It is a brave restaurant owner who takes on so much floor space in these times of economic turmoil. However, if Eureka is the result of what happens when recession hits, please, sir, can we have some more? This new Times Square venue is friendly and the service exceptional. The dishes are not going to be on anyone's top 10 list of the new and noted, but there is a comfort zone in the tried-and-tested that may work with an economically panicked Hong Kong population. The sweeping wall murals make the most immediate impact. Executive director Eddie Wong, who walks the restaurant floor making sure everyone is happy, tells us he brought in about 10 of Hong Kong's dying breed of movie poster painters to decorate Eureka. Their work includes a matador who lends a Spanish flavour, Michelangelo's David with strategically placed fig leaf, London's Big Ben and some sweeping Mediterranean-style landscapes. There are a few sections that add a quirky sense of humour - or poor taste, depending on which side of the royal divide one stands. There is Prince Charles dressed as a waiter serving none other than Princess Diana and her beau, Dodi Fayed. There are former governor Chris Patten dressed up as a mariachi singer, and an upbeat Pope apparently having a good snigger at it all. He would be less amused than impressed at the food, which displays an interesting disregard for culinary fashion of the day. Or perhaps this is the new fashion for leaner times - comforting, familiar, reasonably priced dishes with straight-shooting names served with a smile in he-man portions on no-nonsense white plates. In keeping with the 'casual Euromerican' eating promise, the menu meanders through a version of American-European habits such as baked avocado with crab meat ($78), seafood crepe with Hollandaise sauce ($78), lobster bisque ($58), osso bucco ($128) and fillet of sole roll with spinach sauce ($98). No fancy descriptions. Our choices of starters were baked crab avocado and a lettuce bowl. The baked crab avocado is served on a bed of piped mashed potatoes with no apparent effort at beautification. The whole dish is so clearly unpretentious one cannot help warming to it. Hot avocado, perhaps not the first choice of avocado lovers, is served in small pieces enveloped in the overall crab mix. If it gets middling marks for its 1970s-style presentation, for taste it is right up there and goes down on the 'to order again' list. The lettuce bowl ($68), too, is what it promises to be: a straightforward serving of mixed leaves, fresh and crunchy, served with a variety of dressings. The meal highlight was the tenderloin ($168), which could not be faulted, least of all its price tag. The meat was tasty and tender, served perfectly medium-rare as requested. The short ribs were perhaps a mistake. They were a little chewy and I would have preferred a more seared crust and crispy fat. Both meat dishes are served with onion rings, corn on the cob and baby potatoes. However, the vegetables had been murdered, which was unforgivable. The corn on the cob was soft and soggy. The batter on the onion rings was too thick and nowhere near the onion ring standard that has been set in Hong Kong by Dan Ryan's. Apart from being slightly oily, the baby potatoes were the best of the vegetables on offer. Had we asked for the vegetables to be done differently, there was no doubt they would have been whisked away and re-done. But they were not that bad and we did not have the heart to complain in the face of such pleasant service. To the question 'where have all the friendly waiters gone?', the answer is surely: Eureka! Eureka, Shop 1305 Times Square, 1 Matheson Street, Causeway Bay, Tel: 2506-1689, Open: Sunday-Thursday noon-midnight, Friday and Saturday noon-2am