Dim sum “trilogy”
What makes or breaks a dining experience is not the food; nor is it the venue, the service or the bill. It’s the choice of companion – particularly if that person’s motto on eating out is “Oh my god, I don’t do sharing” (dim sum included). This seemingly antisocial attitude should lend itself to a strained, almost angry, meal lest a hostile fork should penetrate their plate’s airspace; but for a 15-course tasting menu at one of the Hakkasan Group’s latest restaurants it’s ideal. I’m always resentful when I spear one half of a conker-sized sphere of deliciousness, wearing a single goji berry like a miniature fez, before being compelled to mutter: “Um, do you want to try some?”
None of that nonsense here. 15 courses for me, 15 for him. Easy.
What isn’t easy is trying to find the damn restaurant. Even with Google Maps up and running again, I’m 20 minutes late and panicking that we will have lost the table, but there’s no risk of that. When I arrive there are fewer than 10 diners – including us. But who cares? It just means that the staff in Tim Soar bespoke outfits are within arm’s reach at all times and the turnaround of courses is tailored to our pace. I’ve barely tucked in my napkin when the four-treasure Iberico ham wrap appears and we both lean forward, wondering if the arrangement should be eaten or pinned on a lapel. It’s followed swiftly by drunken chicken: two slices of potted chicken in gelatinous skin, soaked in 20-year-old wine and laid on ribbons of jellyfish which look and taste like cool, flat rice vermicelli with a mild crunch. While I nibble on the single goji berry, I spy the demolition of a roast duckling, taking place in the middle of the room.
With the lights turned up, the curtains pulled back and a row of tall Habitat jars filled with muesli and cornflakes, this could be a Premier Inn breakfast room
The sheen on the bird’s skin is like polished mahogany, and it arrives in a trilogy of guises. A wedge of cherry wood-roasted pink meat that glistens under a roof of pale fat is followed by a traditional Peking duck pancake, and, to finish, an arc of crisp skin, dabbed in brown sugar and a caramel-like smear. Bliss.
When Alan Yau sold the bulk of the Hakkasan Group in 2007 to an Abu Dhabi investor, I was terrified that the food would suffer, but Yau’s creative vision has kept a firm grip. Chef Tong Chee Hwee steers the ship at HKK: he has 11 years’ experience at Hakkasan and ran the original restaurant at Hanway Place, gaining its Michelin star in 2003. His precision, where style and detail are concerned, is immaculate. Each dish is presented on a different plate that enhances the colours and shapes of the food within.
The room, however, is odd: a colourless, soundless space with diaphanous hangings that lacks the deeply ornate, club-like look of the two Hakkasans. There’s a counter in the centre where the food is given its final tweaks before being served, and diners are seated at spotlit tables that skirt the room. With the lights turned up, the curtains pulled back and a row of tall Habitat jars filled with muesli and cornflakes, this could be a Premier Inn breakfast room.
The next course is a poulet de Bresse and dried scallop soup which tastes a little like fancy chicken stock and is largely unremarkable – but the barometer shoots up again over the dim sum trilogy of truffle har gau, sour turnip puff and a pan-fried Szechuan dumpling. They arrive like tightly-swaddled newborns, plump and warm, with a little red paint brush and a pallet of soy sauce. They lift right up with none of that disastrous Ping Pong-style unravelling, and burst with juice that doesn’t take the skin off the roof of your mouth.
So far the flavours have been limited to one or two per dish, but the Gai-lan, shimeji mushroom and lily bulb in XO sauce shakes things up a little before the quite fabulous wok-fried lobster with pan-mee. Huddled together in a thick comfy yellow-bean broth, the noodles make a little bed for the hunk of lobster meat – easily one the best dishes so far – though there does seem to be an overwhelming tone of chicken stock to the food once more.
Busy nattering, we’ve begun to lose track of courses and there’s a silence when the Osmanthus flower jelly and water chestnut cake slides into place.
“Why have we got dessert?”
“I don’t know.”
Panic.
“No, it must be a palate cleanser, right?”
“It is… I hope.”
“Oh my God, darling, we’re going to have to go and get pizza!”
Thankfully it is a palate cleanser, followed by a fillet of monkfish in Louis Roederer sauce, homemade pumpkin tofu, and jasmine tea-smoked Wagyu beef – which was disappointingly tough. (I have a friend, who, when asked how he likes his beef, replies, “With its feet cut off and its arse wiped”. With this quality of beef I would have preferred the same.) A final dish of razor clam with chilli and glass noodles comes on a rectangle covered in pressed blue cornflowers, the mixture served inside the clam’s shell, a ball of glutinous rice glistening to the side.
Feeling nicely full without having overdone it, I can just manage the lychee tapioca, and gladly hand over the pineapple fritter with salted lime jelly. My companion is happy, and has agreed that pizza would now be ridiculous, so I’m happy and it’s all been a huge success… until… there’s a stumble, right before the finish line. A selection of petits fours arrives and we’re instructed to eat them from left to right – ending on the durian. After such a fabulous array of flavours has spent the evening mingling in my mouth, I just don’t want to end on the taste of caramelised feet.
HKK, 88 Worship Street, London EC2A 2DQ
020-3535 1888; hkklondon.com
Monisha Rajesh is the author of Around India in 80 Trains