The Hakkasan Experience

Continuing with my conquest of the world's best restaurants, I followed up Nobu with Hakkasan. At number 19 on the 2007 roll of honour, it is the only Chinese restaurant on the list. And a one Michelin star restaurant as well....

So... how did Hakkasan fare compared to Nobu (which according to the 2007 list is just slightly above Hakkasan at number 17)?

Here are the dishes that I had:

Sesame prawn toast (it's an ang-moh Chinese dish! Somehow, you can only find this in Chinese restaurants in the West!) and Fried soft-shell crab with red chilli and curry leaf (now... this is yummy... I have always been a great fan of soft-shell crab... definitely thumbs up for this dish!)

Jasmine tea smoked organic pork ribs and Grilled Chilean sea bass in Chinese honey (both of these dishes are the chef's speciality... Chef Tong Chee Hwee from... Singapore! The fish was especially good and had a unique taste, in a very good way)

Stir-fry black pepper beef (although this is a simple dish, I actually thought it was pretty good... simply because my beef dishes are always not very good and I seem to have difficulties in getting the beef tenderness right!) and Pipa duck (the duck was good, although I must admit that I have tasted better ones)

King scallop in Yakiniku sauce (okay, although this dish was not bad... it certainly didn't taste like scallops to me... I think it's because rather than using whole scallops, it was scallop meat made into patties and then fried) and seasonal Chinese vegetables (nothing much to comment about for this one as it was just a stir fried pak choy)

Dessert was a different story... here is what I don't understand about all these posh restaurants... why can't they have desserts of the of the same type of cuisine... i.e. Chinese desserts? Just like Nobu, they served us Western desserts... Are you telling me that we do not have any good Asian desserts?? I beg to differ... e.g. a small bowl of bird's nest soup here would complement the meal perfectly!

Anyway... on a whole, I think that the food was enjoyable although I didn't think it was value for money... considering the price that we were paying, you could get much more from traditional Chinese restaurants... in fact, you could even get delicacies such as abalone, shark's fin or bird's nest!

And oh... I think they are really snobbish... my dining experience was marred by the fact that they impose 1001 rules on us e.g. we were only allowed to have the table for 2 hours, we were not allowed to take any pictures (hence the bad quality of the photos as I had to take them using my mobile phone sneakily!), we had to pre-order from the set menu rather than ordering a-la-carte, there is a dress code etc. Hey... I am paying exorbitant prices here... do I not at least deserve good service? For one thing... the service at Nobu was a lot better!