Restaurant review: Café and Meal Muji, Causeway Bay - Japanese hit and miss

Lifestyle brand Muji has opened its first restaurant in the city. However, this Causeway Bay branch - opened in early June - still has some way to go to match the food and service of its 17 outlets in Japan.

Diners choose from a three- or four-course set (HK$88 or HK$98), then pick the items. Among the eight choices of cold dishes are sargassum seaweed salad, or omelette with assorted vegetables. The nine hot dishes include fried chicken with sweet and sour sauce, and vegetables au gratin with carrot sauce. Sets come with miso soup or a drink and a bowl of plain or ten grains rice.

The homemade sesame and milk tofu is interesting. It's a dense, creamy block of tofu, drizzled with fragrant black sesame sauce. We also like the spinach and chicken burger with teriyaki sauce, as the spinach and onion give it a crunchy bite. Others we tried - such as the pork in sweet and black vinegar sauce and potato croquette - are well executed but not memorable. If you prefer stronger flavours, the butter chicken and vegetable curry (HK$80) is a good choice.

The staff were polite, but the service could have been smoother. And it would be more helpful if items were categorised into "salads" and "mains", as most of the "hot" dishes were not even warm. We were disappointed that most of the desserts, including the honwakatou (Okinawa sugar) custard pudding, were sold out.