Artsy nibbles

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Many of my friends know that I am loathe to try out any new restaurants, simply because most (if not all) restaurants never have everything down pat when they open.  I also generally do not accept invitations from restaurant PRs for those "media/blogger" meals, because of the reason I just mentioned, and also because I'm pretty picky about where I wanna eat.  Yes, you're inviting me for a free meal, but if I don't think the food is any good... there's no point in taking in calories from crappy food - especially when I'm supposed to be cutting down intake.  OK, so I'm a food snob.  I didn't get the moniker of Arrogant Prick for nothing, ya know...

Having said all that, I ended up dining at the invitation of a club today.  Duddell's, to be exact.  This place opened up with some fanfare a while ago, and apparently was quite the place to be during Art Basel Hong Kong.  A fellow foodie friend had been asked to invite a few people to try the place at lunch, and since Paulo's a friend I asked him if he thought their food was good enough at this stage.  When he replied in the positive, I figured it would be safe to give it a try.

We ended up being seated indoors on the upper level, as the rain had just suddenly come down while I was en route to lunch, killing the original plans to seat us on the outdoor terrace.  While the seating was comfortable, there was a distinct deficiency in terms of lighting.  It probably didn't bothered anyone else, though...

The menu was all pre-arranged so we just sat back and waited for the food to arrive... although it did take some time for the first nibbles to appear in front of us...

We were presented with what must have been the 5-piece dim sum combination.  Today we had:

Steamed chicken and pork bun with coriander (香茜雞鮑仔) - the Restaurant Manager introduced this as steamed barbecued pork bun (叉燒包), so I kinda did a double-take when I split the bun open with my hands and saw the filling.  Well, taste-wise this was decent, but clearly the front-of-house wasn't talking to the back-of-house... or didn't know his menu well enough.

Steamed lobster dumpling with shrimp and scallop (龍皇帶子餃) - we were told that this was a "scallop dumpling", but what I was chewing on didn't have the texture of scallop... and it wasn't plain old shrimp, either... so could it have been the dumpling with lobster, shrimp and scallop?  Wasn't expecting to be blind-tasting "mystery dumpling" today!  Perhaps just a tad over-steamed?  Otherwise filling tasted pretty good.

Steamed yam dumpling with chive and peanut (潮式蒸粉果) - if I recall correctly, we were told that this was a "shrimp dumpling (蝦餃)"...  Well, I think we would know what a Chiuchow-style steamed dumpling tastes like... the chives and peanuts inside are dead giveaways... although I was surprised at the amount of crunchy cubes of veggies inside - bamboo shoots, I think...

The spring roll (春卷) was decent, although I'm not sure if this was the spring rolls with shrimp and cheese (芝士蝦春卷) listed on the menu.  I hope not, because I certainly didn't taste any cheese flavor from this...

Baked glutinous cake with diced chicken and chive (韭菜雞粒烤軟餅) - pretty tasty.

Done with dim sum, we moved on to a couple of simple dishes...

Barbecued pork with honey (蜜汁燒叉燒) - nice red food coloring here...  My first piece was the one in the picture, at the end of the plate.  It was ever so slightly on the dry side, although still reasonably tender.  My next piece came from the middle of the plate, with a nice chunk of caramelized fat.  Yumminess.  Good balance in terms of flavors, textures...

Stir-fried kale (炒芥蘭) - these are young and crunchy, but I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't like the taste.  For me the best kale has a sweet aftertaste along with the slight bitterness, but this was just a bitter without the sweetness...

Fried noodles with shredded squid (龍鬚豉油皇炒麵) - we were told this was fried noodles with shredded chicken...  Loved the dried and fragrant squid tentacles.  The noodles themselves could have used a tad more soy sauce, and it was clear they weren't stir-fried at high heat as they lacked that fragrance the Cantonese call wok hei (鑊氣).  I definitely shouldn't stuffed myself with these noodles...

We were pretty stuffed so we turned down dessert.

Overall I thought the food we had was decent, although I was rather hoping for a little bit more considering the pedigree of the chef.  But I think the front of house definitely needs improvement... we were told the wrong dish name 3 or 4 times!

Many thanks to Duddell's for their kind invitation.