Review | Hong Kong new restaurant review: Moxie – clever plant-based dishes, ethereal puff pastry and dreamy desserts

Moxie in Alexandra House, Central offers all-day dining and has a mostly plant-based menu, with enticing, carefully thought out dishes

The pea and mushroom tart had the lightest of puff pastries, and the desserts were worth the visit on their own

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Three Grain Mapo Tofu from new Hong Kong restaurant Moxie at Alexander House in Central. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 11:15am, 23 Sep 2021Updated: 11:15am, 24 Sep 2021

Next time I eat at Moxie – and I’m already planning my next visit – I know what to do. I’ll order anything on the menu that has pastry. Plus, all the desserts.

The latest venture by Arcane Collective – the restaurant group of Shane Osborn (of Arcane, on On Lan Street, in Central) – features all-day dining by chef Michael Smith, who’s created a primarily plant-based menu.

It wasn’t deliberate, but we ended up ordering all vegetarian dishes, simply because they sounded more intriguing than the few that contained seafood.

There was only one dish that we wouldn’t bother ordering again – the water bamboo salad with radicchio, jicama and tahini dressing (HK$128). Water bamboo is a vegetable that we usually love, but the salad was almost too austere: it needed something to perk up the flavour.

Water bamboo salad from Moxie. Photo: Jonathan Wong

When we cut into the beautiful tarte fine of sweet onions, girolles, peas and argan oil (HK$158) we knew we were in for a treat – we could feel through the knife that the puff pastry was so light and flaky, it was almost ethereal.