Chef Pynt grew up in Perth. He started out washing dishes at a pizza restaurant, then learnt to make pizzas and trained in commercial cooking at TAFE. His early career took him to Tetsuya’s in Sydney and Amusé in Perth. In London, he worked with Fergus Henderson at St John and joined Nuno Mendes’ Loft Project. A short spell at Noma and time with Victor Arguinzoniz at Asador Etxebarri gave him a close look at two very different kitchens. Etxebarri’s wood-fire cooking became a major influence on the restaurant he would later build.

Burnt Ends brings those experiences into a restaurant that runs on fire, reminding me a bit of the late Humo. Nearly every dish on the menu passed through its four-tonne, dual-cavity oven and elevation grills. The kitchen writes a new menu each day, with plenty of off-menu dishes. Pynt has held on to one Michelin star since 2018, but the room still feels like a busy, high-volume grill rather than a hushed tasting-menu restaurant.

The dining room has a dark, warehouse feel, with a long counter facing the open kitchen. Two ovens roared behind it. At least 20 people worked the pass and kitchen, while servers moved around the room with clockwork timing. It was a big operation, and the counter gave us a close view of it.

The chef recommended the tasting menu for first-time visitors. I had eaten a huge lunch, so I knew I would not get through it. We ordered à la carte instead. I just asked for the signature dishes, and added a few of the off-menu items.

The smoked quail egg with caviar was a classic opening bite. The grissini and flatbread were another house staple: crisp, light and topped with herbs, dill, cream cheese and fish roe. The roe brought salt, with a little spice at the end.

One of the off menu items, a deep-fried ravoli, topped with 80-day-aged striploin slices and leek ash came next. It was crisp and savoury.

The next dishes were Burnt Ends’ version of fish and chips and steak fries: steak tartare, then ceviche over potato terrines, covered with caviar. I was told this was a classic starter at burnt ends, but it was a bit underwhelming.

Smoked mussels with burnt butter brought more smoke and richness.

Steak is sold by the gram, and I wanted a small one. The smallest one was 180g, and when presented with the raw cut, it was quite a bit larger than I expected.

They did not ask how I wanted it cooked, but it arrived a perfect medium-rare. The cut itself was lean. Bone-marrow sauce added the richness, and a crisp watercress salad kept the plate in balance.

The orange-and-cinnamon marshmallow was one of my highlights. The outside had caught the heat and smoke, while the centre stayed cold. It tasted as if someone had taken a frozen marshmallow and passed it quickly through the smoke, really capturing the essence of smokiness without reducing the marshmellow to goop.

Burnt Ends has a clear identity because the fire shapes the whole menu, not just the meat. The meal moved between a variety of starters, the main and a playful dessert, and the busy kitchen gave the room plenty of energy. It very much does feel like an industrial operation, and despite a really amazing steak, I felt the starters were generally uninspired. I didn’t realize how small each starter was and the pricing was pretty extreme - I can see how the bill racks up quickly.

I found it a bit curious why this place is always fully-booked. I finally managed to make the reservation so I went, but for the amount of hype and a Michelin star, I thought the restaurant was a bit overrated. Perhaps it’s because there aren’t many amazing BBQ or steak-forward restaurants in Singapore. That said, tried it, service was good, food was pretty good, didn’t really think the value was there. Not really in a rush to return.

Total damage: 500 SGD/2 people

When in Hong Kong, the fresh seafood is really where it’s at. It’s a bit touristy, but going out to Sai Kung or Lei Yue Mun fish markets to buy a bunch of seafood and have the restaurants cook it up is probably one of my favourite group activities in the city.

Back in Singapore, I managed to return to 1887 after they received their two Michelin stars. Decided to go a la carte this time to see if the other items on their menu were just as good, or if it really was just the tasting menu that was outstanding.

The potato and egg dish - sounds simple but a variety of flavours and textures of both potato and eggs

Singaporean chicken rice, prepared two ways, and both absolutely delicious.

Another great experience, with hit after hit after hit. Definitely one of my favourites for the year.

That history gives Ishizawa real pedigree, but this is his own expression of Japanese Omakase, not a Shinji branch, and Shinji’s Michelin star did not transfer with the chef. Ishizawa now has room to set his own course, from the rice to the balance of each piece. Japanese seafood arrives four times a week, while the shari uses Akita rice and a house vinegar blend.

The counter keeps the meal close to the chef. Chef Ishi was warm, funny and happy to chat with the guests. Lunch had a relaxed rhythm, with a few playful fake endings that kept the meal lively and exciting.

The restaurant itself is quite difficult to find, with the main door tucked away in a dark quiet corner of the hotel.

I was led through a darkened hallway to the nine seat counter where Chef Ishi was preparing the mise-en-place for service.

The opening course paired winter melon with shrimp and gingko nuts in a thick dashi sauce. The shrimp had a crisp finish, and the gingko brought a seasonal note.

Flounder came next, with warm rice and yuzu. The temperature contrast worked, while the citrus and a sharp, nose-clearing heat woke up the palate. The generous use of wasabi was a recurring theme with Chef Ishi that divides opinions. I personally quite enjoyed it.

Yellowjack followed with more wasabi heat. It was at this point I realized the complexity of the operation. Unlike most traditional omakase counters, where there’s a single seating being worked through at a time, Chef Ishi was juggling multiple staggered seatings with different menus, keeping pacing right for each of the nine patrons.

Smoked Spanish mackerel had a deeper, more complex flavour.

Ginger lifted the squid, which is not a cut I’m particularly fond of, but was well done nonetheless.

The grouper finished off the whitefish and kept the sequence moving into the tuna.

At first, I thought the piece was the lean tuna akami, but it turned out it was a chutoro cut. It looked a bit darker than what I think of when I imagine chutoro, but still tasted very rich.

Horse mackerel was oilier and more assertive, with a distinctly fishy finish.

Botan shrimp brought a sweeter note before lean akami reset the palate.

A giant piece of lean tuna akami, left to marinade in a soy dressing briefly before service.

A rice ball topped with uni stood out from the usual gunkan format. The sea urchin came from Aomori. It was an unusual, simple presentation that delicately balanced the uni on top of the rice ball.

I thought the next piece was otoro, but it was actually shimofuri, cut from between the tuna’s neck and cheek, and it was my favourite of the meal. The cut had more richness and texture than I expected. It was the lunch’s clear highlight.

Sweet pickle and egg custard signifying the end of meal.

That was a fake-out: a blazing-hot piece of grilled sea eel arrived on rice, its flesh soft and fluffy.

Miso soup to signify end of meal, but alas, another false finish.

A tuna mince handroll to finally finish the savory courses.

Yuzu ice cream with lemon jelly closed the meal on a clean, bright note.

Ishizawa’s style carries the discipline of his Kanesaka training, but the restaurant gives him space to make his own decisions. The intimate counter, frequent Japanese seafood shipments and Ishizawa’s easy manner made for a genuinely fun lunch. The restaurant is easy to miss inside the Raffles complex, and deserves more attention. I had a great meal and I’d happily return.

Total Damage: 192 SGD/1 person

Chef Lucchi grew up in Toscolano Maderno, near Lake Garda in the province of Brescia, Lombardy. His grandmother cooked fresh pasta, braised meat and ragù for the family, and those Sunday meals remain a clear reference point in his cooking. He has described food as part of his daily life long before he had a serious plan to become a chef.

He entered culinary school at 14. After national service, he left Italy for London - initially to learn English and gain experience outside his hometown. His early career placed him at Osteria dell’Orologio in Salò, followed by work at Quirinale in London under the Brescia-born chef Stefano Savio. He then moved to Rome and worked with Adriano Cavagnini at Hotel Eden, before returning briefly to the Lake Garda area and joining the Esplanade in Desenzano.

Lucchi came to Singapore after deciding that he needed a wider experience of cooking and life outside Europe. He worked at Gattopardo and Garibaldi, two established Italian restaurants in Singapore, before taking charge of Buona Terra in 2012. Buona Terra gave him the opportunity to lead the restaurant and develop a cuisine under his own name rather than work as part of another chef’s operation.

His first Michelin star arrived in 2019, after six years at Buona Terra. Lucchi has said that the award was not the original reason he became a chef, but that it recognised the team’s daily work and gave them motivation to keep improving.

Lucchi treats sourcing as one of the restaurant’s central jobs. Buona Terra uses Italian ingredients where they make sense, but it does not insist that every product travel from Italy. The kitchen uses the best available produce and prepares it through an Italian lens.

The food is recognisably Italian, with contemporary technique and fine-dining presentation. Lucchi has spoken about becoming less interested in complexity as he gained experience. Earlier in his career, he tried to make dishes more complicated to impress diners. At Buona Terra, he now gives more weight to flavour, identity and restraint. The cooking is polished and seasonal, and it does not chase novelty for its own sake.

There was one menu with two choices of supplements. The spaghetti carbonara was one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, so I decided to go with that supplement. Wasn’t super interested in the steak, so stuck with the duck instead.

The first amuse bouche was a tomato gazpacho inside a cocoa-butter shell, presented like a small chocolate. Concentrated tangy tomato came through once the shell cracked and it was a particularly memorable bite.

The squid-ink tart was filled with scallop tartare and caviar - clean marine flavour and a crisp pastry base.

Next came the pizza fritto, a fried doughnut filled with cheese, topped with prosciutto. The dough was warm and savoury, although the texture had softened a bit by the time it reached the table.

A perfectly toasted slice of sourdough and sweet dinner roll followed, accompanied by Sicilian olive oil and salted butter. While I know that the bread course isn’t usually particularly notable, but I ended up finishing both, and had to restrain myself when offered more. The peppery, pungent olive oil was a great accompaniment.

The scampi came with an anchovy-garlic sauce, crisp garlic chips, artichoke and preserved lemon. The sauce had enough salt and acidity to balance the sweetness of the scampi, while the artichoke gave the dish a more earthy centre. A great start to the meal.

The tilefish had been dry-aged for three to four days, giving the skin extra crispness and concentrating the flavours. It came with a lemon-caper sauce, olive oil and aubergine purée. The fish was well handled, with the double sauce adding both brightness and weight.

The spaghetti carbonara supplement was rich, warm and intensely earthy, with a generous amount of truffle. This was the most obviously indulgent dish of the meal and the reason to come to Buona Terra. Absolutely heavenly, and I’m glad I went with the supplement.

The duck had been dry-aged for 14 days and served with beetroot and cherry sauce, endive, beetroot slaw and dill. The dry-ageing gave the meat a deeper flavour, while the cherry and beetroot supplied the acidity and sweetness it needed. Another big hit!

The pre-dessert took its cues from the south of France, highlighting Solliès Figs, with fig granita, fig-leaf powder, diced fig, fig cream and jelly. It was cool and refreshing after the richer savoury courses.

The strawberry salad dessert combined strawberry in a variety of textures and forms: meringue, ice cream, crisps, jus along with some herbal elements: sage, sorrel and mint. The herbs kept it from becoming a straightforward sweet fruit course, and the balance of sweet and bitter gave the dessert a surprising amount of complexity.

Petit fours included a crisp cannoli, mango choux and a chestnut tart.

Buona Terra is more conventional fine-dining restaurant than theatrical experiences. It builds the meal around Italian technique, sauces, pasta and wine. It’s a more personal expression than a generic Italian tasting menu - references to the Lucchi’s background in Lombardy, his grandmother’s cooking and the years he spent learning in London, Rome and Singapore remain visible, even when the ingredients are sourced internationally.

The food is controlled rather than radical. The strongest reason to visit is Lucchi’s long-developed version of contemporary Italian cooking, a strong sense of consistency, and excellence across all the dishes. Worth a revisit!

Total Damage: 350 SGD/1 person

Chef Yang became known as the runner-up on the Chinese culinary competition, “The Divine Dish” and has also received recognition from the Michelin Guide and the Black Pearl Young Chef awards.

QUAN describes its concept as “Complementary Chinese Dining”, using Hong Kong’s position as a crossroads to frame contemporary Chinese cuisine. The name 泉 suggests a spring or source, which fits the restaurant’s emphasis on Chinese culinary references presented through a modern service model.

The restaurant sits somewhere between a modern Chinese tasting-menu restaurant and a luxury banquet kitchen. The opening publicity focuses heavily on Yang’s young-chef awards, but the food is more interesting when it leans into classic Chinese ingredients and techniques rather than the chef’s competition background.

The restaurant is in a quieter part of Central, inside a modern office building. The dining room is fairly large and has a slightly colonial European feel.

Interestingly, the menu was only provided in Chinese. The English category headings were not especially helpful, but fortunately, in the age of AI, a photograph of the menu is enough to get a rough translation.

The amuse bouche was a thick jelly with some sort of herbal root inside, topped with an intense aged-vinegar sauce. It was not really my thing. The texture was firm and slightly gelatinous, while the vinegar dominated the small bite.

The appetisers were much better.

• A light, crisp tart filled with smoked foie gras and sweet peas.

• Lightly pickled passion fruit.

Both were big hits. Clean, refreshing and distinct, with enough contrast between the textures and flavours to make the opening courses work.

The fried course was the highlight of the night. QUAN’s take on fish maw was well concieved and well executed: a small piece of fish maw, lightly battered and deep-fried, presented on a plate made from a much larger dried fish maw.

The batter was light and crisp, while the fish maw itself was chewy, almost like rice mochi. A sticky vinegar sauce added sweetness and acidity. It was absolutely delicious and a very effective reworking of a classic Chinese delicacy.

The soup was a classic shark fin soup with crab meat, crab roe, bamboo pith and loofah melon in a rich chicken stock. It was made as a “gung”, or thick soup, with plenty of flavour and a smooth, substantial texture. Rich, filling and absolutely delicious.

Starting into the mains, a soup-filled, deep-fried pigeon leg arrived next. The pigeon had a small amount of mala seasoning, a crisp fried exterior and an incredibly juicy centre. Once you bit through the shell, soup came running out, so the restaurant gave us spoons to catch the soup.

Another massive hit, and one of the best pigeon dishes I have had. The crisp exterior, juicy meat and burst of hot soup made the whole thing feel more like a cleverly constructed snack than a conventional main course.

The fish was less impressive. It was a oil-poached grouper topped with Sichuan peppercorns and dried chillies, served over giant bean sprouts. The fish was cooked very well, but the dish felt a little greasy and lacked the same precision as the fish maw and pigeon.

The vegetable course was napa cabbage slowly braised in a rich dried-scallop broth. A classic comfort dish, with soft cabbage and plenty of savoury depth from the broth.

Another big hit was QUAN’s take on Fujian fried rice. The rice came with slow-simmered beef and just enough sauce to bind everything together. I could taste the heavy use of lard, and it was delicious, although a little rich after the earlier courses. A slight aftertaste of heat rounded it off well.

Dessert was a simple agar jelly flavoured with lightly sweetened tea. Cold, light and refreshing, it was exactly what the meal needed after several heavy and oily courses.

Overall, QUAN was a bit hit and miss, but the best dishes were genuinely excellent. The fried fish maw, shark-fin soup and soup-filled pigeon leg were all memorable, and they showed a kitchen with a good instinct for texture and traditional Chinese ingredients.

The pacing was not quite there. We had a long delay between the soup and the main courses, although we later found out that we had arrived on the restaurant’s official opening night, so I would expect the service to settle with time. The menu is also fairly short, but the pricing reflects that. You are unlikely to leave feeling as stuffed as you would after a full Chinese banquet.

QUAN is worth visiting if you want a shorter Chinese tasting menu with several strong dishes and do not need a huge meal. It still feels like a restaurant finding its feet, but the fish maw and pigeon alone make the opening menu worth trying.

Total Damage: HK$4,300/2 people

Merone moved to Hong Kong in 2012 to work at L’Altro under Chef Philippe Léveillé. He later became executive chef of 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana Macau, where he led the restaurant to its first Michelin star. Merone’s experience at Otto e Mezzo clearly informs the cooking. The stocks, sauces and pasta work are serious, while Naples remains the restaurant’s main reference point. Estro currently holds one Michelin star and sits at 32 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Chef Merone’s cooking at Estro is rooted in Naples, but the restaurant carries the discipline of a serious Italian fine-dining kitchen. Handmade pasta, seafood, stock-based sauces and carefully controlled acidity are the most reliable ways to understand the restaurant.

The restaurant describes its cooking as modern techniques applied to traditional Neapolitan cuisine. The dishes use contemporary presentation, but the flavours tend to come from seafood, acidity, handmade pasta, rich sauces and the food culture of Southern Italy. The name, Estro, means inspiration in Italian, and Merone ties the menu to childhood memories and family cooking in Naples.

The restaurant itself is hidden in a building that mainly houses medical offices, so it was easy to miss. I’ve passed by countless times, and never realized that Estro was in the same building.

There was a choice between a six-course or eight-course tasting menu, as well as two supplements. We had been dining out quite a bit recently, so we stayed on the conservative side with the six-course menu. We did swap in the signature red prawn dish, though, as it seemed like something we should try at Estro. We also went with the wine pairing.

The wine pairing started with a dry, creamy Champagne to go with the first few courses.

Spring onion crackers and almond biscuits to keep us company.

The amuse bouche started with a somewhat soggy mini taco filled with julienned radish, potato and pumpkin, topped with aged balsamic vinegar.

A mini tuna tart.

A neat shot of clarified watermelon juice. Light, sweet and refreshing.

A crusty sourdough loaf. Oddly, a bit lukewarm. Could’ve used a bit of a reheat before service.

Nutty, peppery olive oil, with an anchovy and soy emulsion in place of butter. Whenever I see a “butter alternative”, I usually make a mental reminder to avoid. I ended up trying it out of curiosity, but this was no exception.

The signature red prawn tartare, served on coral panna cotta and topped with caviar and potato foam.

A layered dish, with concentrated crustacean flavour from the prawn and panna cotta, briny caviar and a bright citrus note from Amalfi lemon. I could see why this is one of Estro’s signatures. Rich, briny and delicious.

A briny, minerally white wine to pair with the next seafood dish.

Kombu-marinated Jeju abalone with slices of maitake mushroom. Earthy and nutty, with the abalone providing the firmer texture.

Tomato, basil and lemon linguine with mantis shrimp. The lemon brought plenty of citrus, while the tomato kept the dish sharp and fresh.

Ravioli filled with smoked eggplant and ricotta, served with a yellow and green tomato sauce and drops of basil oil. The ravioli had a soft, creamy filling, with the different tomato preparations adding acidity and freshness. The smoked eggplant gave the dish a darker, earthier note.

The main course was pigeon presented in several preparations: liver mousse, leg confit, breast and tiny tenderloin, served with a layered potato accompaniment.

A sparkling red dessert wine. A slightly unusual pairing, but it worked with the richer flavours of the meal.

A lemon dessert with several different flavours and textures, including gels, sorbet and pastry.

The other choice of dessert was chocolate, which was rich, but not excessively heavy.

Some petit four to finish off the meal. A tiny lime and coconut dessert with diced peaches and foam. Light, tropical and refreshing.

A pistachio gelato that was surprisingly rich and heavy.

Finally, some chocolate truffles to see us on our way.

Overall, Estro delivered a polished modern Italian meal. The red prawn tart was the obvious highlight, and well justified the supplement. Both pasta courses were also strong, with well balanced flavours and perfect execution on the texture.

I enjoyed the food, although the meal did not have the same sense of surprise as some of Hong Kong’s more experimental tasting menus. The red prawn dish was excellent, and the best courses showed Merone’s ability to combine Southern Italian directness with fine-dining technique. The weaker moments came from the more decorative small bites and desserts, which felt less distinctive than the savoury courses.

Total Damage: HKD $6,100/2 people

The Hong Kong restaurant was still new when we visited, so it had Boss Tanaka’s pedigree but very little independent track record. The reason to come is clear enough though: serious meat sourcing, a Japanese kappo progression and unlike the Singapore location, the chance to watch the legend, Boss Tanaka himself, at work behind the counter.

Similar to his other restaurants, the format is wagyu kappo, with a variety of cuts appearing in a multitude of temperatures and preparations rather than as one large steak. The original Ginza restaurant uses a 12-course structure that moves through seasonal dishes, meat sushi, grilled courses, rice and steak. Both Singapore and Hong Kong locations faithfully follow the same broad sequence putting Matsusaka beef at the centre of the meal.

Boss Satoru Tanaka owns and leads the Tanaka Group. He comes from a third-generation meat family: his grandfather dealt in cattle and horses, while his father ran a butcher’s shop. Tanaka opened his first yakiniku restaurant at 25 and later built a group of about 20 meat-focused restaurants in Japan.

His expertise sits in selecting cattle, buying whole animals and breaking down the meat. The restaurant buys specially selected Matsusaka beef from female cattle that have not calved and have been raised beyond 50 months. Whole-animal purchasing gives the kitchen access to a range of cuts across the menu instead of reserving the obvious steak cuts for the end. The kitchen then applies Japanese culinary formats to the different cuts, including sushi, tataki, tempura, shabu-shabu and steak.

The room is dark and theatrical, with a slight nod toward the Kitchen Stadium from the original Iron Chef TV series. The staff were methodically finishing the mise en place when we arrived. Eight counter seats face the open kitchen, while two tables at the back offer larger groups a little more privacy.

The room was designed by Yasumichi Morita, who combined shrine and temple references with a minimalist look. The counter performance forms part of the experience.

In the traditional kappo manner, the ingredients were arranged in a display on the kitchen counter. The seafood and produce were present, but the main attraction was the spread of beef cuts from a single Matsusaka cow.

The menu followed a format very similar to Nikuya Tanaka in Singapore with many of the courses were shared between the two restaurants: the nori-maki, beef tataki, beef tempura, shabu-shabu, somen served in an ice bowl, tenderloin and dragon-eye rice. The Hong Kong menu added its own details through local ingredients and seasoning.

The amuse bouche, a small shot of fragrant and rich beef consomme, served in a wine glass.

We went with the wine pairing, although I was so excited watching the kitchen at work I didn’t take many notes about the wines. It was a bit of a eclectic selection, with sparkling reds, funky whites. Most notably, even though we shared a single wine pairing, Tanaka has seriously generous pours. The glasses were really starting to pile up toward the end of the meal.

The appetizers paired a light corn tempura fritter with sesame and tofu paste on fig, ginkgo nuts and candied walnuts. A gentle, sweet start to the meal.

The sparkling red wine was funky and sweet, with a bitter finish.

Next came one of Tanaka’s signatures: nori-maki wrapped around lean cuts of beef, snapper, lightly pickled cucumber and gourd, then topped with shaved bottarga. The combination was delicate, hits of sweet, sour and overall refreshing.

We had been given the best seats in the house, directly in front of Boss Tanaka. From there, we could watch father and son prepare the meal together.

The beef tartare arrived on kushi sushi rice topped with fresh salmon roe and uni. The beef was marinated briefly in soy sauce and the staff explained the great pains they went to in order to soruce fresh salmon roe appears for only about 40 days each year. It’s only available during spawning season, after which the harvested row is salted and frozen to make it available year round. The fresh roe tasted much milder than the more common alternative.

Despite not featuring the signature ingredient, the hairy crab soup was the highlight of the meal. It came topped with lemon zest and a mount of a crab meat in a deep, rich broth. There was a lot of crab in the bowl, and the dish briefly moved the focus away from the beef. Alongside the soup came a spoonful of rich crab liver paste and caviar.

The next three dishes came paired with a Burgundy.

The top-round tataki, another Tanaka signature, arrived with wasabi, and salted onions.

Father and son worked side by side to finish the beef tempura.

The tenderloin was light and crisp, topped with XO sauce for a Hong Kong accent and shaved black truffle.

The staff trimmed the sirloin before lightly poaching it for shabu-shabu. Another chef ground the sesame and prepared the dressing by hand.

The dish was rich and nutty, beef cooked just enough to warm it through.

Another Tanaka signature followed: short somen noodles in a concentrated, refreshing broth, served inside a hand-carved ice bowl.

One of the problems with going with the wine pairing is that they had very generous pours. Even though my companion and I were sharing a single pairing, we were definately getting a bit drunk, and the glasses started piling up.

The main event was the tenderloin steak.

It was extremely tender, almost falling apart, and arrived at a perfect medium rare. Fried garlic chips, wasabi, yuzu and pickles completed the plate.

The dragon-eye rice came with chestnuts, beef roulade wrapped around eggplant, pickles and wood ear fungus, another nod to Chinese cuisine.

A bowl of miso soup with winter melon followed, a final nod to Chinese cuisine.

Dessert was red bean mochi with intensely ripe muskmelon, followed by hand-whisked matcha.

Tanaka delivered the full luxury wagyu-kappo experience: rare beef, a large number of preparations, a carefully staged counter and a founder who was visibly involved in the cooking. The father-and-son performance and Boss Tanaka’s obvious excitement explaining each ingredient and dish made for a fun and entertaining night.

The hairy crab soup was my dish of the night, even though the restaurant’s purpose is beef. The tenderloin, shabu-shabu and beef tempura were also strong. The meal felt more theatrical than Nikuya Tanaka in Singapore, largely because we were seated directly in front of the Tanakas and could watch the performance at close range.

The wine pairing was generous enough to become a problem. Sharing one pairing between two people was more than sufficient.

Tanaka is a specialised and expensive experience, but the sourcing and range of preparations made the meal feel more substantial than a conventional steak dinner. As with Singapore, one of the best meals I’ve had this year. Definately worth returning.

Total Damage: $9,200 HKD/2 people

The restaurant’s strongest quality is clarity. Rice, cut and temperature lead the meal. No theatrics, curious oddities or instagrammable showpieces. Kumogaku belongs to Hong Kong’s newer wave of specialist sushi restaurants rather than to a famous Japanese branch network. The restaurant runs on local ownership and execution, with Japanese seafood and Edomae structure adapted to Hong Kong diners.

The name and room are understated. Diners sit close to the chef, and the experience depends on the sequence of otsumami and nigiri rather than a large dining-room production.

Chan Wing-kin is the Hong Kong-born chef. Chan entered the kitchen at 18, but he treated the work as just a job until he sat on the customer side of an omakase meal. That experience changed his view of sushi and pushed him towards the craft.

Before opening Sushi Kumogaku, Chan spent close to a decade in established sushi restaurants. The clearest connection is Mori Tomoaki, whose Mori 醍醐 counter preceded Kumogaku at the H Code location. Chan worked under Mori for years and later became head chef before taking over the space when Mori Tomoaki closed and Chef Chan rebranded it to Sushi Kumogaku.

Chan’s Hong Kong background shapes the service. Local diners often come to omakase restaurants for celebrations and may not know Japanese counter etiquette. Chan uses Cantonese conversation to make the room less formal, while adding more otsumami and cooked dishes than a stripped-down Edomae progression might contain.

His style uses scoring, ageing and gentle sauces with restraint. That leaves the rice, temperature and fish texture exposed. Kumogaku feels more local than a strict Japanese outpost, but more restrained than Hong Kong counters that foreground sauces, luxury toppings or overt Western technique. It sits closer to an independent chef-led sushiya than a branded hotel operation.

Salmon roe as an amuse bouche. Deceptively simple, with yuzu or ponzu adding a hit of acid and undertones of bonito broth.

The second dish was flounder fin and uni served with wasabi and salt.

The individual appetisers came between the nigiri, which gave the meal a different rhythm from a straight sushi progression. The nigiri started almost right away, with a piece of cuttlefish nigiri topped with salt.

The legs of the cuttlefish were grilled and served separately.

Sea Bream nigiri

Simmered octopus in a sweet mustard-seed sauce. A very unusual preparation, and one of the more memorable appetisers.

Sweet botan shrimp.

Pacific Saury.

The highlight. Rich monkfish liver in a sweet caramel sauce, finished with a sprinkle of sansho pepper.

A riceless maki roll with trout, chives and pickled ginger. It reminded me of a similar dish at Nikuya Tanaka.

Chutoro.

The chef handed me a maki roll with grilled barracuda wraped in nori. Given the reputation of the fish, I was expecting it to be tough, dense, aggressive. Surprisingly, it was incredibly light and fluffy.

Simmered abalone, a classic omakase course, served with a slightly bitter and complex abalone-liver sauce.

As is traditional, we received a small ball of sushi rice to mop up the remaining abalone sauce rather than letting it go to waste.

Roasted sea bass.

A giant butterflied clam, topped with yuzu

Tempura fish in a sweet ponzu sauce, topped with shaved bonito flakes. The fish was wrapped around a shishito pepper. Another unconventional, but absolutely delicious dish.

The classic uni gunkan.

Light, fluffy grilled anago nigiri. One of my favourites when it is in season.

Egg castella marked the end of the meal. Two large pieces, light and fluffy, with sweetness and a savoury undertone. One of the best tamago I have ever had.

The customary bowl of miso soup.

There was a choice of fresh Japanese peach or milk pudding for dessert. My companions were full, so I tried both. Both were excellent.

Overall, I was impressed by Sushi Kumogaku. The restaurant lacks some of the polish of its longer-established neighbours. A few courses went to the wrong table, and the wait staff missed a few details during the meal. The nigiri doesn’t follow the conventional progression, and serving mixed courses of appetizers between pieces of nigiri definately changed up the pacing a bit. Still, the food punched above its weight, and I understand why Kumogaku is becoming one of Hong Kong’s more popular omakase restaurants. Worth returning!

Total Damage: HK$11,400/3 people

The format is a tasting-menu restaurant with a giant marble counter facing the open show kitchen. 25 diners sit at the counter, while tables for up to four and a private room for eight provide other options. The food is technically polished and each course is carefully explained.

Chef Cheng was born in Hong Kong and spent nearly two decades working in Canada and the US before returning home to open VEA. He has said that he watched Jamie Oliver and Emeril Lagasse while living in San Francisco, then started cooking professionally in Toronto while studying at George Brown College. Chef Jason Bangerter taught him knife skills at Auberge du Pommier, while Chef Anthony Walsh showed him how to respect local ingredients at Canoe. At 21, Cheng moved to New York and joined Daniel, Chef Daniel Boulud’s flagship restaurant. By the time he returned to Hong Kong, he had spent roughly two decades around French cooking in Canada and the United States.

He opened VEA after running the kitchen for a period at Liberty Private Works. The menu places fish maw, abalone, sea cucumber, preserved vegetables, Chinese wine, local seafood and childhood flavours inside a French fine-dining structure.

VEA calls the concept “Chinese x French”. French technique provides the sauces, structure and presentation, while Chinese ingredients, seasonings and memories provide much of the flavour vocabulary.

While VEA remains the clearest expression of Cheng’s French training, Wing, which opened one floor below in 2021, takes a more direct route through Chinese classics and regional references. Cheng has described VEA as the restaurant where his French background remains most visible, while Wing focuses on what he calls “boundaryless Chinese” cooking.

An envelope awaited us when we arrived.

Breaking the seal, inside was a card explaining VEA’s culinary concept, along with the menu for the night.

In a remarkable show of salesmanship, we were presented with a display showing the each of the supplements for the menu. I’ve never seen a fish maw of that size, and an abalone wellington sounded like an interesting concept, so we decided to do both.

I could not drink, so I ordered from the tea menu: the rice-scented aged pu’er. I am a sucker for anything with a pandan flavour.

The amuse-bouche was a bok choi and salted-fish doughnut with a light bok choi and salted-fish sabayon. The restaurant placed a music box under the display. It played a Chinese love song Chef Cheng had used when he proposed. The dish came from that song, and two rolls of parchment carried its lyrics beside the sauce.

The next course was a seasonal green asparagus tart with the asparagus cut into a fine lattice. Herbal, earthy and fresh, with springy asparagus and a crisp, intricate structure.

The next display showed Taiwanese water bamboo, lily bulb and six-month-aged Hangzhou caviar.

The lily bulb tartare came with a layer of dashi jelly, snap peas and broad beans in a smoked coconut-milk sauce. The textures worked well: crisp snap peas against soft lily bulb. A great start.

The next dish highlighted preserved salted lemon, a classic Hong Kong ingredient.

Day-aged red prawn sat on avocado with two forms of preserved salted lemon: a gel over the prawns and a sorbet beside it. A bright sweet-and-sour kiwi and coriander sauce finished the dish.

Pan-seared Japanese flounder barely touched by fire and came with Japanese turnip, watercress gel, turnip purée, Longjing tea gel and a buttery sauce. The fish stayed delicate, while the different preparations of turnip gave the course some weight.

The next course focused on rehydrated sea cucumber. I was surprised by how much it expanded after several days in water.

The restaurant misted the sea cucumber with Chinese yellow wine at the table.

The giant piece came stuffed with tiger-prawn mousseline and more aged yellow wine, then sat in a deeply savoury crustacean sauce. Mini mantou arrived on the side for dipping into the extra sauce.

The hawthorn sorbet acted as a palate cleanser. It recalled the hawthorn-flavoured biscuits that are common Hong Kong childhood snacks.

The next course used Noirmoutier potatoes, harvested for one week each year. They had a mineral, salty flavour and came with a sauce made from 20 year aged Chinese turnip.

VEA prepared the potatoes in two ways: small chips and a roasted whole potato. Black truffle and a thick chicken jus finished the dish. I did not expect to like it as much as I did.

The fish maw supplement replaced the potato for my companion. Like the sea cucumber, the fish maw had gone through several days of rehydration. VEA prepared the sauce in front of us with caviar, chives and toasted quinoa. It added flavour to a rich, gelatinous ingredient without overwhelming it.

To cut through the richness before the next dish, a shot of Iron Buddha tea.

The abalone and sweetbread Wellington arrived next.

Once cut open, the pastry showed Candy Heart abalone layered with sweetbread, wrapped in fennel sausage and duxelles before the pastry went around it. A thick abalone sauce, enriched with fish maw, came alongside.

This was the only miss of the night. My companion found the abalone tough and lacking in flavour. Another day of rehydration may have helped.

The watermelon, lychee and osmanthus pre-dessert brought some fresh sweetness.

VEA then served an off-menu dessert with pear chunks, pear sorbet and cooked sugar shaped to resemble bird’s nest.

The mushroom tart was unusual. Thin slices of raw mushroom sat over sautéed mushroom cream, pine nuts and mushroom ice cream. It made for a light, earthy dessert.

The petit four was condensed-milk pudding inside rice mochi, sandwiched between flaky crackers.

The final dessert played with a Hong Kong street-food classic: a French crêpe wrapped around coconut ice cream and crystal sugar. Absolutely delicious, and a great end to the meal.

As we left, the restaurant gave us a marshmallow cookie to take home.

After trying Wing, I could not wait to try VEA. Wing is the restaurant that is always booked out, while VEA is supposed to be the flagship. I understand the booking situation now. Wing has limited public seating, while VEA has more flexibility with its larger counter and dining-room arrangements.

The contrast between the two restaurants was clear. Wing felt more familiar and more Cantonese, with a formal Chinese dining-room experience. VEA felt more like an event, using Cantonese ingredients and references while placing French technique and the tasting-menu format at the centre.

I ended up preferring VEA. The meal felt more whimsical, and both restaurants executed at a high level. Wing is the stronger expression of modern Chinese cooking, but VEA gave me the more memorable evening.

Total Damage: HK$8,500/2 people

Returned to Don Pedro again, and it’s as good as always. It’s a fairly limited menu, but every single item is good. The tomato salad is particular killer.

Otherwise, it’s been a pretty quiet month. Doing a lot more cooking at home, finding inspiration from flavour profiles and techniques I’ve encountered at all these amazing restaurants I’ve been to.

The restaurant made history in the inaugural Michelin Guide Hong Kong and Macau, becoming the first Chinese restaurant to receive three stars. It held that rating for fourteen years. Michelin reduced it to two stars in 2023, and it remains at two stars in the 2026 guide. That is a disappointment, but Lung King Heen is still operating at the top end of Hong Kong Cantonese dining.

Four Seasons built the restaurant around Chef Chan Yan Tak, who came out of retirement to lead the kitchen. Chan started working in kitchens as a teenager and learned through restaurants rather than formal culinary school. His career took him through Dai Sam Yuen, Fook Lam Moon and Lai Ching Heen before he arrived at Lung King Heen.

Chan spent much of his senior career at Lai Ching Heen in the former Regent Hong Kong. He joined as sous chef in 1984 and became executive chef about a year later, staying for around fifteen years. He helped turn it into an internationally recognised Cantonese restaurant.

After his wife died, Chan left the industry to look after his children. Alan Tsui, a former Regent colleague who later became general manager of the Four Seasons project, persuaded him to return..

The cooking is recognisably Cantonese, with a fine-dining finish. Sauces are controlled, seasoning is restrained and the presentation is modern without turning the food into a design exercise. Brilliant execution for classic Cantonese dishes tell you more about the kitchen than any new fusion novelty .

The tea menu was fairly extensive, with a good selection of exotic aged pu-er teas. I went with an unorthodox choice, a Lapsang Souchong smoked over pine needles. An elaborate tea ceremony followed with them washing and preparing the tea in front of us.

The amuse-bouche was deceptively simple: cordyceps mushrooms tossed with mala chilli oil and sesame seeds.

Some cashews kept us company while we worked through the extensive menu. We skipped the tasting menu and ordered a la carte, choosing a mix of seasonal specialities and signature dishes.

Off the seasonal menu, the deep-fried oysters came in a light, crisp batter. Well-executed but fairly uneventful.

The sliced abalone with red jellyfish and asparagus was all about texture: tender abalone, crunchy jellyfish and springy asparagus. Very lightly seasoned, but the point was really to highlight the different textures.

One of Lung King Heen’s signatures is the massive wok-fried sea cucumber with leeks in abalone sauce. It is a substantial dish, with the giant gelantious sea cucumber slathered in the rich sauce with plenty of wok hei. A huge hit!

The braised oxtail was another seasonal dish. It arrived as one massive piece of oxtail, slow-cooked in a rich, gelatinous sauce. Flavourful, tender and full of collagen and rich mouthfeel. I underestimated how filling this dish would be.

The fish maw casserole is one of the restaurant’s most famous dishes. It came with huge pieces of rehydrated fish maw, abalone, shrimp, scallops, shiitake mushrooms and bok choi in a rich oyster and abalone sauce.

We finished with seafood fried rice containing shredded crab meat, shrimp and a blast of wok hei.

We were completely stuffed by this point, deciding to pack half the fish maw casserole for the lunch the next day. The waiter did warn us subtly while we were ordering, deciding to reduce our fried rice order to half an order instead of giving us the full order.

This was one of the best Chinese meals I had this year. It comfortably beat most of the other hotel Chinese banquet restaurants. I much preferred Lung King Heen to Lai Ching Heen, Rùn, Tin Lung Heen and even three-starred T’ang Court.

Ordering a la carte was the right decision. We got to choose the dishes that interested us, and the final bill was far lower than I expected given the ingredients and the setting.

Total damage: HKD $3,600/2 people

The hotel opened in 2019, with Rùn as its flagship Chinese restaurant. The dining room takes its design cues from a Chinese tea pavilion. The result feels quieter and more residential than the grand hotel Chinese restaurants around Central, yet the service still has the polish and staffing of a large luxury hotel.

Chef Hung grew up in Hong Kong and has more than three decades of hotel-kitchen experience. Before joining Rùn, he worked at Cuisine Cuisine at The Mira and Man Wah at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong. His cooking follows the classic Cantonese repertoire: wok cookery, roasting, steaming, soup work and dim sum. The kitchen adds modern presentation and occasional contemporary pairings, but this remains a restaurant for ordering a Cantonese meal rather than a chef’s tasting menu.

The dining room was packed for a Wednesday night. We skipped the tasting menu and ordered a selection of signature dishes from the à la carte menu.

The amuse-bouche was a sweet vinegar jelly with pig ear. The jelly brought sweetness and acidity; the pig ear added crunch and spring. Deep-fried tofu filled with minced shrimp followed, with a crisp, spongy shell and a warm, gooey centre.

The smoked foie gras was one most unique dishes at Rùn. Dense slabs of foie gras came smoked over applewood, with deep-fried mantou and homemade chilli jelly. The smoke was strong without burying the foie gras, while the mantou gave the dish a sweet, crispy fried counterpoint.

Another appetiser paired sliced fish maw with celtuce, mountain yam and several kinds of wood-ear fungus. Sichuan pepper oil finished the dish. The mix of textures worked, although the foie gras left a stronger impression.

In an unorthodox move, my companion decided they wanted dessert in the middle of dinner, and Run gladly obliged with an order of egg tarts. They came promptly and were surpringly good.

The double-boiled abalone with young coconut and goji berries was the highlight of the meal. The kitchen cooked the abalone in a rich consommé inside a young coconut, using the coconut water for a three-hour double boil. The broth carried a concentrated coconut flavour, and the abalone had the texture expected from a dish at this level.

Braised wintermelon came with shrimp cakes and dried shrimp in a thick, flavourful sauce. It was a good supporting vegetable dish.

The deep-fried local Hong Kong three-yellow chicken was another highlight. The skin sat close to separating from the tender meat, and the fat had rendered clear of the flesh.

The Fukien fried rice was dry rather than sauce-heavy, with plenty of wok hei. Great execution.

A palate cleanser before the petit four, a cold brewed lychee tea.

Some butter cookies for the petit four…

… and concentrated jelly made from hibiskiss flowers.

Rùn gave us a good meal with three memorable dishes: the smoked foie gras, the young-coconut abalone and the fish-maw appetiser. The restaurant would not sit at the top of my list, but worth another visit.

Total Damage: 2900 HKD/2 people

Wing has become a global 50 Best darling, ranking 2nd on its list of Asia’s top restaurants, while the Michelin Guide still refuses to award it a star. That gap forms part of the story. Wing’s reputation rests on its service, personalisation, confidence in Chinese fine dining more than Michelin validation.

Wing opened in 2021 as Cheng’s second restaurant after VEA. VEA opened in 2016 and built its reputation around Cheng’s “Chinese x French” philosophy: French technique, Chinese ingredients, and tasting-menu structure. Wing reverses that emphasis. Here, Cheng works inside Chinese cuisine rather than using Chinese references to complicate French cuisine.

Wing grew out of an invite-only midnight-supper test kitchen at VEA. Cheng used those dinners to test whether his Chinese dining memories and French fine-dining training could produce a distinct restaurant below the successful one upstairs.

Its philosophy as “Chinese x French”, with each dish placing Chinese elements, heritage, and memories inside a French technique frame. Cheng’s approach is the evolution of Chinese cuisine, using quality ingredients and refined finesse to make dishes inventive while keeping them rooted in tradition. While VEA expresses Chinese memory through French fine dining, Wing handles Chinese cuisine with fine-dining precision.

Wing uses Chinese dishes, Chinese textures, and Chinese table logic, then sharpens them with modern fine-dining service. The kitchen draws from the eight great Chinese cuisines and the cooking is selective and chef-led.

Cheng wants guests to leave feeling that they have eaten a Chinese meal, with the warmth and precision associated with European fine dining. Wing keeps some shared-dish logic, then removes friction through portioning and guidance.

The restaurant works best as Cheng’s homecoming project. He uses fine-dining discipline to make Chinese dishes precise and luxurious without turning them into French food.

When we arrived, it was clear why reservations are nearly impossible to get. Apart from the private rooms, which come with hefty minimum charges, the public dining room has only four tables.

A decorative dragon display awaited us at the table.

Shots of wintermelon and honeydew tea as an aperitif.

Because reservations are so difficult to secure, we pre-ordered the premium tasting menu with nearly all the optional supplements. That may have been a mistake. There was an enormous amount of food even before the supplements, and it was all excellent.

Some of the largest cashews I have ever seen arrived at the table, dusted with Chinese five-spice powder to keep us company while we waited for the first course.

A display showed the exotic ingredients used in the meal: giant botan shrimp, a Macau sole, soft-shell turtle, sugar cane, Alaskan king crab, two kinds of sea cucumber, a crystal egg, which is a white version of the normally black century egg, razor clams, fresh sugar snap peas and dried tangerine peel.

The appetisers arrived together in an intricately arranged display.

Firstly, two botan shrimp, served “drunken” in a sweetened soy and Chiu chow sauce.

Thinly sliced razor clams came topped with kelp and pickled Yunnan chillies.

An interesting variation on a classic Sichuan appetiser: century egg and tofu in mala sauce. Instead of the usual black century egg, Wing preserved the egg’s translucent white. The tofu was deceptive as well. This dish usually uses soft silken tofu, but Wing took some inspiration from Okinawa and used jimami tofu made from peanuts, giving it a slight springiness and chewiness uncharacteristic of normal tofu.

There was another surprise. Once we had eaten the century egg and tofu, the staff brought out a mouthful of noodles to mix with the remaining mala sauce, leaving no sauce behind.

The final starter in the display was a tender quartered asparagus spear, lightly poached and served in a green Sichuan pepper sauce. It left the characteristic Sichuan numbness on the tongue.

Our drinks arrived at this point. I chose a semi-dry Riesling, while my companion ordered Champagne. I usually find Riesling quite sweet, but this one had excellent balance.

We could smell the first optional supplement before we saw it. Wing’s Hong Kong variation on deep-fried prawn toast adds a generous amount of stinky tofu. The toast came with a sweet hoisin sauce and a savoury Chiu Chow chilli paste. Once we got past the pungent aroma, the combination of sweetness, heat, and deep savoury flavour hit hard. Delicious!

Taking more inspiration from the Sichuan region, Wing’s version of the hot and sour soup added soft shell turtle, which was largely unnoticable, but also added fresh lemon zest microplaned on top of the soup, which was a really unique, and welcome addition.

Moving into the main courses, the steamed Macau sole was brought out for display before being portioned and blistered with hot oil. It was topped with coriander and several varieties of spring onion. The kitchen then blistered the fish with boiling oil cooked down with sweet soy sauce.

This was one of the highlights of the meal. The fish was perfectly cooked. Steamed fish can be difficult to judge, with a narrow line between undercooked and overcooked determined by the thickness of the fish. Wing got it exactly right. My only complaint was that I wanted more.

The Alaskan king crab was also brought out for display before being portioned. Two pieces of leg meat came with pan-fried crispy cheung fun in a crab-meat and innard sauce.

Moving into the reds, we had a fairly light-bodied red, but otherwise forgettable.

The next dish reminded me of the mala lobster spring roll at Duddell’s: an intensely crisp, airy, light spring-roll shell filled with rehydrated giant sea cucumber. This one was much better than the one at Duddell’s.

Absolutely delicious. The gelatinous texture of the sea cucumber contrasted with the crisp, light shell. This is one of Wing’s signature dishes and it’s pretty clear why. This was one of my highlights of the meal.

Before the pigeon, a shot of refreshing chrysanthemum tea cleansed the palate and cleared the heavy flavours and slick mouthfeel left by the sea cucumber.

I normally avoid baby pigeon, quail, and other small birds. The effort rarely seems worth the amount of meat. This dish changed my mind. Cooked in sugar-cane syrup and gently smoked, the pigeon had crisp skin, juicy meat, and perfect seasoning.

The second optional supplement was a braised whole sea cucumber in mapo tofu. It was an unusual combination. Sea cucumber has little flavour of its own and absorbs the flavours around it, so it is rarely cooked in a spicy broth. The pairing worked surprisingly well.

The spicy, gelatinous sea cucumber was served on its own. Another big hit and highlight.

The mapo tofu came with a spoonful of rice.

A small vegetable dish reset the palate: sweet snap peas cooked with dried bamboo shoots in thick pork lard. Springy, floral, flavourful, and surprisingly good.

The final main course took inspiration from Taiwan: a warm, thick beef soup with slow-cooked beef tendon, brisket, and raw slices of fatty Wagyu. It had a slick mouthfeel, intense richness, and the characteristic flavour of braised turnip, all served over flat rice noodles. A soupy noodle dish is an unconventional starch for the end of a Chinese banquet. Traditionally, the final starch is dry, while soup noodles are often served as a meal on their own. It was delicious nonetheless.

The mignardises arrived before dessert: rice mochi filled with walnut paste made from Hangzhou walnuts.

Small doughnuts filled with salted duck-egg custard.

Dessert was a traditional sweetened soup made from ground mung beans. Wing infused it with black truffle and topped it with slices of fresh black truffle. The take was unique, with an almost overwhelming truffle flavour. It worked well enough, but by then we were too full to eat much more.

To add insult to injury, the waiter arrived with one final surprise: a trolley of fresh fruit. Japanese peaches, baby apricots, lychees at the height of the season, watermelon, and pineapples - each sweeter than the last.

I can see why it’s nearly impossible to make a reservation to Wing. The four tables aside, this was probably the best meal I’ve had in Hong Kong this year, and tying with 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana for my favourite experiences in Hong Kong ever. The style of dining, using Chinese influences in Western-format dining reminds me of Tate Dining Room (RIP), but Wing’s execution stays closer to Chinese dining, using Chinese dishes, and not merely Chinese ingredients in the tasting menu format. This one is a must return, and I look forward to trying Vicky Cheng’s VEA as a comparison.

Total Damage: 10k HKD/2 people

Found myself briefly in Shanghai, where there were massive clusters of artisanal coffee shops. I found my cafe vienna, while my companions enjoyed the Shanghai take on a Vietnamese egg coffee.

One standout dish I had was the Beggar’s chicken, a slow cooked chicken wrapped in parchment paper and left to cook in its own juices.

A really extremely interesting take on pigeon - crisped up skin, juicy meat gently smoked on tea leaves. One of the better pigeon dishes I’ve had recently.

A Shanghainese specialty - raw drunken crabs. Yeah. I still don’t get this one. Wasn’t a fan.

The room has had a full reset. Sevva’s dark interiors have given way to an ornate French Riviera look, with sweeping curves, a raw bar, but keeping the large terrace looking over the harbour and Central. Malherbe Paris has leaned into brasserie and luxury-train references. The view remains the main event.

I have been staying dry lately, so I started with sparkling tea from Tea Saicho.

Warm sourdough with walnuts and sunflower seeds arrived with salted French butter. A good start.

For starters, we ordered the Mediterranean octopus and cuttlefish with grilled artichokes, romesco and crisp ham. Both were cooked properly and the portion sizing was generous. The trio of crudos followed on a scallop shell: red shrimp with cherry tomatoes and miniature mozzarella, scallop with shiso and watermelon, and yellowtail with pickled cucumber. Fresh, clean and refreshing!

For mains, I had the Poulet Basquiaise, a slow-braised basque stew with chicken tomatoes onions and basil. For a local touch, they featured Hong Kong’s famous three yellow chicken. Chicken breast has a habit of drying out, but slowly braised, then managed to keep it moist and juicy.

My companion ordered the Saint-Jacques with saffron risotto. That was the best dish of the meal: very fresh scallops and a rich, well-seasoned risotto.

Charred Brussels sprouts with Parmesan was a great side. Worth ordering.

For dessert, the fraise rose paired a traditional blancmange with rose ice cream, strawberry sorbet and lychee granita.

Petit fours arrived after: jellies, chocolates and warm madeleines straight from the oven.

The meal was good. Nothing went wrong, nothing was amazing. It was just very “blah”. There wasn’t really a lot to say. Nothing made me want to return for another meal. Terrace Boulud has improved the food offering in the old Sevva space, but the formula has not changed much. Go for drinks on the terrace on a warm day and enjoy the view. The kitchen is a supporting act.

Total Damage: 1850 HKD / 2 people

It opened in late 2021 under Chef Miguel Gallo, initially as a more formal tasting-menu restaurant built around smoke, hot and cold dishes, and the grill. Jaime Ortola took over in 2022 after La Paloma and moved it towards a la carte, lunch sets, brunch and steak. That feels like the current restaurant: good produce, serious beef buying, and enough fire to keep the room from becoming another dark, polished steakhouse.

The cooking relies on wood, binchotan, a Mibrasa grill and a brick oven. Fireside still leans hard on the open-fire language, but the kitchen handles the smoke with some restraint.

We arrived at the fifth floor restaurant and were greeted by a flaming centerpiece highlighting the live-fire nature of the cooking.

Passing the aging room with the steaks cut out for the night on display.

Additional primals in various stages of dry aging were sitting in the meat lockers behind the display counter.

We went with a larger group and booked the Tuesday steak tasting: five steaks from different countries, served for groups of four or more. They brought out the cuts before cooking. On the left was a wet-aged Uruguay Patagonia Angus striploin; on the right, four dry-aged ribeyes: John Stone Irish Hereford, Italian Marango, Danish Jersey dairy cow and nine-year-old Spanish Rubia Gallega.

For five people, each steak looked closer to 600 to 800 grams than a tasting portion. There was no shortage of beef.

The grill was already going by the time the whole table had arrived. Looking at the amount of steak lined up, and the lack of anything else, we ordered a few starters while we waited.

The warm sourdough came with whipped smoked butter.

The blue belly shrimp crudo came with the heads fried crisp and an escabeche sauce.

The burnt crab roll: charcoal brioche, crab, and a generous layer of uni. It gave the meal some lift before the steak parade started.

When the first two steaks arrived, the restaurant asked us to choose our weapons. We soon asked for sauces, horseradish, anything to help cut through the incoming volume of meat. The chef refused. His view was that the steaks needed to be tasted with salt alone, then he relented enough to send a small extra dish of salt.

I understand the argument. The tasting exists to compare the beef. Still, after several large cuts, salt is not much of a strategy.

The first pair was the Uruguay Angus striploin and the Irish Hereford ribeye, served with blistered padrón peppers under an unidentifable cheesy sauce. The striploin was leaner and cleaner. The Hereford had more marbling and a deeper beef flavour. Both landed at a proper medium rare: a thick striploin and a thinner ribeye, perfectly executed.

The first two steaks were served with some blistered padron peppers topped with a unidentifable cheesy sauce.

Then came the Italian Marango and the Jersey dairy cow, both ribeyes, with a small head of charred butter lettuce and ponzu mayo. The Marango was my favourite of the five. It was extraordinarily fatty, almost too much so, but the richness carried real depth rather than just grease. The Jersey was also excellent, with the lactic sweetness you expect from dairy cow.

The Rubia Gallega came last. At nine years old, it was less tender and less fatty than the earlier ribeyes, but had a concentrated, savoury beef flavour.

Fireside served it with smashed potatoes, aioli and herbs. By then, the potatoes felt less like a side and more like a rescue operation.

Dessert was lemon sorbet over dried coconut flakes. Clean and useful after that much fat.

Fireside sources its meat well. Its beef list runs from Australian Wagyu and Korean Hanwoo to Italian Carima Frisian cow, Irish Hereford, Spanish Rubia Gallega and El Capricho, German Simmental dairy cow and Portuguese Minhota ox. The steak tasting gave us a real sense of the differences between the cuts: texture, fat, flavour and ageing all came through. The kitchen cooked every one of them perfectly.

But the format is hard to love. The meal became mouthful after mouthful of beef and salt. There were two small vegetable and potato accompaniments, but they did not balance the scale of the steak. I would take two-thirds of the beef, more sides, and a few sauces without hesitation. It would make for a more relaxed dinner and a better conversation.

The tasting prioritises a sourcing exercise over a good night out. Fireside can buy serious meat, explain where it came from, and cook it well over fire. Five people can enjoy a steak comparison without treating it like an endurance event. It’s a shame, because the sides were absolutely excellent. I would’ve just preferred a lot more of them.

For a normal dinner, I would go a la carte. Order one or two cuts to share, keep the crab roll and shrimp crudo, add vegetables and potatoes, and let the grill do its job. Fireside has more personality than the usual Central steakhouse and the cooking is better than the whole live-fire performance suggests. Just do not book the tasting unless you want an awful lot of beef.

Total Damage 8200 HKD/5 people

The restaurant opened in 1984 as Lai Ching Heen, became Yan Toh Heen during the InterContinental Hong Kong years, before returning to the Lai Ching Heen name when the hotel reverted to Regent. This is not a new restaurant trying to borrow history from an old one. It is the same Cantonese institution moving through different hotel-brand eras.

The continuity runs through Executive Chef Lau Yiu Fai, who joined the hotel in 1980 and was part of the original opening team. He came up through old Hong Kong Cantonese kitchens, including Tai Sam Yuen and Fook Lam Moon, before moving through Vancouver, Tin Shan Palace, and then the Regent / InterContinental room.

Head Chef Cheng Man Sang is the other half of the story. He has worked alongside Lau for decades, and current coverage frames the restaurant as a Lau-Cheng partnership rather than a one-man room. This is cooking built around consistency, temperature control, seafood handling, dim sum, roasting, banquet-grade polish, and service choreography.

The grammar is luxury Cantonese: crab, lobster, scallop, abalone, Hokkaido seafood, Kagoshima wagyu, suckling pig, Peking duck, premium tea, house XO, caviar touches, and black truffle where useful. It’s less about reinvention than the kitchen keeping a difficult form of hotel Cantonese cooking intact through ownership changes, room redesigns, and dining-fashion cycles.

You enter through a long jade hallway. Jade is the recurring motif, and the restaurant leans into it hard.

The hallway eventually opens into a dark dining room facing the Hong Kong skyline. A slightly theatrical atmosphere: controlled lighting, polished service, harbour view, quiet money.

We went with the Prestigious tasting menu, which is effectively a greatest-hits menu built around signatures developed over the past 40 years.

The amuse was a small vegetarian dish of wheat gluten, Chinese mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, lightly marinated. Fine, but mostly a palate-setter.

The appetiser had two pieces of crunchy jellyfish, pickled in a slightly sweet and sour liquid with a little heat from pickled peppers. Beside it was a meaty scallop in a slightly soggy shell, topped with caviar. The jellyfish was the better half of the plate.

Then came the golden stuffed crab shell, similar in idea to the version at T’ang Court. Lai Ching Heen stuffs the shell with local red and green crab meat, cooks it down in a rich onion and milk sauce, then serves it gratin-style. It is old-fashioned, rich, and a classic banquet dish.

The main event was Buddha Jumps Over the Wall. This was by far the best dish of the meal. The soup came as a deep chicken consomme packed with classical luxury Chinese ingredients: fish maw, abalone, sea cucumber, dried clams, black chicken, mushrooms, and bird’s nest. The bird’s nest gave it that gelatinous, slippery texture without making the soup heavy or muddy.

The dish is a classic Fuzhou banquet dish from Fujian cuisine. It’s less as normal soup and more a luxury braised casserole served in broth, all slow-cooked until the broth absorbs the flavour of land and sea.

The best-known lineage of this dish ties it to Juchunyuan, a historic Fuzhou restaurant founded in 1865, and chef Zheng Chunfa. The Juchunyuan version is now national-level intangible cultural heritage, prepared with more than thirty ingredients and seasonings, layered into a Shaoxing wine jar and slow-cooked over low heat.

The name itself comes from another Chinese food legend: the aroma was so strong that even Buddhist monks, bound by vegetarian discipline, would jump over the monastery wall to eat it.

It was intensely savoury, deeply aromatic, and extremely filling. The dish had the density and confidence that the rest of the menu did not always reach. This was the reason to be there.

The meal continued with wok-fried lobster, vegetables, and a minced cuttlefish patty wrapped around a Hiroshima oyster. The lobster had good wok hei and was a clear hit, although the portion was a bit small. The cuttlefish patty had the right springy texture and the oyster gave it a bit of interest, but it did not leave much of a mark.

For the main, Kagoshima wagyu came three ways. The cheek was braised until fall-apart tender in a marsala sauce with turnip, radish, and spring onion. The tongue came as thin slices, deep-fried in a salt-and-pepper batter. The third part was crispy egg noodles topped with a thick sauce of bean sprouts, spring onion, carrot, and minced wagyu.

All three are familiar Chinese restaurant forms. Nothing here was especially surprising, but the execution was solid. The cheek was the best of the three. The tongue was pleasant enough.

Dessert moved outside the usual Cantonese register: avocado cream and honeydew melon popsicle with fresh passion fruit sauce and strawberry jelly. This did not work for me. The avocado felt forced, and the whole plate seemed more interested in being unexpected than being delicious.

The petit fours returned to safer ground: sesame roll, steamed white sugar cake, and a delicate pineapple jelly shaped like a goldfish. Much better. Small, traditional, and well judged.

The Buddha Jumps Over the Wall anchored the meal. Without that dish, this would have felt like a polished but fairly standard luxury Cantonese banquet menu, the kind of thing you could imagine being served in a thousand high-end banquet halls across Hong Kong.

The kitchen is serious, the room has history, and the service is exactly what you expect from a Regent-level Cantonese institution. But on this menu, only the soup felt essential. The crab shell was good, the lobster was well cooked, and the wagyu was competent, but none of them would bring me back by themselves.

We also missed some of the restaurant’s other major signatures because they require pre-ordering and are better suited to a larger group, especially the suckling pig and Peking duck. That may be the better way to do Lai Ching Heen: come with more people, pre-order properly, and treat it like the grand Cantonese banquet hall it is.

Total damage: 4500 HKD/2 people.

The room fits the concept. The Baker & The Bottleman sits in the more polished, gentrified part of Wan Chai, surrounded by new restaurants and high-rise apartments.

MARROW takes over the upstairs space. It is dimly lit, intimate, and small, with a few tables around a bar-height centrepiece. More neighbourhood grill than luxury steakhouse.

Chef Chris Ma is the reason the pop-up is more interesting than another expensive meat concept. His background runs through serious kitchens: Cepage, Amber, NUR, Fish School, and TATE Dining Room. Fish School is probably the most useful reference point, since that restaurant was built around local fish, Hong Kong flavours, and daily sourcing. MARROW swaps seafood-first cooking for fire, meat, and odd cuts, but it keeps the same instinct.

The menu backs that up. The flavour language is very Hong Kong and regional: typhoon shelter crumbs, Sichuan seasoning, salted egg, Shaoxing wine, salted plum, fermented soy bean, and Taiwanese Magao pepper.

The Sichuan steak tartare was the strongest starter. It took a classic steak tartare and added a clean mala edge without turning the dish into a gimmick. Instead of toast, they served it with puffed beef tendon. Good execution, and very similar in spirit to the bone and flesh dish I remember from 1887.

The namesake dish was less successful. The Typhoon Shelter roasted bone marrow came as two pieces of bone marrow topped with fried garlic and spices. It should have been the dish that explained the whole restaurant: a Western grill-room object treated with a Hong Kong seafood-stall flavour profile. In practice, the fried garlic mix overpowered the marrow. Not a disaster, but disappointing given that this is the dish the restaurant is named after.

The blue crab rigatoni was cooked properly. The pasta was right, the sauce worked, and the crab was generous enough. The only miss was temperature. The picked crab felt like it had come straight from the fridge. Warming it first would have made a big difference.

Overall, pretty good for a brand-new pop-up. I was disappointed by the bone marrow, especially because it should be the signature dish, but the tartare, rigatoni, and chuck eye made up for it. Worth returning.

Total damage: HKD 1,350/2 people

Found myself drinking at a German bierhall and ordered myself a Bavarian pretzel. Auntie Anne’s this was not. Massive honking pretzel, served with a curry horseradish and aioli. Not as sweet, or salty as the American pretzel I’ve had so much. More just like… bread.

A fairly decent beef tartare at Rowley’s. Really heavy on the capers and gherkins.

Chef-owner Eric Räty is the centre of the restaurant. His background runs through Helsinki, Chez Dominique, Aqua in Wolfsburg, and Gray Kunz’s Cafe Gray Deluxe in Hong Kong. That lineage explains the cooking better than the easy label of Nordic-Japanese. Arbor does not feel like rustic Nordic food, and it does not feel like Japanese fine dining either. It is a Hong Kong tasting menu that borrows Nordic acidity, dairy, herbs, berries, smoke, and restraint, then runs those ideas through Japanese seafood, seaweed, caviar, wagyu, noodles, dashi, and fermentation.

The room supports that idea. Arbor means “tree” in Latin, and the restaurant leans into a calm forest mood: wood, soft lighting, muted luxury, no unnecessary chaos. The service is equally engineered. Wine director Sebastien Allano brings serious pedigree from La Tour d’Argent, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Four Seasons George V, Daniel, Le Bernardin, and Four Seasons Hong Kong. Head of operations Timothy Chan adds a Caprice and hotel-service spine. This is not a casual chef-led room pretending to be relaxed. It is a fully composed fine-dining machine.

We decided to go with the full nine-course tasting menu.

Dinner started with the new potato dish: potato and egg salad shaped like a piece of salmon nigiri, topped with a slice of salmon. It had a kick of horseradish, enough to cut through the richness without bullying the dish. It was one of the better openings of the meal because the idea was simple and the execution landed really well.

Next came a shot of rich, thick fish soup with dill. It was creamy and comforting, with the dill keeping it from becoming too heavy. Arbor’s Nordic side showed clearly here: dairy, fish, herbs, warmth, and a certain cool-weather logic, even in the middle of Hong Kong.

The somen dish moved the meal back towards Japan. Sweet tomato, slimy seaweed, abalone, and somen noodles made for a slippery, marine bowl. It was more about texture than punch. The abalone gave it weight, while the tomato brought sweetness and lift.

The eel pancake was one of the more interesting constructions. It came across a little like a summer roll: grilled eel, cured cucumber, herbs, and crisp fried herb leaves on top. The herbs and cucumber helped keep the eel from feeling too oily.

The bread course was a piping hot sourdough loaf with Japanese brown cheese and natto butter. This was an umami bomb. The butter had depth, funk, and savoury pull. We ended up finishing the entire loaf.

The scallop and caviar was the highlight of the night. The scallops were barely cooked, sweet, and tender, topped with caviar and served with crunchy fresh peas in a yoghurt and dill oil sauce. It had the balance Arbor is clearly chasing: luxury without heaviness, acidity without sharpness, and enough texture to stop the dish becoming soft luxury mush.

The Norwegian langoustine came on an egg mochi cake, topped with spicy pollock roe in a kimchi and langoustine-shell sauce. It was richer and louder than most of the meal. The mochi base gave it chew, the roe brought heat and salt, and the shell sauce gave it depth. It was a good dish, though not as clean as the scallop.

Before the mains, Arbor served a warm truffle dashi as a palate cleanser, with an assortment of mushrooms and sweet radish. “Palate cleanser” slightly undersells it. This was a heavily truffled broth course, closer to a small savoury interlude. The mushrooms and radish worked, and the warmth helped reset the meal before the main.

For the main course, I chose the Murray cod in mushroom sauce with yellow wine foam. It came with a fish and egg-white mousse, a juicy matsutake mushroom, and a rice crisp. The cod was well handled, but the mushroom was the real standout of the dish: plump, fragrant, and much more memorable than the fish. That says something about both the strength and weakness of the plate.

My companion chose the pigeon, which was the right call. It was juicy, properly seasoned, and served with peppercorns and a loose sausage of innards. The dish had more character than the cod. It also felt more like Arbor at its best: refined, but not timid.

The signature dessert was genmaicha and caviar: a crisp matcha shell filled with genmaicha ice cream and chewy Japanese mochi, with caviar adding salt. It sounds like a stunt, but it worked. The tea flavour, mochi texture, and salt from the caviar made it more interesting than a standard sweet finish.

The second dessert was peach and rhubarb, with a slice of peach set inside a yoghurt base, plus peach sorbet under crisp meringue. It was lighter, cleaner, and more conventionally pleasing than the genmaicha and caviar. The acidity from the rhubarb helped.

Then came aptly-named chocolate: a chocolate panna cotta topped with passionfruit and a homemade marshmallow. It was pleasant rather than revelatory, with the passionfruit doing the necessary work of cutting the chocolate.

The petit four was a freshly baked madeleine with lemon zest and Chantilly cream. A warm madeleine is hard to argue with, and this one did its job well. It ended the meal on a polished, familiar note.

Overall, Arbor is a neat concept, and the execution is clearly serious. The new potato and the scallop with caviar were the standouts. The pigeon was the better main. But the meal as a whole felt a little underwhelming. Nothing was badly done, and several dishes were very good, but not much stayed with me afterwards.

That is the caveat with Arbor. The restaurant has pedigree, technique, and a coherent point of view. It also has a tendency towards restraint that can make the meal feel more admirable than exciting. I liked parts of it. I would not rush back.

Total Damage: 4700 HKD/2 people