Hong Kong’s top restaurants reviewed: Amber – modern French turns out to be nine courses of Japanese delights

This is how SCMP.com’s food editor enticed me to Amber after I admitted to caring little for traditional French cuisine. “It’s not duck confit and cassoulet,” she said briskly. “It’s very modern and can be appreciated purely as delicious food.”

She was right. But all she really needed to have said was that the two-Michelin-star restaurant (and number 24 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list) borrows a little from Japan (“negi”, “dashi” and “sansho pepper” jumped out from the menus when I looked them up online). And that they offer a vegetarian à la carte menu.

Not that we wanted to go without meat or fish, but just knowing culinary director Richard Ekkebus does more than simply tolerate vegetarians gave us a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Seated at a slightly awkward banquette (two of us on a straight bench by a window, facing others), we quickly forgot all about our herbivorous friends when the amuse bouches arrived. These appetite stimulants didn’t mess around with flavours, delighting with creations that individually nailed salty, bitter, sour, sweet and umami (in the form of chawanmushi, that silky, steamed egg-custard dish the Japanese serve as an appetiser).

Then the chefs really started showing off. At the top of our degustation menu (HK$2,068), chosen because it contained almost as many dishes as are offered à la carte, was Hakata Bay Ebisu oyster, which, and I quote in full, came over a plankton gel with organic kale, seawater and organic lemon jell-O, plus mustard cress bloom.