Vacation 9 – French

This is the only western dinner that I had during the 21 days. I haven’t been to the SOHO district for a very long time. Clicked on my radio blog, listening to this song “Perfidia” by Xavier Cugat… hum… feeling good. Feel like I’m back to the 40’s or I’m in one of those movies directed by Wong Kar-wai. Yea… I’m probably thinking too much, or maybe I’ve taken too much medicine lately. (Yes, I’m sick and had to take half day off today.)

I always love old stuffs. (and I always like to go off topic just like an old nanny telling her stories…) I’m supposed to write about this French restaurant, called “Brasserie Le Fauchon” tonight.

The first dinner that I had with my friend in HK was at an Indian restaurant, called Bombay Dreams, in Central. Unfortunately, it was very dark inside and I don’t like to use flash. So I didn’t take any pictures. The food there was quite good. Originally I was worried that we may have ordered too many dishes. When the food came, I realized that I am so used to the North American portions. The portion in HK was much smaller. After dinner, we went to a pub in Lan Gwai Fong and the live bands were great. I was even jumping around when I heard them play the song “Zombie” from the Cranberries. The other night, it was clubbing at Sugar, not bad. The music could be better. It seems that going to Central is inevitable when I’m in HK. This night, I walked up the escalators again with another other friend of mine.

Without a particular restaurant in mind, we came to the SOHO district. Didn’t feel like Italian, Spanish, Mexican nor Indian. Then my eyes felt onto this pink neon light “Brasserie Le Fauchon”. Let’s do it.

On the menu outside, it said there are two types of set dinner: 3 courses for HKD168 and 4 courses for HKD198. Converted those amounts to Canadian dollars, they are around CDN24 – 28, which is not bad at all, consider there is no extra 15% tax on top. The place was quite nice, with a few tables at the front and a more spacious dining room at the back. It’s good place to sit down and have a quiet talk with your friend.

We ordered one 3 courses and one 4 courses dinner. The only difference was the soup as an additional course. Looking at the menu, there were about 10 different appetizers/salads, 3 kinds of soup, around 10 main dishes, including rack of lamb, surf and turf, ribeye, fish steak, etc. that we could choose from.

Here are the two salads that we ordered – Scallops salad and soft shell crab salad. The taste was good and the portion was just right for both of us.

The french onion soup was quite disappointing as the broth was not too good. Yet, I found the waiter/waitress quite smart. We didn’t tell them explicitly that we were going to share the soup – we just showed that we’d like to try it together. When the soup came, it was already put into two bowls. I’d say this kind of “initiative” is good to have, and it definitely adds value to the good customer service.

On the left is the lamb that I ordered. It was juicy and tender, with mustard and mint jelly. My friend ordered the surf and turf. I had a bit of her steak and it was good. This cute photo on the right was taken with the aid of her cell phone’s flash light. 🙂

Margarita… didn’t know why I ordered this. In fact, that night I discovered that I never really liked Margarita. It is just not my cup of drink.

So far, the service and the food there have been quite good. Here comes the girls’ favourites… desserts.

Molten chocolate cake – with chocolate melted inside the chocolate cake. Who can resist that?!

I ordered the creme brulée for myself. The taste was ok, but the sugar coating on top was hard. It hurt the upper part of my mouth!! ouch!