Restaurant review: La Bombance in Causeway Bay – superb kaiseki

If you visit La Bombance anytime soon, you won’t be tasting any of the dishes described in this review, because we were there just before they changed the menu, and by now they’re deep into matsutake season. The menu changes about once a month.

Even if you don’t eat the same dishes we did, I highly recommend you book a dinner there – the food is fantastic, and at HK$1,280 plus 10 per cent for the kaiseki tasting menu (the only one available at dinner), it’s a bargain, considering the quality. At that price, the place doesn’t have the ambience of the super high-end kaiseki restaurants you can experience in Japan, where diners sit in an antique-filled private room while gazing into the quiet garden while being served by a waitress clad in a beautiful kimono.

At La Bombance, the experience is less serene – diners sit at tables (or in our case, side-by-side at a long counter) that looks out past the balcony onto the Hong Kong skyline. But the food and the tableware are lovely.

We enjoyed every one of the 12 dishes served. One of the highlights of the excellent meal was a composed plate of cold sesame tofu and deep fried kuruma shrimp with black beans and wasabi soy sauce, deep fried ginkgo nut croquette with yuzu pepper mayonnaise, grilled rice ball with foie gras, and fruit tomato with Kyoto pepper, jellyfish, sunflower seed, brasenia, wolfberries and ginger vinegar jelly. Some elements were light and refreshing, others heavier – but all were delicious.

The sashimi course was another beautifully composed plate consisting of hirame (flounder) with ponzu sauce, octopus and torched hokki clam, served with a beautiful bowl of house-made soy sauce and a brush so you can season the ingredients to taste. The brush also made it easy to add soy sauce to the sushi course served next, and which a chef prepared in front of us: chu toro (medium fatty tuna), kombu-flavoured whiting and a miniature, elegant donburi topped with chopped negi and tuna.

Cold Shimabara-shi somen with fresh sakura shrimp kakiage was light, delicate and so good we wanted more.