hkLifestyleGeek heads to Quarry Bay
There's a taste of France in Quarry Bay with the addition of Plat du Jour, Swire's first venture into opening a stand alone restaurant. It's a cute-looking bistro, with a minimalist look, wooden floors, red leather banquet and wooden chairs with caved backs. The space seems cramped at first, but actually there are pockets of space for more privacy. The other great feature about this restaurant is the price. It's HK$185 for two courses, HK$225 for three -- for lunch and dinner. There's also chalkboard specials for each day of the week.
We sampled a few of the dishes and overall the appetisers and desserts were fantastic, the mains, sadly on the bland side. A strong start is the steak tartare made with Australian beef tenderloin with a slow-cooked egg and accompanied with roasted sourdough. It's flavourful thanks to the nice seasoning. The lobster bisque is excellent. We only had a coffee-cup sized portion and what we had was amazing, the shellfish taste was delicious and just a touch of creme fraiche added to smooth things out.
Another nice starter is the escargot bourguignon, arriving on a special ceramic dish to hold the shells that were lavishly covered in minced garlic butter. As long as you don't have to kiss someone that night, you'll be happy you ordered this.
However when it came to the mains, the beef bourguignon which was braised in Pinot Noir was surprisingly on the bland side, though we loved the accompanying potato puree, baby onions and mushrooms. While the meat was cooked perfectly tender, there wasn't much taste.
The same could be said for the moules mariniere, small but plump Bouchon mussels presented in a white wine and cream sauce with shallots. The cream sauce was light but didn't add much to the mussels and perhaps would have been better minus the cream. The matchstick fries with aioli sauce were addictive though...
Finally for dessert the apple tarte tartin hit the spot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, while the rum baba had a nice rum flavour, it could have been marinated a bit more in the liqueur.
Plat du Jour
21 Hoi Wan Street
Quarry Bay
2789 4200
facebook.com/platdujourHK
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