There were a couple of reasons for visiting Lung King Heen (Podium 4, Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, 8 Finance Street, tel : +852 3196 8880). They're the first Cantonese restaurant in the world to receive 3 Michelin Stars. They are as of this year, still the only Cantonese/Chinese restaurant to do so. Bo Innovation does not count. I wanted the experience or a close semblance to the actual experience. That and a couple of people I know have recommended me to give it a go so, here I was.
I get it that this was dim sum and isn't an accurate reflection of how an experience could have been like for say, dinner. Still.
That's the steamed shrimp and crab meat dumpling with egg white. Not bad, I could identify that it was crustacean meat even though I couldn't tell it was crab or shrimp or even that it had egg.
If there was any point of equilibrium where one could consider as balanced in terms of flavours for siew mai, I suppose these here would qualify. Honestly, we liked them.
I've generally never been a fan of abalone but these whole mini abalone tarts seemed to the one of the pastries that LKH is known for. I guess they weren't too bad. The pastry was especially buttery.
And those are baked bbq pork buns with pine nuts.
Not bad too, but they could have omitted the pine nuts and I wouldn't have known. I thought that the only thing we could taste apart from the char siew were bits of onions?
That's the Lung King Heen Appetizer Combination. That's from left to right; roast goose, suckling pig and barbeque pork with honey. There was a four appetizer combination platter, but the last item was jellyfish so I decided it wasn't worth the money. That barbeque pork was tender, fat laced and the meat grains fell apart easily in the mouth. The favourite of the platter. The rest was unfortunately, quite mundane.
The other item I was recommended was their lobster fried rice with seafood. It's quite nice, very competently fried and what would be impressive for most was that there were actually chunks of lobster that you could identify by taste. Each grain was well coated and there was a medley of textures from the rice the greens and the seafood. Nice, but rather pricey. I wouldn't have minded eating this again if not for the fact that I actually needed to plan for some months in advance to get a table here.
That's a dessert of bird's nest with double boiled egg white custard. A signature dessert of Lung King Heen. Again, all I could say was nice. But I've had better done bird's nest than most of the rest of the world, so very little outside impresses me.
And a closing of their petit fours of osmanthus flower jelly and Chinese walnut cookies.
I kept my expectations really low and so I left with little disappointment. The service was commendable. It's been a while since I have had any that were at the level that Lung Keen Heen provided. The servers could actually answer questions, were very polite and knew now to manage a discreet distance while paying attention.
