba pointed out that the tuna served after it was also from Shizuoka, so there was a decent chance the tuna had been feeding on the snapper before it was caught. Good line. Better piece.

Chef Chiba then spent real time explaining each cut of tuna, where it came from on the fish, and how he wanted us to read the progression. He even took out a model tuna and dissected it into individual parts in front of us. This is where the restaurant is strongest. He is charismatic, specific, and engaged with the product.

We started with akami: ruby-red lean tuna with ground sesame on top.

Then straight into jabara otoro, the fattiest cut of bluefin. Rich, heavy, and exactly what it sounds like.

The giant tiger shrimp was the first nigiri that lost me. Chiba put salted duck egg between the rice and shrimp as a Hong Kong reference. I understand the idea. I did not think it belonged there. The shrimp did not need the extra gesture.

The shrimp was served as a single piece for the men and cut in half for the women.

Then came a rare sight at an omakase counter: Indonesian mantis shrimp. Chiba said large mantis shrimp are hard to source in Japan, so he had to look elsewhere to get pieces big enough for sushi. This was one of the more interesting sourcing choices of the meal.

The uni gunkan was classic: creamy sea urchin, a little sea salt, no drama.

Anago was one of my favourite pieces. Sea eel with yuzu zest, lighter and fluffier than unagi, almost melting into the rice.

The savoury section ended with a roll of minced tuna, uni, chive, and sesame. Rich, crunchy, and a little more built-up than the nigiri before it.

Pickles and castella-style tamago followed.

The miso soup came with chilli oil, another Hong Kong reference. This one worked. It gave the soup a little lift without turning it into a gimmick.

Dessert was cream cheese ice cream with strawberry mango jam. On paper, I hated the idea. I would prefer muskmelon at the end of sushi. In practice, it ate like a small cheesecake and worked better than expected. It still felt odd in this meal.

That is the issue with Mamoru. The restaurant talks about protecting tradition, but the meal drifts further from traditional Edomae than Saito or Shikon . The chilli oil in the miso soup, the crab with pickled cucumber, and the yuzu pepper with octopus worked. The Mediterranean oyster, salted duck egg shrimp, and cream cheese dessert did not.

The meal is good. Chef Chiba is fun, generous, and technically serious. The room is comfortable. The sourcing has real thought behind it.

I do not think Mamoru is the best version of what it says it wants to be. For traditional Edomae sushi in Hong Kong, I would book Saito or Shikon first. For a polished, more experimental Hong Kong omakase with a charismatic chef, Mamoru makes more sense. For me, a decent meal, but not one I would rush back for.

Total Damage: HKD 7,200 / 2 people

Chef Anne-Sophie Pic is one of the most important French chefs working today. She is best known for Maison Pic in Valence, the family restaurant whose third Michelin star she regained in 2007. She became the fourth woman to hold three Michelin stars and was named The World’s Best Female Chef by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2011.

Her cooking is built around precision, perfume, acidity, sauces, and unexpected aromatic pairings. That sounds vague until you see the combinations: coffee and sobacha, black garlic in dessert, Douglas fir with lobster, shiso with pear, sake lees with Chinese pea, gyokuro, dashi, citrus, flowers, smoke.

But it’s not Chef Pic who is cooking in Central every night. Chef Marc Mantovani runs the Hong Kong kitchen. He comes from Romans-sur-Isere, near Valence, and has worked under Anne-Sophie Pic for more than 10 years. He joined Maison Pic young, moved through the Pic system, led La Dame de Pic London at Four Seasons Hotel London at Ten Trinity Square, before coming to Hong Kong for Cristal Room.

Pic’s food is not old-school French in the heavy butter-and-truffle sense. It is lighter, more perfumed, and more aromatic. She likes tension: floral with bitter, sweet with saline, smoke with citrus, French sauce-work with Japanese or Chinese ingredients. The signature is controlled complexity. Not minimalism.

The speed of the Michelin rise is notable. Hong Kong Michelin likes polished international French rooms, but one star within months and two stars within roughly two and a half years is still a serious result.

The restaurant sits high up in Landmark, among a cluster of luxury restaurants on the upper floors of Gloucester Tower.

The dining room is open, with views into the kitchen. The kitchen is arranged into two stations around the room, with staff working in full view.

The harbour view is amazing, though partly interrupted by the iconic round windows of Jardine House.

We were in a but of a rush and went for express lunch menu, but added the signature Berlingots.

The canapes arrived on Baccarat glassware. Light tarts with microgreens. Pretty, precise, and on-brand.

Then a small taco filled with more microgreens.

For my starter, I chose the ebi chawanmushi. A variety of textures with a giant tiger prawn and a layer of soft egg custard underneath.

The sourdough came with some of the most carefully arranged butter I have seen: composed into a rose, delicate enough that the butter became part of the theatre.

The Berlingots were the dish to order. Tiny triangular parcels filled with 24-month Comte, served in a mushroom consomme with smoked oolong and vanilla. This was the clearest Pic dish of the meal: aromatic, technical, and strange in a way that made sense.

The main course was Hong Kong Three Yellow chicken done in a French style. It came encrusted with tonka, double-sauced, with corn and a fluffy doughnut on the side. Good technique, but the dish did not leave much behind.

Dessert was mango sorbet infused with geranium, served with mango coulis, mango on biscuits, and a crisp tuile for texture.

Then a chocolate tartlet with a lot going on: crisp cocoa wafer, chocolate ganache, vanilla cream, crushed nuts, and chocolate leaves.

The meal ended with homemade madeleines with local honey. Fine. Pretty vanilla.

Overall, the restaurant executes French technique well. The room is beautiful, the service is polished, and the Berlingots are worth ordering. But the meal was unremarkable. For a room with this much pedigree, theatre, and Michelin momentum, I wanted more dishes that stayed in my head after lunch. Most of it felt correct rather than exciting. Cristal Room is a good luxury French restaurant. It is not one I feel much need to rush back to.

Total damage: 3,900 HKD/3 people

The restaurant occupies the hotel’s old formal dining room, previously associated with the Elizabethan Grill and Raffles Grill. 1887 by Andre is Chef Andre Chiang returning to Singapore, yet it is not Restaurant Andre rebuilt in another room.

Andre Chiang is Chef Patron. This is not a tiny counter restaurant where Chiang personally cooks every plate. He shaped the concept, menu direction, team and tone, but the daily restaurant is run through the Raffles machine, with Chiang as creative authority rather than resident craftsman. Leading the kitchen team are chef de cuisine Ben Wang, 34, and sous chef Roy Kuo, 35. Both Taiwanese chefs had worked at chef Chiang’s two-Michelin-starred Raw in Taipei, which closed in 2024, before joining the team at the Raffles.

While Restaurant Andre was Chiang’s private language: Octaphilosophy, memory, texture, terroir, restraint. 1887 starts from a different archive. The raw material is Raffles itself: old menus, silverware, dining-room ritual, trolley service, French technique, colonial hotel theatre, and Singapore as a stopover for travelers and ingredients.

1887 sits where two histories overlap: Chiang’s Singapore years and Raffles Hotel’s long afterlife as a colonial grand hotel.

Chiang became a Singapore name before he became an Asia-wide chef figure. Jaan par Andre gave him his first major platform here. Restaurant Andre opened in late 2010 and became one of the defining restaurants of Singapore fine dining. It held two Michelin stars and reached No. 2 in Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants that same year. Then Chiang closed it in February 2018 while it still had awards, demand and global status. He said he would return the Michelin stars. That decision became part of the Andre myth: closure on his own terms rather than keeping a famous restaurant alive as a trophy.

1887 belongs to a later phase. Chiang returns to Singapore after building a wider Asian network. He is now less the lone chef at the pass and more a director of systems, teams and restaurants built around memory, craft and cultural material.

At Restaurant Andre, Chiang worked from his own memories and French training. At 1887, he works from Raffles’ memory: menus, rooms, guests, rituals, stored objects, and the hotel’s habit of turning Singapore history into theatre.

Raffles Hotel opened in 1887 as a 10-room hotel founded by the Sarkies brothers, Persian-Armenian hoteliers. It became one of Asia’s most famous grand hotels. The National Library Board records it as a national monument gazette in 1987. Raffles’ own mythology leans into writers, dignitaries, travelers and celebrity guests: Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy.

Chiang and the team draw from hotel archives, early dining-room recipes, Victorian rituals, local produce and Singapore’s multicultural flavours. It also mentions Raffles’ old silverware and the silver trolley said to have been buried in the hotel grounds during World War II and uncovered afterwards.

1887 belongs with the small group of Singapore restaurants where chef history, room and institution all matter: Odette, Les Amis, Born, imported Zen-style precision, and the old Restaurant Andre memory that still hangs over the city.

The entrance sets the colour story immediately: emerald green drapes, a shade that keeps returning through the meal.

The room is opulent in a very Raffles way. You walk into polished silverware, mechanical palm leaves fanning the dining room, and the sense that the hotel wants you to notice its own past.

At the back, the chef’s counter wraps around the show kitchen. The cooking stays visible, but the room never becomes a kitchen-counter restaurant. The hotel theatre still wins.

The Chendol Old Fashioned is a clever opening drink: chendol frozen into the ice cube, sweetness kept in check, strength hidden until it is too late.

The green motif returns in the amuse bouche, especially the herbal tart inspired by the herb garden outside the restaurant. It is a small detail, but it ties the room to the property instead of leaving the decor as costume.

A layered shot follows. The idea is more important than the liquid: the meal keeps using colour and format as memory cues.

The Spice Bomb lemonade asks you to crush the spices yourself. It lands somewhere between lemonade and chai, with enough aroma to make the interaction feel earned rather than decorative.

The pickles with the hors d’oeuvres do useful work. They reset the palate and stop the opening snacks from becoming only richness and crunch.

The Trio of Fish and Chips is the kind of dish this restaurant should be doing: fish and chips done three ways, tightened into a small-format snack.

The Hae Bee Hiam prawn roll is fragrant, savoury and direct. It does not need much explanation. The reference is clear.

Bone and Flesh pairs puffed beef tendon with cured wagyu ham. It is light, crisp and a little spicy, with chilli oil doing the work of keeping the luxury from feeling too tidy. Absolutely delicious and one of my highlights of the night.

Crispy rice encrusted on to a stuffed chicken wing filled with crystal capellini and Alaskan king crab pushes harder into texture. The dish is busy on paper, but the point is straightforward: crunch, poultry depth and cold seafood sweetness.

Turtle Soup from 1887 is one of the signature dishes. The team takes an old luxury dish from the Raffles archive, removes the obsolete ingredient, and rebuilds the memory with double-boiled chicken, grouper, herbs and a springy konnyaku ball for texture. This is the restaurant’s thesis in a bowl.

The grilled skate is a better tasting dish than it looks. It takes a Singapore seafood memory and runs it through French meuniere technique, with lemon, butter and capers doing heavy lifting. It is not pretty. It is delicious.

Bread comes in four choices: flaky toast feuillete, mini brioche, pain de campagne sourdough, and a steamed buns finished in an iron pan.

The flaky toast is the right pick. Hundreds of laminated layers get compressed into something closer to milk bread, served with pear and onion marmalade. It is technical, indulgent and still readable as bread.

Royale of Foie Gras, “Memory”, is the direct Andre Chiang callback. He created the dish in 1997 while working at the three-Michelin-starred Jardin des Sens. It is a warm foie gras custard layered with truffle coulis. Rich, controlled and unmistakably his.

Lobster Heh Mee “Al Ajillo” turns a humble local noodle memory into sakura ebi and lobster-bisque spaghetti. This is the East-West theme at its clearest: prawn intensity, French luxury, local logic.

Boeuf au Sept Poivres 1887 brings seven-pepper short rib cooked until it gives way. It is not the most conceptual dish on the table. It does not need to be. It is tender, deep and satisfying.

The Frites Maison Allumettes are absurd in the right way: nearly foot-long fries that look like breadsticks, served with homemade ketchup and curry oil. They are memorable because they understand that grand-hotel dining still needs pleasure.

La Vert, or Verdant Forest, keeps the dessert course inside the green motif. The avocado souffle is the anchor.

A slice of musk melon sits on pistachio kombu ice cream. It is delicate, clean and more interesting than another heavy luxury dessert would have been.

The green matcha pudding continues the colour line without over-explaining it.

The final sweets, a green olive macaron and an After Eight-style mint chocolate, close the meal with the same idea as the room: old-world reference, and a little theatrical control.

Overall, absolutely amazing. For a restaurant that’s a month old, service and execution were absolutely spot on, and dinner was delicious, if not a bit excessive. By the time we got to the short rib, we were already stuffed. We gave up halfway through dessert. If the degustation menu is a bit excessive, Chef Andre has kindly also also offered every dish a la carte, and in smaller set menu formats as well, so it’s not necessary to go all out to have a great experience here.

In fact, I tried to get a follow up reservation to try the signatures that I missed, but the restaurant is booked out for months. Definitely worth returning, maybe when the initial hype and reservation line dies down.

Total damage: 1050 SGD/2 people

Tanaka was born in Gifu Prefecture in 1967. His grandfather was a livestock broker. His father ran a butcher shop. Tanaka says he started using a knife at three, went to cattle auctions with his father as a child, helped with trimming and butchery from a young age, then eventually took over the family butcher shop. He opened Yakiniku Tanaka in 1992, expanded into wagyu-focused restaurants in Gifu and Shiga, opened Omi beef Setsugekka in Hikone in 2010, grew to 10 restaurants by 2015, then opened Nikuya Setsugekka in Nagoya in 2016.

The Singapore restaurant opened about six months ago as Tanaka’s first overseas expansion. It follows the Ginza format: a small counter, Kobe beef and purebred Tajima-lineage wagyu, then Japanese techniques around it. Charcoal grilling, tataki, sashimi-style service, shabu-shabu, tempura, rice, dashi and seasonal dishes.

Head Chef Yosuke Sekiguchi is one of the two named chefs for Singapore. He has around three decades of Japanese cuisine experience and worked with Tanaka on the menu before moving here. He brings the kappo structure: soup, sashimi-style handling, seasonal produce, pacing and counter service.

Chef Masaya Yano is the other named chef. He trained under Tanaka in wagyu handling. His business card says “meat specialist”, which sounds a bit much until you watch the work. The trimming and cutting are part of the show, not background prep.

The Singapore branch is the first Nikuya Tanaka outside Japan. It uses the same grammar as Ginza: a small chef-facing counter, Japanese tableware and carpentry cues, binchotan grilling, and a kappo menu built around beef from a single Tajima/Kobe cow.

The restaurant sits in Tanjong Pagar, along a stretch of shophouses that now has a heavy concentration of high-end dining.

The entrance is understated. A narrow dark hallway leads to a lift, which brings you up to the second-floor kappo counter.

Tanaka selects meat from a single whole cow, usually raised for around 35 months. The point is texture, marbling and flavour. The restaurant also stresses traceability. Each Kobe beef portion comes with certification and an individual serial number. The beef is flown chilled from Japan to Singapore rather than frozen, to avoid damaging the fibres.

The cuts for the night would be the sirloin and chateaubriand, the best part of the tenderloin. By the time I was seated, the beef for the meal was already displayed in front of me with its certificate of authenticity.

The menu for the night listed the cow’s serial number and sourcing details.

Chef Sekiguchi was finishing preparation before dinner service.

The first course was sweet corn and uni puree topped with caviar. Light, sweet, grassy, with enough salt from the caviar to keep it balanced.

Then came tempura of fuki bud, shaved bottarga and a small ball of rice. The fuki bud brought bitterness. The bottarga added salt and weight. The rice kept it from becoming too sharp.

They were also running pineapple juice made from Okinawan pineapples. I prefer pineapple juice with rum and coconut cream, but sure. Why not?

Chef Yano prepared the next course: a lean beef and white fish maki roll.

It was rolled with chives and uni, with no rice. A clean opening beef course. Light, controlled, and a better introduction than going straight into fat and smoke.

Chef Sekiguchi then prepared a nigiri with a leaner cut of Kobe beef.

There was also a loose uni nigiri as a surprise course that wasn’t on the menu. Decadent, as always.

Moving deeper into the beef dishes, with a chateaubriand grilled directly on hot charcoal, the smell of smoke filling the room.

It was sliced and served rare, with a crisp smoky crust.

An abalone course followed in a rich bonito and kombu broth. This was the useful reminder that the restaurant is still kappo, not a steak counter with Japanese garnish.

Chef Sekiguchi then prepared beef tenderloin tempura.

It was placed directly into my hand. Light crust, dense meat in the centre. Heavier than typical tempura, but that is expected when the filling is tenderloin.

Chef Yano trimmed excess fat from thin slices of sirloin before Chef Sekiguchi lightly poached the beef and then submerged it in an ice bath to stop the cooking. Controlled fat, precise cooking, very little else.

The shabu-shabu was served on a bed of ice, then covered with more crushed ice on top. Unusual presentation, but it worked. Clean, cold, fatty beef, with the traditional ponzu and chive sauce doing exactly what it should.

As a palate cleanser between mouthfuls of fatty beef, they served Nara-style somen in a hand-carved ice bowl. One of the signatures here, and a huge hit. Springy, smoky, citrusy and refreshing.

The main event was tenderloin steak, cooked medium rare and served with the traditional garnishes: wasabi, fried garlic chips, pickles and smoked salt. Only three pieces, but the fat made it extremely filling. I could barely finish the third.

Chef Sekiguchi then prepared Dragon’s Eye rice, a cultivar with extremely large grains. Sweet, fragrant, and mixed with young bamboo shoots for texture. It almost did not need the pickles and garnishes. Roasted rice tea and miso soup marked the end of the savoury courses.

Dessert was chilled loquat and muskmelon, both in peak season.

A small piece of red bean paste followed as petit four, with a final cup of tea.

Overall, Nikuya Tanaka was a massive hit. I did not know exactly what to expect going in. I expected the Japanese omakase format and had seen some of the more photogenic dishes online, but the meal was a proper celebration of beef, yet there was no single standout beef dish. The strength was the attention paid to every part of the meal, including the intermissions and accompaniments. The only reason it doesn’t have a star is because I don’t think it was open the last time the Michelin inspectors came around. I definitely expect it to get one or more next year.

Totally worth it. I can’t wait to come back again with friends. One of my best meals of the year.

Total Damage: 730 SGD/1 person

The main dining room centres on a beautiful brushed hinoki counter, which the restaurant claims is the only curved sushi counter in Singapore. The format combines sushi and kappo, with a kaiseki-like rhythm: seasonal appetisers, uni, hot dishes, premium ingredients, nigiri, soup and dessert all prepared in front of you. The room is deliberately spare. You are meant to watch the chef dance with the ingredients, not the room.

Chef Kazuhiro Hamamoto opened Hamamoto in 2021 and the restaurant presents itself as the culmination of more than 20 years of work across Kyoto, Tokyo and Singapore. Before opening Hamamoto Chef Hamamoto worked at Ki-Sho, another famous Kaiseki address in Singapore. He would be the chef who would contact suppliers late at night to secure unusual ingredients. This is consistent with how Hamamoto now markets itself: producer relationships, seasonality and ingredient timing before technique-for-show.

Hamamoto’s distinguishing angle is not a famous Tokyo parent, a celebrity import, or a dramatic room. It is Chef Hamamoto himself, his Ki-Sho history, the tiny counter, and ingredient relationships in Japan.

Down a row of historic shophouses in Tanjong Pagar, this area hosts endless restaurants, with many other standouts nearby.

Walking into the darkened. cavernous room. The lighting is particularly impressive, soft, but with specific spotlights in front of each of the seats to highlight the theatrical preparation of each course. Three chefs at their stations, with Chef Hamamoto in the middle, all preparing the mise in place for the meal ahead.

It would be a shame not to do a full experience when visit Hamamoto, and I went with the most extensive menu. The menu was a bit odd, there were definately some translation errors here, and we ended up with a few extra courses that I wasn’t expecting on the menu.

A collection of appetizers with beautiful presentation:

• Charwanmushi with diced abalone, mountain vegetables and green peas. Lots of texture in the dish, and it wasn’t all cooked together until soft. Lots of contrast between the soft egg, the spring of the abalone and crunch of the vegetables

• Sweet shrimp sashimi, on a bed of slimy seaweed

• White jack sashimi, topped with shio-koji and homemade pressed roe

Chef Hamamoto searing the piece of fish for the next dish with a brick of charcoal

Octopus sashimi from two parts of the octopus, a piece of pike conger eel Chef Hamamoto was searing earlier, and some firefly squid, just lightly touched with fire.

Spiny lobster sashimi topped with generous portions of uni, and kaluga caviar.

Grilled rockfish, in an aged vinegar sauce on a bed of rich, buttery monkfish liver. Foie gras of the sea.

Presentation of the live hairy crab to be used in the next dish.

The leg was deshelled and presented before cooking shabu shabu style.

The chef rapidly dipping the leg to just barely poach it in a broth made from the crab innards.

Served with a bit of the broth, just lightly cooked. Absolutely delicious and a highlight of the meal.

Starting the nigiri dishes, a piece of young sea bream, dramatically smoked table side.

Next, Isaki, or chicken grunt, a fish that maintains higher fat content than most other summer fish.

Moving into the tuna pieces, the chutoro, a medium fatty piece of tuna (and not cherry trout as it says on the menu).

Shimofuri otoro, an incredible piece of otoro with incredibly fine marbling. Looking more like a piece of wagyu than tuna. Slightly less fat percentage than the fat bomb of the more common jabara otoro, which is cut to highlight the fat. This cut is more balanced, and has one of the best pieces of nigiri I’ve ever had. Definitely my highlight of the night. The menu calls it “medium fatty tuna”, but there was nothing medium about this one. I’m pretty sure it was referring to the chutoro from the previous piece.

An unexpected piece of nigiri that wasn’t on the menu. What could possibly follow up the shimofuri oroto? Another cut of otoro, of course, cut parallel to highlight the heavy fat, broiled with charcoal directly before serving. A massive mouthful of fat, almost to the point of excessiveness. Without the charcoal grilling, it would’ve probably been too much. Would’ve been my highlight of the night if it wasn’t for the shimofuri piece right before it.

Starting to wind down from the fat bombs, a piece of botan-ebi, or sweet shrimp. A sweet, well-needed break from all the fattiness.

Back to the heavier, creamy dishes, a heavy scoop of uni served on nori, sourced from the northern tip of the Aomori Prefecture. Creamy and decadent, as always.

Finishing off the nigiri, and according to the menu, the meal, a piece of Nodoguro or black throat sea perch, lightly poached.

I was completely stuffed by this point, but the chefs just kept going. They showed up with a plate of incredibly well marbled beef. I wasn’t sure where we were going with this.

Lightly tapping the meat with charcoal to just char the surface slightly.

Topped with uni and we were told to roll it up into a Kobe beef-uni wrap

I thought we were done, but there was one final dish before dessert.

Tuna mince with egg yolk and pickles formed into a hand roll.

Finally, the egg custard, signifying the end of the meal, precisely positioned at the corner of the plate.

Miso soup, as it customary.

A choice of desserts, which is rare for a omakase or kaiseki meal. I was tempted by the Miyazaki mango shaved ice, but went with their signature musk melon, which was served with shaved ice. Intensely sweet and juicy.

Overall, this was probably the single best Japanese meal I’ve had in a very long time, and a contender for the best meal of the year. Hamamoto doesn’t pitch itself as just a sushi stand, but combining the best of the kaiseki and omakase formats and it shows. There is a sense of dinner and a show, watching the chefs prepare your dinner with a variety of techniques, arousing all the senses - from sight, sound, smell, touch and flavour.

If you want pure sushi hierarchy, Hamamoto may not be the cleanest benchmark because the meal gives meaningful space to cooked seasonal courses. If you want a chef-led Japanese seasonal counter in Singapore, it is squarely in the conversation. I can’t wait to return and to bring others here. Definitely come for dinner and not for lunch, it’s a lot of food and well worth the price of admission.

Total Damage: 660 SGD/1 person

It is on Level 102 of The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong. It has two Michelin stars. It has a polished room, proper service, a strong wine list and the full ICC skyline performance outside the windows. The name means something close to “sky dragon pavilion”, which is about as on the nose as it gets.

The more useful story is Chef Paul Lau Ping Lui and the Hong Kong luxury hotel Cantonese tradition around him. Lau has been cooking for more than four decades, with time across Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Dubai and the UK. His cooking sits in the classical lane: roast meats, double-boiled soups, live seafood, dim sum, tea, wine and private-room hospitality. This is the type of restaurant where the basics matter more than invention. Heat control. Knife work. Stock. Seafood timing. Roast meat. Restraint.

The Ritz-Carlton opened in 2011 and Tin Lung Heen opened with it as the flagship Chinese restaurant. It could have stayed a high-altitude novelty. Instead, it became one of the more serious hotel Cantonese rooms in Hong Kong.

The room is impressive. Double-height windows, Hong Kong spread out underneath, service moving around with that luxury hotel smoothness. It is expensive and it knows it. This is a business lunch room, a family celebration room, and a visitor’s “one proper Cantonese meal in Hong Kong” room.

We came for dim sum.

The meal started with a crispy crab roll in salted duck egg batter. Interesting idea, more novelty than classic dim sum. I think ours was a little undercooked.

The har gow was traditional, with gold flake added on top. The wrapper and shrimp were fine. The gold did nothing, as gold usually does.

The egg tarts were the classic flaky lard-crust version. Properly made.

The siu mai were massive, probably the largest I have had, topped with a big slice of shrimp or scallop. Impressive to look at, although size is not the same thing as balance.

The rice noodle roll with clams was the best of the unusual dishes. Normally this is shrimp, char siu or fried dough. Clams make sense here. Sweet, briny, and much more interesting than it sounded on paper.

There was also a steamed and pan-fried bun with uni on top. Again, unusual. Good idea in theory. The execution did not quite land.

Desserts were weaker.

The mango and pomelo sago was the best one, because mango and pomelo sago is hard not to like when the fruit is decent.

The cold red date and snow swallow jelly did not work for me.

The glutinous rice dumplings with black sesame were fine, but not memorable.

The petits fours came in a Star Ferry container, which was cute. I liked the container more than the sweets.

I may have caught Tin Lung Heen at the wrong meal. Dinner may be a better expression of what the kitchen does. The restaurant’s strengths are probably roast meats, soups, seafood and the more formal Cantonese dishes where Paul Lau’s classical background has room to show.

For dim sum, I was not particularly impressed.

The classics were competent, although a bit plain. The creative dishes were hit and miss. Desserts were the weakest part of the meal. At this price, that is a problem.

You are paying for the room, the view and the service. All three are real. I just do not think the dim sum itself justifies the premium. Frankly, I can get much better dim sum at a much lower price point. You’re paying for the view, and the service. The dinner service may be better, but I’m definately passing on the dim sum here.

Total damage: $1200 HKD/4 people.

It is the official Hong Kong outpost of Takashi Saito’s Tokyo restaurant. This is not a random luxury-hotel sushi counter borrowing a famous surname. It has real lineage, real training, and real connection to the Sushi Saito ecosystem, but it is also not the Tokyo counter. Chef Takashi Saito is not usually standing in front of you, shaping the rice, brushing the soy, and deciding whether your life has so far justified a piece of tuna.

Chef Takashi Saito founded Sushi Saito in Tokyo and turned it into one of the great modern sushi temples. The Tokyo restaurant formerly held three Michelin stars and built a reputation that sits somewhere between restaurant, private club, and myth. The Hong Kong branch was created to export that philosophy: Saito-trained chefs, Edomae technique, ultra-premium sourcing, and the same quiet seriousness around rice, temperature, ageing, seasoning, and sequence.

Sushi Saito Hong Kong opened on 2018 in the Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong. It was the first overseas branch of Sushi Saito in Tokyo.

The format is familiar if you have spent too much of your life caring about sushi: a small Edomae omakase counter, around 8 seats, Japanese sourcing, careful rice, serious technique, and the sort of atmosphere where everyone pretends to be relaxed while quietly studying every movement behind the counter.

The original Hong Kong head chef was Ikuya Kobayashi. He was born in 1988, trained under Takashi Saito for roughly eight to ten years, and was described as Saito’s second-in-command in Tokyo before being sent to lead Hong Kong.

Under him, Sushi Saito Hong Kong earned two Michelin stars in the 2019 Hong Kong & Macau guide. After Hong Kong, he returned to Japan, later led 3110NZ by LDH Kitchen, and then opened Sushi Kobayashi in Ebisu.

Later, Masashi Kubota was reported as heading Sushi Saito Hong Kong after leaving Taka by Sushi Saito in Kuala Lumpur. More recent sources point to Nawata Ryosuke as executive chef, with experience in Sushi Saito’s Japan operation and the Thailand offshoot before Hong Kong. However, the chef that was preparing the meal today was none of the above.

On this visit, the chef at the head of the counter was new to me. Friendly, and incredibly professional, he took great pains to explain technique and fish, both in English and Cantonese when asked, but conservative enough not to interrupt or add commentary when he wasn’t.

We started with the house sake: clear, sweet, refreshing, and very easy to drink. Dangerous in the way good sake tends to be.

The first proper bite was bonito, seared over charcoal and served with ginger flowers and a ginger, spring onion, and soy dipping sauce. Clean smoke, bright ginger, good start.

Then came sea bream roe and milt with tender bamboo shoots and vegetables in a smoky clear broth. Gentle, savoury, and more about texture than drama.

The chef sliced trout for a light cure before the nigiri section. One of those quiet counter moments where half the pleasure is watching someone work cleanly.

A large grilled scallop followed, butterflied and tucked into nori with a little chili pepper. This was excellent. Sweet, hot, crisp from the seaweed, and gone too quickly.

The chef displaying the ingredients for the next dish - the abalone and octopus

The abalone had been braised for seven hours and came with a thick abalone liver sauce. The octopus came with fresh wasabi, fruity and sharp. The chef explained how he massages the octopus to tenderize it. This is the kind of detail I like at a counter. Not theatre for its own sake, but a glimpse into the labour behind a simple-looking plate.

The leftover abalone liver sauce was then mixed with rice, diced abalone skirt and foot, and a squeeze of fresh yuzu. Rich, sticky, saline, slightly bitter from the liver, lifted by citrus.

The Chef preparing the mise en place before moving on to the main event.

Sea bream continued the theme from earlier, brushed with soy and finished with yuzu.

Horse mackerel from Osaka Bay came with shredded shiso underneath. It was stronger, slightly fishy, and better for it. The shiso kept it in line without making it polite.

The cured trout returned as nigiri.

Then lean tuna from a 163kg fish.

Then chutoro.

The grilled otoro was the best of the tuna sequence: yuzu, salt, smoke, fat. It had that ridiculous quality where the fish almost disappears before you have finished registering it.

A seaweed interlude followed, sweet, slimy, and vinegared. Not glamorous, but useful. It reset the palate.

Striped shrimp came with tiny caviar. Sweet shrimp, little pops of salt.

The elderly sous lightly adding a bit of smoke to the nori before the uni roll.

Then an uni gunkan roll, creamy and sweet in the way good uni should be, without needing much explanation.

The clam was slightly chewy, sweet, and braised.

The sea eel was simmered, soft, fluffy, and sweet.

Then came futomaki with cucumber, egg, chives, dried gourd, shrimp, uni, minced tuna, and eel. A lot going on, but still coherent.

Grilled firefly squid followed. Barely grilled, just touched with fire. Much better than the slimy versions I’ve had in the past.

The meal closed with classic miso soup, warm and comforting.

Then signifying the end of the meal, the egg custard - smooth, dense, and velvety.

Dessert was intensely sweet mango and Japanese white strawberries. Not complicated. Did not need to be.

Overall, Sushi Saito Hong Kong is not fake Saito. The lineage is real. The training is real. The meal has enough precision, sourcing, and craft to justify taking it seriously.

The harder question is whether it justifies the price. For me, the answer depends on what you think you are buying. If you want Takashi Saito himself, this is not that. If you want a Hong Kong expression of the Saito system, executed by chefs from the broader lineage, then the restaurant makes sense.

It is expensive. It is controlled. It has the usual access games of ultra-premium sushi. But it is not empty luxury. There is substance under the brand. Under the new chef, I think Sushi Saito has improved since my last visit! Definitely worth a repeat!

Total Damage: 8200 HKD/2 people

Met up with a friend at Tango, a casual Argentinean steakhouse in Hong Kong. I've always remembered Tango for the chimichurri and not the quality of the meat, and this time was no exception. Absolutely amazing chimichurri though - the best in the city!

I expect things to pick up a bit into May and June. If things quiet down in the middle east, I may have a chance to drop by Dubai. I’m really looking forward to trying Row on 45, after the amazing experience I had at Row on 5.

Otherwise, just continuing to chill and eat my way around the world.

That same idea carries through to the room. The interior is dark, understated, and quietly expensive rather than overtly grand. On our visit, the room was filled with exactly the sort of crowd you would expect: obvious business dinners, family gatherings, and tables that looked like they had been coming here for years. It has the atmosphere of a serious Central dining room, not a showpiece destination for tourists. The effect is more controlled than flashy, which suits the food.

We decided to go with the tasting menu, which felt like the clearest way to understand the kitchen’s range.

The opening selection of appetisers set the tone neatly. There was classic char siu, suckling pig, and a crisp tofu preparation. Nothing here was trying to be clever. The point was execution, and that much was apparent from the start.

The lobster course came next, done in two ways using the two halves of the tail. One half was stir-fried with crispy garlic, green onion, and a good deal of wok hei, the kind of dish that reminds you how much flavour Cantonese cooking can build from heat, oil, and timing alone. The other half was removed from the shell and paired with asparagus and Chinese fungus, more restrained in style, allowing the sweetness of the lobster to come through more directly. It was a smart progression, showing both power and finesse with the same ingredient.

After that came a double-boiled soup of fish maw and matsutake mushroom, made using the classic Chinese low-and-slow approach that avoids diluting the broth with excess moisture. This was deeply concentrated, clear, and full of umami.

A traditional fish course followed: steamed grouper fillets, deboned for convenience, finished with blistering hot scallion oil. This is one of those Cantonese preparations that can seem almost too simple if you do not stop to think about how much precision it requires. The fish has nowhere to hide. Here, it was handled properly, delicate and clean, with the hot oil providing fragrance rather than brute force.

The wagyu beef came glazed in a sweet sauce and served with meticulously cut bok choi. Cantonese beef courses at this level often risk becoming a little predictable, but this was well judged and balanced, with enough sweetness to compliment the fattines of the beef without overwhelming it.

One of the neater dishes of the night was a traditional preparation of poached Tianjin cabbage in rich chicken broth with wolfberries. The cabbage had been carefully carved into the shape of a flower. The dish itself was elegant and soothing, and a reminder that high-end Cantonese cooking often reaches its most sophisticated expression not through extravagance, but through taking a humble ingredient and treating it with extraordinary care.

The highlight of the night came at the end of the savoury courses: a large rehydrated abalone served with fried rice in abalone sauce. This was excellent. Properly prepared abalone should be tender without losing its structure, and this one had exactly that quality, rich and deeply savoury, with the sauce carrying all the patient concentration you hope for in a dish like this. The fried rice underneath was not an afterthought either, but a useful delivery mechanism for all that sauce. If you are going to come to a place like Ying Jee Club, this is the kind of dish you want them to make for you.

Dessert was relatively traditional, a double-boiled bird’s nest followed by petit fours on the side, including water chestnut jelly and an almond biscuit. It was a gentle ending, not especially theatrical, but consistent with the measured tone of the meal.

What impressed me most about Ying Jee Club was not that any one dish was wildly inventive or shocking. In fact, that is almost the wrong way to think about the place. The strength of the restaurant lies in the consistency and care across the board. The kitchen takes traditional Cantonese forms, occasionally gives them a slight twist, and executes them with a level of discipline that very few restaurants can sustain across an entire meal.

There was no single dish that left me stunned, but there were no weak points either, and that kind of consistency is harder to pull off than a one-off signature flourish. For serious, highly accomplished Cantonese cooking with Michelin pedigree, Ying Jee Club is the real thing. Worth a return visit.

Total Damage: 4800 HKD/2 people.

I enjoyed the experience at Ying Jee Club so much, that I ended up returning for dim sum just a few days later. I was impressed again. No caviar, gold flake or foie gras here. Just simple Cantonese cooking, exceptionally well-executed, every single time.

Teppanyaki Mihara Goten is one of the more interesting Japanese openings in Hong Kong because it is not trying to recreate the old-school hotel teppanyaki model, all flashing knives and overworked theatrics. It is smaller, more chef-led, and noticeably more thoughtful than that. The restaurant is built around chef Terufumi Mihara’s “Wa Modern” style, a format that blends teppanyaki with kappo sensibilities and allows in a few French, Italian, and Chinese ideas without ever feeling like obvious fusion for the sake of it.

Chef Mihara first built his reputation in a more homey Tseung Kwan O shop before moving the concept to Causeway Bay in 2023. The Cubus version feels less like a completely new restaurant than a polished second chapter, one that takes the original idea and sharpens it into something more refined and more ambitious. The move also pushed the restaurant more clearly toward a kappo-style teppanyaki identity, with seasonal ingredients, a more deliberate sequence, and a stronger sense of progression across the meal.

The chef behind the restaurant is, of course, Terufumi Mihara himself. The place carries his name, and the whole concept feels unmistakably personal. Each service is said to run under his close supervision, and the menu reflects his broader philosophy: premium Japanese produce, prepared with the precision and sequencing of kappo, but filtered through the live-fire steel surface of teppanyaki. That hybrid is really the whole point. This is not just beef and seafood on a hot plate. It is trying to create a more layered, seasonal, chef-driven teppanyaki experience.

Tucked away inside a fairly nondescript office building in Causeway Bay, the restaurant itself is intimate enough that our group of seven took up half of the 14-seat counter. The seats are arranged in a semicircle around the central teppan grill, which gives the room a good sense of focus without feeling cramped. It is a small room, but not a severe one. The atmosphere felt polished and quietly modern rather than formal, and the scale of the place suited the style of cooking.

The menu was somewhat intricate on paper, with various supplements and optional upgrades, but in practice there was essentially one tasting menu, with a few decisions around toppings and additions. That worked well enough. At a place like this, too much choice would only get in the way of the pacing.

The meal began with a firefly squid canapé, a neat opening bite. Firefly squid can turn unpleasantly slimy very quickly if mishandled, but this one was fresh and clean, paired with broccolini in a way that let the sweetness of the squid show through.

A small bottle of sake appeared at some point early in the meal, though I confess I can no longer remember what exactly what it was or any tasting notes. That may say more about the evening than the sake.

The sashimi course was yellowtail with a jellied soy sauce, a restrained and elegant start before the teppan portion of the meal really began. After that came one of the more enjoyable rituals of this style of restaurant: the presentation of the raw ingredients before they were cooked. Abalone, amadai, rehydrated shark fin, mantis shrimp, and beautifully marbled A5 wagyu all made their appearance one by one, each ingredient laid out like a promise.

We also added an optional supplement of Hokkaido sea urchin, served in a deconstructed uni gunkan format. This was indulgent in exactly the way uni should be, vivid in colour, sweet, creamy, and deeply marine. A little obvious perhaps, but no less enjoyable for that.

One of the best dishes of the night followed soon after. Arctic surf clams arrived in a hollandaise sauce topped with caviar, and this was superb. Clams can so easily be ruined by overcooking or buried under too much sauce, but these retained their snap and sweetness, while the hollandaise gave them richness and the caviar added just enough salinity. It was one of the best clam dishes I’ve had in quite some time.

Then came the signature dish of the restaurant, a large piece of shark fin served in a creamy chicken soup. Shark fin is, at heart, a texture ingredient, valued less for flavour than for the way it absorbs whatever surrounds it. Here, the thick, concentrated chicken broth did exactly what it needed to do, giving the fin both context and depth. It was luxurious in the old-fashioned way, and rather good.

The grilled mantis shrimp in soy butter was less successful. Mantis shrimp should have a certain spring and sweetness when fresh, but this one was a little mushy and lacked the texture I was hoping for. Not disastrous, but clearly one of the misses of the night.

A much stronger dish followed. A pan-fried piece of tilefish arrived with remarkably crisp skin, served in a clam and basil consommé. On paper, basil feels slightly unconventional in this format, but the dish worked. The fish itself was excellent, and the broth gave it brightness and fragrance without overwhelming the delicacy of the flesh. One of my highlights of the evening.

The grilled abalone with bamboo shoots in a uni sauce was well executed, but less memorable than I expected. There was nothing wrong with it at all, but it never quite rose above being competent and luxurious. At this level, that can sometimes read as faint praise.

The lobster, grilled in soy butter and served with basil pesto and tapenade, was similarly a little underwhelming. The seasoning combination was interesting enough, but the lobster itself was slightly overcooked and chewy, which is hard to forgive when lobster is meant to be one of the centrepieces.

Before the beef course, the chef presented two cuts: an A4 wagyu sirloin and an A5 “drunken” tenderloin. I appreciated that they specifically source A4 rather than A5 for the sirloin, recognizing that too much fat in that cut would become cloying. It is the sort of decision that suggests someone is thinking carefully rather than merely chasing labels. The beef arrived properly cooked, served with garlic chips, wasabi, and three different salts. The portion size was also exactly right. With wagyu, generosity can become a burden quite quickly, and any larger serving would have tipped from indulgent into exhausting.

Both arrived perfectly cooked on the plate with garlic chips, wasabi, and three kinds of salt. The portion was just right; the fattiness of the beef makes it extremely filling, and any more would have been unmanageable.

To finish the savoury courses, we were given a choice of three claypot rice preparations for the table. We went with grilled eel, snow crab, and flounder fin. This was a good ending to the meal, the sort of comfortingly substantial final course that teppanyaki does especially well when it remembers that starch matters as much as the headline proteins.

Dessert was red bean paste with mochi and ice cream, a straightforward and pleasant finish without trying to reinvent anything.

Overall, I came away fairly impressed. There were definitely some hits and misses, but the stronger dishes were strong enough to make the meal feel worthwhile. The arctic surf clams were excellent, the shark fin chicken soup was unusual and memorable, and I liked the inventiveness of the menu overall, particularly where Mihara’s kappo-influenced sequencing gave the meal a bit more shape than standard teppanyaki usually manages.

I actually preferred Teppanyaki Mihara Goten to its Michelin-starred neighbour, I M Teppanyaki & Wine, though the two are clearly aiming at different price points and perhaps slightly different diners. Still, for a more intimate, chef-led alternative to the usual teppanyaki formula, this is very much worth a return visit.

Total Damage: 12,500 HKD / 7 people

His path through Asia has been anything but linear. He helped launch a cocktail renaissance in Beijing with the opening of Apothecary in 2009, ran a restaurant called Bei at the Opposite House hotel, and created Traitor Zhou’s Nonkosher Delicatessen, producing artisanal cured meats and bagels. After more than four years running Okra 1949 in Beijing’s Sanlitun district, he moved to Hong Kong in 2015 to set up Okra Bar and Okra Kitchen in Sai Ying Pun. Okra Bar was a luxe eight-seat omakase sushi counter; Okra Kitchen, downstairs, was a casual izakaya blending Japanese, Chinese, and American influences.

He became deeply embedded in Hong Kong’s food community, championing local ingredients like phoenix eye nuts, dried oysters from Lau Fau Shan, and wild rice shoots. Okra eventually closed, with Levy speaking publicly about the Hong Kong ingredients he would miss most.

Max Max Pizza Pizza is his current pop-up project. He is the inaugural chef at the new Chef’s Room in the Upper House Hotel, a private dining enclave curated by culinary advisor Ricardo Chaneton that hosts rotating residencies. The residency features a tasting menu of handcrafted pizzas shaped by his New Orleans roots and sushi training, with a focus on sustainably sourced local ingredients.

Chef Max finishing the mise en place as diners filed into the private dining room.

True to his sushi chef roots, the mise en place was prepped and displayed prominently in wooden boxes ahead of the meal.

Somen, nuts, and olives awaited us as we filed into the intimate twelve-person counter surrounding the chef.

A glass of sake with pizza. A slightly unusual pairing, but it worked.

The only non-pizza dish on the menu: a zucchini tempura on sheep's milk ricotta, served over a cold gazpacho.

Chef Levy preparing the first pizza alongside his sous chef, oddly named Tony Leung (an incredibly famous movie star in Hong Kong). One of the other patrons kept commenting on the sous chef's muscular forearms, adding a side of sexual harassment to accompany dinner.

The first pizza had a base of porcini mushrooms, stracciatella, and morel mushrooms with pecorino, topped with a drizzle of honey.

Next, their take on a Hawaiian: coriander, basil pesto, pineapple, and jalapeño. Herbal and spicy.

Next, sauerkraut, broccolini, sardines, and pine nuts. An unexpected combination, and unexpectedly good.

Thai sausage, coriander, confit garlic, and sweet potato. I wasn't sure what to expect (sweet potato on pizza?) but it held together well.

Razor clams, Manchego, zucchini, and rosemary came next. I love razor clams, but their presence was hard to detect on the pizza itself.

Chef Max's take on the classic pepperoni: five cheeses, mushroom, and mala sausage.

Dessert pizza: Nutella, roasted pear, mascarpone, and honey. The Nutella goes well with nearly anything, and the roasted pear was a great pairing.

Overall, a really enjoyable experience. I wasn't sure what to expect from a "pizza omakase," but it turned into an intimate night with groups of patrons laughing and chatting with the chef. We learned about Chef Max's inspiration: making pizza during COVID, and his efforts to demonstrate the versatility of the dough as a base for everything from savoury to sweet. Would I go back? Probably not. I was fairly sick of pizza by the end of it. But it was definitely worth doing once.

Total damage: 2300 HKD/2 people.

I M Teppanyaki & Wine was founded by Chef Lawrence Mok Tsan-lam, who spent more than 30 years in some of Hong Kong's best kitchens before opening his own teppanyaki restaurant in 2013. It earned its first Michelin star in 2016 and has held it ever since.

We decided to do something simple and went with the set lunches.

The room is cavernous and dark, built around two central hibachi grills with 14 seats at the counter and a dark black motif running through everything.

The meal opened with a chawanmushi topped with a generous portion of salmon roe and a dab of wasabi for a bit of kick. The raw ingredients were then laid out on the grill in front of us, as is tradition.

I'm usually not awake before noon, so a lunch reservation required a bit of caffeine to get me going. I asked for a coffee early, but the restaurant didn't have much of a coffee programme; an Americano from a super-automatic was as good as it was going to get.

I’ve also been trying to manage my alcohol intake recently, so I swapped the bubbly for a sparkling genmaicha tea, yuzu-infused and on the sweeter side. It turned out to be a good accompaniment to the meal.

The star of the lunch was the crispy tilefish, served on a bed of pumpkin sauce. Always a crowd pleaser and perfectly done here: the skin blistered and popping, while the flesh remained fall-apart tender.

Next, big-head shrimp served on a piece of sea kelp, followed by abalone on kelp with an abalone liver sauce. Both were clean and well-executed, letting the ingredients do the talking.

The A4 wagyu tenderloin came wrapped around deep-fried garlic flakes and green onion, rich without being heavy, with the garlic adding a sharp crunch against the soft beef.

To close the savoury courses, a traditional fried rice with whitebait and dried shrimp, served alongside Japanese pickles, miso soup with giant clams, and a side of fried bean sprouts. Homely, filling, and exactly the right way to land after the parade of premium proteins.

This turned out to be one of the best-value Michelin meals I've had in Hong Kong. I think the only cheaper starred restaurant I can recall is Tim Ho Wan, which I've never been a fan of. At this price point, it's hard to find fault with anything. The tilefish was the highlight, the beef roll was excellent, and as an introduction to high-end teppanyaki in the city, I M Teppanyaki is a great pick.

Total damage: 1200 HKD/2 people

Few Cantonese restaurants in Hong Kong carry the same weight. Forum was founded in 1974 by Yeung Koon-yat with HK$600,000 and a handful of business partners, before being officially registered in 1977. The early years were not especially smooth. Partners left one by one, and Yeung eventually became the sole owner. Over the decades, however, Forum grew into one of the great institutions of Cantonese dining in the city, a place with the reputation of a rich man’s canteen, known for banquet-style luxury, old-school polish, and above all, abalone.

The cuisine at Forum is unapologetically traditional Cantonese fine dining, the kind that leans heavily on premium dried seafood, painstaking technique, superior stock, and the quiet confidence that comes from not needing to reinvent anything. The restaurant became especially famous for Yeung’s abalone, prepared according to a method he refined over decades, braising superior dried abalone in a deeply concentrated broth of chicken, pork bones, and lean pork over charcoal stoves until the texture turned supple and the flavour sank all the way through.

Chef Yeung Koon-yat led the kitchen from the beginning until his death in 2023 at the age of 90. His life reads like the classic Hong Kong culinary story. Born in China, he came to Hong Kong in 1949 and began at the very bottom, working as a dishwasher before slowly climbing through the trade over more than sixty years. He did not come with some glamorous pedigree or famous European detour. His reputation was built the hard way, through discipline, repetition, and a near-obsessive pursuit of technical perfection. Over time, his work earned international recognition, including the Club des Chefs des Chefs Gold Award in 1996 and its highest honour in 2009. His signature Ah Yat braised Yoshihama abalone, often served with goose web, became one of the defining dishes of high-end Cantonese cuisine.

After Yeung’s passing, the kitchen passed into the hands of his long-time protégés, with Adam Wong Lung-to now serving as executive chef. Wong joined Forum in 1992 as Yeung’s apprentice and never really left, dedicating more than three decades to the restaurant. His background is steeped in culinary institutions and guild-style recognition, but what matters more is that he appears to understand that Forum is not a place for dramatic reinvention. The menu, style, and overall philosophy have remained largely unchanged. The restaurant continues to preserve Yeung’s recipes almost exactly, while allowing only the occasional collaborative flourish around the edges.

The room itself feels exactly as an old guard Cantonese dining room probably should. Slightly dated Chinese décor, polished surfaces, red accents, dark wood screens, chandeliers, porcelain vases, and the sort of understated formality that now feels increasingly rare in Hong Kong. It is not fashionable in the contemporary sense. It does not need to be. The whole place feels like a preserved piece of another era, more banquet hall than tasting-menu theatre.

There were several tasting menus on offer, alongside a thick à la carte menu full of the restaurant’s classics. We decided to go with one of the tasting menus, partly because it allowed the kitchen to show its range, and partly because it seemed the best way to understand how Forum thinks about luxury Cantonese food. As the meal unfolded, one of the more interesting themes became clear. Several dishes took familiar Hong Kong street-side or everyday formats and elevated them using premium ingredients and banquet-style techniques.

The first example of this was a deep-fried lobster toast with garlic and chili. In its more ordinary form, this would usually be made with shrimp paste, the kind of thing you might happily eat from a cha chaan teng or snack stall without giving it much thought. Here, the restaurant substituted lobster tail, then topped it with deep-fried garlic, bird’s eye chili, and green onion for a bit of heat and a whisper of wok hei. It was excellent. Rich, crisp, and aromatic.

One of the highlights of the night came next, Forum’s luxurious take on imitation shark fin soup. This is the sort of dish you can find all over the city in humbler form, where vermicelli stands in for shark fin in a thickened broth with shredded chicken and mushrooms. Forum reversed the substitution and put the real thing back in, serving an actual shark fin soup with the traditional street-side condiments on the side: red vinegar, sesame oil, and fine white pepper. The result was wonderful. There was something faintly amusing about presenting such a luxurious version of such a familiar Hong Kong comfort dish, but it worked beautifully. The broth was rich and deeply savoury, and the condiments gave it that nostalgic local identity.

Then came the dish most closely associated with Forum, and the one that explains why Yeung earned the title “King of Abalone”. This was a deeply traditional preparation of rehydrated dried seafood, featuring a whole braised abalone and sea cucumber served with Chinese lettuce and a small ball of rice to mop up the sauce. Both sea cucumber and abalone are texture foods as much as flavour foods. On their own, they are relatively restrained, absorbing the essence of whatever they are cooked in. Sea cucumber tends toward a gelatinous springiness, while abalone can easily turn tough if mishandled. Here, both were superb. The abalone sauce had that dense, savoury depth that only comes from long reduction and patience, and the little rice ball was a smart touch, because wasting that sauce would have been unforgivable.

After that came a small teacup of cold-pressed rose tea, functioning as a palate cleanser after the intensity of the abalone course. Light, floral, and neat.

The next dish continued the broader theme of luxurious Cantonese banquet cooking. An egg white custard arrived with bird’s nest and crab meat, seasoned without salt, alongside a small tin of caviar. We were told to try it first on its own, then with the caviar, to see how the dish changed. Without the caviar, the sweetness of the crab came through more clearly, and the textural contrast between the custard and the bird’s nest felt more pronounced. With the caviar, the dish took on more depth and salinity, becoming more complete, if perhaps a little less delicate. It was a clever way of letting the diner calibrate the dish in real time.

A pan-fried star grouper followed, served in a strongly alcoholic aged ginger wine broth. The skin was excellent, blistered and crisp, almost like a good tilefish, while the flesh remained moist and delicate. The broth, however, was extremely assertive, a concentrated blast of alcohol and ginger wine with green onion lingering at the edges. I liked the fish more than the sauce. The latter bordered on overwhelming.

Another of the more playful dishes followed: a deboned chicken wing stuffed with fennel pork mince. Juicy, aromatic, and unexpectedly herbal, it almost read more European than Cantonese. In fact, the flavour profile reminded me more of a good British pork sausage than anything I usually associate with banquet Cantonese cooking. Strange in theory, but enjoyable in practice.

To round out the savoury part of the meal, we were served dry-stirred vermicelli with braised mushrooms, shredded fish maw, poached gai lan, and more of that excellent abalone sauce. This was a deeply satisfying closing starch, the sort of dish that feels far more luxurious than it sounds on paper once all the sauce and concentrated seafood flavours begin to settle in.

Dessert was less convincing. A chilled Cantonese sweet soup arrived with crispy aged lily buds, osmanthus, spongey Chinese fungus, and barley-like grains, alongside an osmanthus jelly roll topped with water chestnut flakes. It was certainly interesting, but not my favourite part of the meal. The textures felt slightly awkward together, and the whole thing leaned more unconventional than delicious.

Overall, though, Forum was a very strong meal, and one that captured a style of Cantonese luxury that Hong Kong does better than almost anywhere else. What I liked most was the way the restaurant balanced old-school banquet grandeur with occasional references to familiar Hong Kong street food forms. The shark fin soup was superb, the abalone and sea cucumber fully lived up to their reputation, and the whole meal felt grounded in the kind of culinary tradition that does not need to chase novelty. Compared to another giant of Cantonese cuisine in Hong Kong, T’ang Court, I much preferred Forum.

Total damage: 6400 HKD/2 people

In good news though, I found a great shakshuka.

The restaurant that bears his name has moved twice since then. The original was a compact shophouse on Stanley Street with a 26-seat counter and an open kitchen. Around 2020, it relocated to a larger space on Amoy Street for better flow. The current home, since early 2024, is on Mohamed Sultan Road, and the shift is significant. The room is cavernous and contemporary, with an industrial edge and three open islands in the centre where the kitchen team prepares every course in full view. It feels less like a dining room and more like a stage, which is exactly the point.

Inspirations pull from those stints abroad - French base with experimental edges, travel flavors, and fresh suppliers. Signature items shift often, but examples include refined takes on seafood or veggies with unexpected pairings, like punchy sauces or textures from his global exposure.

Sous chef Kirby Quinol, who rejoined the team in recent years after stints at The Black Swan and L’Angelus, handles much of the daily execution alongside Lerouy. Multiple wine cellars sit in the back of the restaurant, packed floor to ceiling with bottles spilling out of their racks. What I saw was apparently only half the collection.

Lerouy operates on a carte blanche basis. There is no menu upfront, no choices, no preview of what’s coming. You sit down and eat what the chef has decided to cook that day, built around whatever is seasonal, whatever has arrived fresh, and whatever ideas are circling his head that week. The printed menu arrives only at the end of the meal (I kept mine as a souvenir). It’s an omakase philosophy filtered through a deeply French sensibility, and the kitchen has held a Michelin star since the 2019 guide.

The meal opened with a round of canapés, each one distinct in flavour, texture, and temperature.

A foie gras terrine arrived on an anchovy crisp with yellow plum, rich and sharp in equal measure.

Next, a composition of beetroot (freeze-dried, diced, layered) with creamy feta and smoked eel, where the smokiness lifted the earthy sweetness of the beet.

Then escargot, tucked into a Japanese egg custard with classic garlic and parsley butter and a parsley foam on top; a clever Franco-Japanese crossover that somehow felt natural rather than forced.

The last canapé was a flatbread with Munster cheese, Alsatian bacon from Chef Lerouy’s hometown, and chives. That Alsace connection would resurface as a quiet theme throughout the night.

The bread course followed: a sourdough loaf pulled straight from the oven, still releasing a puff of steam when torn apart. Served with three kinds of butter and olive oil.

Then came a Spanish Carabinero prawn, served cold with slice of lardo in a umami daikon sauce, and a generous scoop of caviar on top. Well seasoned, briny, with a clean acidity that made it immediately refreshing.

The Alsatian thread returned with the next course: toothfish and ham wrapped in nori like a gunkan sushi roll. The toothfish had been pressed with a chicken mousse and sat in a sauerkraut sauce. I'm not typically a fan of sauerkraut, but this worked. The sourness cut through the richness of the fish and chicken without overwhelming either, and that kind of well-balanced acidity became another recurring motif as the evening went on.

A crab Spätzle followed, topped with sea urchin and salmon roe. The Spätzle had been pan-fried after boiling to give it a slight crispiness, then finished with crisped leeks in an umami-rich kombu sauce. A hearty dish with a lot happening on the plate, but nothing competing.

From that density, the kitchen pivoted to something quieter. Norwegian langoustine with white asparagus, walnuts, and veal tongue in a lovage sauce. Herbaceous, grassy, and restrained after the richness of the Spätzle.

The main was French pigeon, served with a small piece of turnip, a turnip salad, and a sauce built from apple, passionfruit, and quince. Sweet and savoury in the same bite, with a gentle acidity from the quince that kept pulling the dish back into balance.

An optional cheese course followed, which I declined. By that point I was running out of room.

For the palate cleanser, different preparations of grape (freeze-dried yoghurt, diced fresh grapes, grape sorbet) came layered together, bright and cooling.

Dessert was Chef Lerouy's take on French toast, though with the hazelnuts involved, my first thought was that it looked and tasted like a Ferrero Rocher. I mean that as a compliment.

The meal closed with a round of petit fours: a chocolate bonbon, a chocolate canelé, a passionfruit jelly, and a triple sec and mandarin jelly perched on top of a pistachio cream meringue.

Overall, this was a really fun night. I spent quite a bit of time talking about food with the Chef as well as the kitchen staff. I was sat right by the main kitchen island, in the midst of all the action. The quality of the meal itself was excellent. A creative menu, well-executed. Worth returning.

Total damage: 330 SGD/1 person

The Connaught project came in 2008, part of a major refurbishment of the historic Mayfair hotel. The restaurant took over the former grill room previously run by Angela Hartnett under Gordon Ramsay Holdings. Darroze was initially apprehensive but won over by the space and the owners. Stars followed quickly: the first in 2009, the second in 2011, and the third in 2021. She now oversees three restaurants across two countries (the three-starred Connaught, two-starred Marsan par Hélène Darroze in Paris, and one-starred Hélène Darroze à Villa La Coste in Provence) for a total of six Michelin stars. Her cooking draws deeply from her Landes heritage (foie gras, family-produced Armagnac, Espelette pepper) while folding in global influences from her travels. Day-to-day kitchen leadership at The Connaught falls to Executive Chef Marco Zampese, an Italian from the Veneto who joined around 2018 and executes Darroze's vision with his own technical precision.

This was my second visit. I remembered the whimsical board game menu from the first time, where you could remove pieces from the board and what remained would be the key dishes in your meal. That detail had stuck with me. The restaurant has since undergone a full renovation, and the board game concept was retired along with the old décor. The room is now all pinks and pastels, with indirect lighting and a colour palette that reminded me of the pink room at Sketch. The waiters wore pastel blue suits; the waitresses, dark red dresses. It looked beautiful, though something of the playfulness had gone.

The meal began with a welcome drink: duck consommé served in a misshapen ceramic mug, finished with juniper and pine oil. Herbaceous and surprisingly complex for something that arrived before I'd even looked at the menu.

Three canapés followed. A pumpkin tartlet with daikon. Goat cheese sandwiched between leek leaf crackers with a rose and horseradish jelly on top. And a small doughnut filled with duck meat, warm and rich. All three were well-executed, compact little previews of what was to come.

The tasting menu ran seven courses with several supplement options. I went with the caviar and, naturally, the signature Armagnac Darroze, but skipped the black truffle seasonal supplement.

The caviar course arrived as a generous scoop over thin slices of raw, crunchy cauliflower with crushed Piedmont hazelnuts, gold leaf, and a sorrel foam sitting in a sea urchin custard. I found out later it was the first night they had served this particular dish, which made it all the more impressive for how confidently it landed.

Next, a beetroot dish with smoked crème fraîche, trout and pike roe, and barbecued kombu. The first hit was pure salinity before giving way to the creaminess of the fraîche and the fresh sweetness of the beetroot underneath.

The bread course brought a homemade rye sourdough with two kinds of French butter: a simple salted version and a peppery Espelette butter. The sourdough would reappear later in the meal in a way I didn’t expect.

Scallop came next, with a green onion and coriander sauce and a carrot mousse studded with herbs on the side. The scallop itself was fall-apart tender, though I found it slightly overseasoned.

Then a surprise: an off-menu course of grilled ox tongue, topped with pickled turnip slices and served in a chimichurri turnip purée. Beefy, substantial, and one of my highlights of the night. The kind of dish that lands with real confidence.

The barbecue turbot followed, with confit potatoes, tiny thin potato crisps carrying small scoops of caviar, and an oyster and caviar sauce. Rich, with a slight bitterness from the sauce that played well against the perfectly cooked fish.

The main was pigeon breast encrusted with toasted grains, alongside savoy cabbage in a pigeon jus. A confit pigeon leg arrived as accompaniment with a touch of quince on the side.

Before dessert, I was given a tour of the refreshed restaurant, including the private Armagnac room featuring bottles from the Darroze family collection.

Downstairs, I had a brief chat with the chef and discovered that, for a more intimate experience, there is a table set right inside the kitchen itself, less formal, more interactive, with the chef and the brigade working around you. Worth knowing for a future visit.

Returning to my seat, a palate cleanser arrived: bread ice cream made from leftover rye sourdough, with muscat jam and crispy toasted croutons also made from the rye. A clever full-circle moment with the earlier bread course, and the flavour worked.

Given a choice of apéritifs, I spotted a Sauternes on the list. Whenever I see a Sauternes, I know I’m ordering one.

The pre-dessert, however, was the one real miss of the night. A rhubarb and rice dish that was also brand new to the menu. Grainy, hard, and unpleasant in texture, closer to eating gravel than anything that belonged on a tasting menu.

The signature Armagnac Darroze more than made up for it. Three decades of vintages from the Darroze family collection were offered to choose from, and a small pitcher of the chosen Armagnac was poured over a green apple glazed baba and left to soak in, served alongside a green apple sorbet with diced kiwi and a touch of Chantilly cream. Divine.

A collection of petit fours followed, but by that point the jet lag had caught up with me. I asked for them to be boxed up and took them back to the hotel, where they made for an excellent breakfast the next morning.

The renovation has changed the feel of the restaurant, and the loss of the board game menu took away some of the fun I remembered from my first visit. But setting that aside, this was a confident, well-paced meal. Apart from the unfortunate pre-dessert, every course showed real thought and execution. Worth returning for a third visit.

Total damage 452 GBP/1 person.

The namesake Chef, Alain Ducasse, came into the world in 1956, in Orthez, France. Raised on a farm near Castel-Sarrazin in the Landes. He started at 16 working with many legendary chefs and moving quickly between roles and kitchens.

His career reads like a novel: apprenticeships across the south of France, a rise through Alain Chapel's brigade, two Michelin stars at La Terrasse in Juan-les-Pins by 1984, and then, that same year, a light aircraft crash in the French Alps from which he was the sole survivor. Months of surgeries and two years of rehabilitation followed before he returned to the stove. By 1987 he was in Monaco running Le Louis XV at the Hôtel de Paris, championing vegetable-forward menus that earned three stars in 1990 (the first hotel restaurant ever to receive them). The empire grew from there. By 2005, Ducasse became the first chef to hold three stars simultaneously in three cities: Monaco, Paris, and New York. His constellation peaked at twenty-one stars in 2012 and has since settled to seventeen. Beyond the restaurants (over sixty launched since the 1980s, some shuttered, others reinvented), the Ducasse universe spans cooking schools, chocolate shops, and a long shelf of books.

The kitchen at The Dorchester, though, belongs day to day to Executive Chef Jean-Philippe Blondet. Born in 1980 in Nice, Blondet grew up shopping markets with his parents and baking with his mother; he says he knew by the age of three or four that he would cook for a living. A sweet tooth pulled him first toward pastry, but he trained broadly for the wider possibilities. He interned under Jacques Chibois at the two-star La Bastide Saint-Antoine in Grasse, spent time at Sun Valley Resort with Claude Guigon, and found his formative mentor in Pascal Féraud, a Ducasse Paris corporate chef who drilled precision into every plate. Blondet joined the Ducasse group in 2004, working at Spoon at the Sanderson in London, then Le Louis XV in Monaco, followed by a brief spell in Hong Kong. He arrived at The Dorchester in 2013 as sous-chef under Jocelyn Herland, stepped up to head chef within two years, and took the top role in 2016. His cooking refines Ducasse's philosophy with a lighter, more seasonal hand, threading British ingredients through a distinctly French sensibility.

The restaurant had been reimagined since my last visit, but the sparkling private dining room, enclosed by a curtain of crystal beads, remained exactly as I remembered it.

There were two tasting menus on offer, and, naturally, I chose the seven-course option.