Petrus Hong Kong

Have always loved a good soufflé and the one I just had at @restaurant_petrus was simply fantastic! The regal decor of the restaurant is almost one of a kind now in HK, and eating here with its gorgeous view of the city is always enjoyable. It was a fun lunch with fruitful discussions, and thank you @uweo @vannesschoi for organizing this lovely menu.

Our menu:

Oyster
Fukuoka / Ebisu / Gin Tonic

Salmon
Norway / Toast / Sucrine

Lobster
Brittany / Risotto / Parmesan

Souffle
Chocolate / Cherry / Ice-cream
•
1*, Petrus
Admiralty, Hong Kong
#supermelHK #supermelADM Less

At some point, you’ll move past the stuffy decor at @restaurant_petrus , a restaurant on the 56th floor of the Island Shangri-La, in Hong Kong. The views are sweeping, but so is Uwe Opocensky’s cooking. A recent carte-blanche lunch featured easy-listening dishes with a studied degree of reinvention: tomato salad with a quenelle of near-frozen burrata and bright pesto; sweet white asparagus with blood-orange sabayon; uniformly-pink baby lamb from the Pyrenees, atop a glossy sauce accompanied by soft artichoke and a meld of peas that held their snap. A tad less daring than the menu from a year prior, but no less gratifying.

In this day and age, nostalgia sells — especially if served at a Supreme Court house with all the fixings intact, inclusive of a trapdoor where prisoners would emerge from their cell and a perch where judges sporting powdered wigs admonish you from above. This is @themagistracyhongkong , where the chef Alwyn Williams, aptly, holds court and renders food that I remember well from his days cooking at the Westbury Hotel, in London. There are clever concessions to terroir: a more curry-forward dressed crab over crumpet; the use of Cantonese chicken in a puff-pastry — a play on pot pie; and steamed cod. But my favorite is his glorious, unadulterated sticky toffee pudding, followed by the ‘family’ salad (puffed grains, frisbee, apple, sultanas), which reminded me why sweeter salads can really work.

My trip ended unceremoniously with dinner at @ando.hkg , an underrated gem run by a humble, unassuming, wildly-talented chef in Agustin Balbi and an ace of a sommelier, Carlito Chiu. Not because the food wasn’t up to par — quite the opposite — but because I was near comatose midway through dinner from food-poisoning (unrelated meal). While the slide photo is of a beautiful morel, Balbi’s best dish is his least photogenic: arroz caldoso, a brothy rice dish made with Yumeprika rice and Spanish baby squid. I’ll be back.
🙏 @geoffreywu for paving the way.

🍽️ Mar ‘25 Less

Just over a year since my last Petrus visit . Very happy to return to revisit @uweo ‘s protein driven European cooking with Japanese influences .

The opening dish is a bright start , perhaps a distant relative of a caprese salad , here Fukuoka cherry tomatoes are paired with burrata and pesto . Clean and vibrant .

Foie gras from Georges Bruck is shaped into a log and coated in freeze dried rhubarb and infused with a raspberry gel . Somehow the fruit notes don’t really shine and the dish is a little one note .

A veloute of white asparagus is next , however with it comes and abundance of textures , have never had chawanmushi within a veloute before but it’s a fun wrinkle , also hiding in the depths are small Japanese oysters and hazelnuts . Every bite and texture is different .

Blue lobster is lightly char grilled and skewered alternating with daikon . A deep crustacean sauce and puffed rice round out the plate .

My favourite dish of the night was a seafood fricasse , it featured Scottish scallops deftly cooked with seaweed butter , some lobes of uni , a ribbon of seaweed pasta and a terrific shellfish sauce . This showed great harmony .

Sea bass was next , with a textbook champagne and caviar sauce and tempura of asparagus . Honestly the asparagus stole the show here , juicy and crispy .

Adored the texture of olive fed Kagawa Wagyu , it yielded completely to the knife but wasn’t overladen with fat , Yunnan morel stuffed with beef cheek was a great accompaniment.

Longan souffle was nice and floral , it was served with lychee sorbet , a generous dollop of cream and sugared rice puffs for texture . Bright finish .

Always nice to head to the 56th floor and experience Petrus , the cooking is rock solid , the wine options are 🤯and the service terrific . It’s a HK dining mainstay for a reason . Less