101/F, ICC, 1 Austin Road West, West Kowloon Tel: 2568 9886 Open: 11.30am-3pm, 6pm-11pm daily Cuisine: Cantonese fine dining
Price: if you avoid the expensive dried seafood delicacies (which range from HK$380 to HK$980 per portion), you can get by on about HK$650, without drinks and the service charge.
Ambience: the decor of this 70-seat restaurant aspires to modern opulence, with a wall-to-wall glass wine-fridge lining the entrance and plush high-back chairs in the brightly lit, carpeted main dining room. There are about eight tables that offer the coveted 'sky' view of the Hong Kong cityscape.
Pros: the daily selection of live fish and shellfish is impressive, and the senior waiters are knowledgeable about the different varieties and market price. Overall, the cuisine has the refinement and subtlety that defines Cantonese fine dining, with the prominent use of fresh and dried medicinal herbs.
Cons: given the price of the meal and the smart uniforms of the staff, the clumsy service left much to be desired, and the timing of dishes was perplexing. We had just begun tucking into the charcoal-roasted pigeon when the soup arrived; the waitress puzzlingly took away our plates to make room for the soup bowls (but forgot the spoons) while one of my guests was still working on a piece of pigeon. Serving spoons were routinely missing. The wine we ordered at the start of the meal wasn't served until the second course.
Recommended dishes: the eastern star garoupa (HK$560 for a one-catty fish), braised in huangjiu (yellow rice and millet wine) and fresh Chinese wolfberries, was delicate and perfectly cooked. The huangjiu gave a mellow fragrance and taste to the broth that contrasted with the slight sweetness of the berries. We liked the poetry of the name 'cicada's shadow in a bamboo forest' (HK$110) as much as we enjoyed the dish, mildly flavoured steamed eggplant slivers wrapped in bamboo pith, which gave a subtle but welcome crunch to the soft texture of the eggplant. We also liked the restaurant's variation on yeung ji gum lo, the popular mango pomelo sago soup (HK$45); the dessert, served in a martini glass, had a layer of soft red bean paste and was topped with an airy layer of mango mousse with beads of fresh pomelo mixed in.