I had been trying for many weeks to get a reservation at this new-ish restaurant located in Chinatown just around the corner from R&G Lounge and staffed by some former chefs from Mister Jiu’s. The restaurant only take reservations a few weeks in advance and every time I checked for reservations, there were only available for 9:30PM or later. You can show up and wait in line for walk-in, but we generally don’t do that since we prefer the certainty of a reservation.. Since I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and reservations open up at midnight, I did manage to eventually book this reservation for a more reasonable (for us old folk) 6:15PM slot for counter seating.
They do warn you that counter seating is quite close seating, but it didn’t turn out to be that bad. You don’t really get a view of the kitchen due to the height of the counter wall in front of you and the counter makes dining a little cramped, so table seating is preferable for comfort, but there is a certain charm to sitting at the counter. There is Cantonese pop music playing and the dining room and even the bathroom are decorated with images of Cantonese pop stars. With all this going on and us huddled at our counter seats with some delicious food, we felt like we had been transported to some little restaurant in Hong Kong.
For the free bites, you get some salted and seasoned roasted peanuts and some smashed cucumbers. The flavoring for the cucumbers was especially good.
They recommended ordering 5 or 6 dishes for 2 people, so of course we ordered 7 dishes, lol. We went with the Mouthwatering Tomato from the Specials, the Chili Crisp Pig Head, the XO Escargot with Milkbread, the Lamb Skewer, the XO Chinese Cauliflower, the Hokkien Style Fried Rice, and the Four Kings Lobster Supreme from the Specials.
Most of the dishes were excellent. The XO Escargot with Milkbread was my favorite escargot dish I’ve ever had. Most escargot we’ve ever had is typically served with in garlic butter, but with XO sauce (practically a cheat code) and with the milkbread to soak up some some of the buttery sauce was sooo good. The lamb skewer was also a favorite of ours with a bit of heat in the lamb and in the sauce. The Hokkien fried rice was similarly decadant…I’m not normally that much into fried rice, but this was loaded with wok fried scallops, egg, meat, all in a flavorful sauce/gravy. The Mouthwatering Tomato was also refreshing and flavorful.
One miss would be the Chili Crisp Pigs Head. I picked this because, well, pigs head and also chili crisp. It was more a novelty than anything and I can honestly say it’s the best (and only…) pigs head I’ve had all year, but we wouldn’t order it again.
The Four Kings Lobster Supreme (how could we not order something with a name like that) was good, but not great. Plenty of lobster and shrimp and some veg with lighter sauce (but all less flavorful than most of the other dishes we had) on a bed of crisp noodles. It wasn’t bad at all (and would have been better consumed by a party of 4), but it was pricey and we wouldn’t order it again with so many other options on the menu (we had debated between that and the squab, which is one of their signature dishes…next time).
There were 3 options for dessert (yes, we actually still kept eating even after all that) and we went with the mango pudding in the shape of a koi (hey, how could we resist), melon sorbet, melon and some almond milk. I didn’t care so much for the gelatinous texture of the mango pudding, but the melon sorbet and bits of melon (honeydew, cantaloupe) and the additional sweetness from the almond milk and topped with some candied(?) nut crumble, made for a delicious bites.
All in all, we had a great time and we’ll be back in 2 weeks (I have another reservation…this time at a table) to try a bunch of other dishes that we didn’t get to try this time around!
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