Tasting Court was not only our penultimate dinner in Hong Kong but our penultimate dinner of a two year trip in Asia. Expectations were high, especially after reading about it on here. On the whole it lived up to them. We picked the menu before going there and it was menu B, below.
Wild Clam Scalded with Sake.
Lovely sweet clams, the sake gave a nice edge but not overdone.
Dried Sliced Beef marinated with house-made soy bean sauce.
This dish was made by the rich home made soy sauce.
Slow cooked Chicken soup with fish Maw & Conch.
Perfectly cooked seafood in a beautifully light but flavoursome soup.
Steamed fresh flowery crab with aged SHAOXING Wine served with rice noodle.
Lovely sweet crab with soft noodles. The sauce was outstanding, very rich, deep and sweet.
Baby pigeon smoked with osmanthus & Longjing tea.
The pigeon was perfectly cooked, crisp skin but still moist. The smoke was very subtle and gave a lovely fragrance and didn’t overpower the pigeon. Nice to see they left the head on.
So far everything had been very very good. The issue with a tasting menu is that you will always like some dishes more than others but the subsequent dishes of Stir fried Kale with ginger essence and Prawn roe stirred noodle with prawn & shallot essence oil seemed a little pedestrian following what had come before. There was nothing wrong with them and you do need balance in a tasting menu but I feel it would have been better if they had been in between the other dishes. It’s like a band playing all their hits at the start of a gig.
Service was friendly and we had a nice bottle of Chablis with the meal. All in all a very good meal.
