1935食府

Proper chinese buffet Dinner with my partner's close family....all in 10 up. Great food and drink and a good evening was had by all.

My family and I went out to see Christmas ornaments and decorations in Central. After that, we would like to try Chinese food and, at the end, we found this restaurant in which it served a variegated selection of Shanghai and Sichuan cuisines. Frankly speaking, we did not have much understanding towards Shanghai and Sichuan cuisines. The only thing that we knew was that these cuisines have had inclination towards exceedingly spicy food. This meal, however, changed our perception of Shanghai and Sichuan cuisines. We ordered "Chilled Free Range Chicken, Truffle, Coriander", "Chilled "Thousand Years" Duck Egg Tofu, Sichuan Pepper Sauce" and "Thinly Sliced Pork Belly, Bean Jelly, Sichuan Chili Sauce" as starters. Perhaps you could realise that everything was cold and comparatively less pungent. All these, of course, could not be very spicy, otherwise we could not taste the entrees. Thus, the chef here used vinegar and little chilli to make the starters, and kept those in the fridge, for the sake of making the food more appetising. Next, we ordered "Stir Fried Pork, Aged Vinegar", "Truffle, Conpoy, Egg White, Fried Rice" and "Stir Fried Potato Noodle, Dried Shrimp, Minced Pork". If you asked me, I would say that truffles should not be applied to the Chinese fried rice. The reason is that it usually comes with many toppings, such as egg, conpoy, sliced whelk, pork and the like. As is well known, these are mostly salty, and naturally the flavour will become more complicated if adding the truffles in the fried rice. In this case, we did smell the fried rice with truffles, but we could not taste it. As for the other two main dishes, these were undoubtedly scrumptious, but not authentic. We, nevertheless, could not blame this to the chef, since he just wanted to bring the Shanghai and Sichuan cuisines to Hong Kongers. Unfortunately, most southerners cannot eat too spicy, and therefore he customized the flavour for us. "Hua Diao Salted Plum Ice-Cream" and "Sichuan Glutinous Cake, Black Sugar" were also ordered to create a perfect ending for our meal. The ice-cream was definitely fantabulous; the sweet and salty tastes were coincidentally matched to each other. If they sell the ice-cream to the patrons, I would bulk-buy it to my home for sure. By the way, the Black Sugar Sichuan Glutinous Cake was quite disappointing or, we had to say, it was tasteless. We completely understood that the black sugar sauce and the glutinous cake were separately served, since some people might not eat too sweet. But, as you can imagine, if the glutinous cake is not soaked in the black sugar sauce enough, it is just a piece of deep-fried flour dough. What we thought was that if the patrons order the Black Sugar Glutinous Cake, they should have the expectation towards its level of sweetness.  The overall service of this restaurant was fair. Apparently, it lacked manpower. When we stepped into the restaurant, the hostess was on the phone to take a booking. She nodded her head to acknowledge us with an apology. But, one minute later, she was still on the phone. Finally, one of the servers approached us and offered us assistance. Besides, when we would like to take an order, we raised our hand to draw their attention for a long time. At the end, we realised that there were merely two servers to take an order, deliver the dishes to the table, tidy up the table, and settle the bill for the patrons. Their workload was a bit shocking, indeed.