Mott 32, Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong

We've been wanting to visit Mott 32 (Basement, Standard Chartered Bank Building, 4-4A Des Voeux Road Central, tel : +852 2885 8688) for a while now. 

While I've read a number of good things about them, I was still a little apprehensive considering that they're pretty pricey and increased cost at a certain point brings only diminished returns. Even though I had been ready to fork a bit more for this experience, I didn't realize that it would cost almost as it did at Lung King Heen.

We got ourselves some aged Pu'er.

And also snagged one of the last orders of their signature Pluma Iberica char siew with yellow mountain honey. Apparently available in limited portions daily. It's nice. The meat was latticed with fat and each slice was on the verge of falling apart when we picked them up with our chopsticks. It's also pretty expensive. Considering how much they charged for each serving, the impression correspondingly diminished because I had been expecting to be blown away for that kind of price tag.

Dim sum on the whole was competently made but was also oddly muted in flavour. These king prawn har gow were decent, but they were just that. A little more salt or flavouring (say lard?) would have helped.

These black truffle siew mai with quail eggs were pretty good. Those eggs in the dumpling even had molten yolk. But if I hadn't read the menu, I wouldn't have realized that it's Iberico pork that they used. There you go.

That's the lobster har gow. With Yunnan ham according to the menu. And in spite of that it was so bland I could taste the rice flavour on the skin. Texture was good though. The capsules stuck in the dumpling were supposed to contain lobster oil. Didn't seem to help much. Rather disappointing this one.

Mott 32's pan fried turnip cakes were described to contain dried scallop, shrimp and Dong Guan sausages. It tasted as good as many cheaper ones that can easily be found elsewhere.

Got the crab roe noodles from their autumn/winter menu. Didn't turned out to be the type of noodles I had imagined. This was way too greasy with too much other flavours going on that the crab roe pretty much went out the window. I thought that this was poorly thought out not worth even half of what they had charged.

Then came the dish with a flourish.

We were recommended their signature smoked black cod because it was their #2 bestseller. Glad we took their recommendation. This was so good. The crispy skinned chunks of cod both smelt and tasted smokey - pairing up very well with the sweet and sour sauce that coated the fish.

If there were anything I could consider a new experience in taste, it would be their soy sauce ice cream. This was very good. Creamy, salty with the aroma of light soy sauce and sweetness from those cookie crumble things they served the ice cream with.

Trailing closely behind was their steam ginger ice cream which was also well done. This reminded me of a frozen ginger milk.