Tirpse (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★☆☆

I have originally booked a place for Jelloman’s birthday ahead of time but it wasn’t until yesterday when they called to re-confirm my reservation that I realized we had to leave the restaurant at 2:30pm sharp! I was in total shock cuz for one, my booking was at 1:30pm (originally at 1:45pm) and the appetizer portion of the meal was supposed to be semi-buffet style. How on earth do they think that we could finish all three courses of the meal including dessert in an hour!? The most disappointing part of all was the fact that I wasn’t fully informed of their arrangement, which should’ve been communicated to me when I was making my booking over the phone. A warm reminder would have been nice. But I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised as the service of this 5-star hotel has never really lived up to its lofty expectation. Enough of a rant, now time to find another place for our quiet celebration…

It’s been a lost year for everybody living through the pandemic. Jelloman has been trying positive throughout her “work from home” regime and not surprisingly, she wanted a quiet celebration this year…..maybe something casual at the mall she said.

I ended up picking a place at the K11 Musea for her (as if we haven’t been here often enough). No, actually I have narrowed down our choices to three for her, all at K11 Musea: Cobo House, 181 at Fortnum & Mason and Tirpse. She made the final call and decided to take Tirpse, a place that a couple of her friends have recently checked in on FB.

Tirpse has been a myth since they first opened in Tokyo back in 2015. Owner-chef Naotaka Ohashi, who previously worked under the Hiramatsu branded restaurants in Japan, Cordeillan-Bages in France and three Michelin-starred Quintessence in Tokyo, took home their first Michelin star within two months of opening. In the same year, they also made a big splash by launching a six-course lunch consisting entirely of desserts behind their talented pastry chef Kiriko Nakamura. But that was all history as Chef Ohashi has since left to work at Den and it's Chef Koji Tamura who has taken over the reigns at Tirpse. Chef Shimizu Yuta who's a Joël Robuchon alumni, is the head chef of their Hong Kong outpost.

The word "Tirpse", which comes from “esprit” spelling backward, is the inspiration behind Chef Ohashi when he opened the restaurant. It's French-Japanese cuisine in the same mold as Narisawa, L'Effervescence and Florilege. My experience often tells me that I will either love it or absolutely hate it. There's normally no middle ground.

 

I just got off work so it was already pretty late for lunch (2pm) but surprisingly, there were still guests coming in for a late lunch like us.

Our lunch started off with a small appetizer, Hokkaido scallop crusted with a charcoal batter.

The dish was served with a squid-ink like sauce on the side which was actually made with sea eel. A pretty decent dish to start off the meal and I did like the savory kick from the sea eel, working well with the sweetness of the scallop.

The scallop dish was followed by another small starter, beetroot carpaccio with crab meat and hazelnut snow. This reminded me of a sea conger dish at Florilege, which also happened to come with a beetroot wafer.

Next up was aromatic fennel soup with olive oil.

Floating on top of the broth was a sumptuous oyster which was cooked at around 52°. Not bad.

For main course, Jelloman went with their Breton blue Lobster which has been superbly cooked with butter and thyme.

The lobster was tossed with lemon confit, avocado, potato, asparagus and Japanese micro tomato in a mixture of lemongrass cream, fish stock and shallot vinegar foam. Very sophisticated yet balanced flavors. Without question, the best dish of the afternoon.

I had the Platinum pork loin (岩手縣 白金豚) from Iwate Prefecture, with maitake mushrooms, leeks and garlic purée.

This was beautifully cooked as well, with the succulent pork loin complemented well by the complex flavors led by the leeks (different textures of leeks including leek ash - those small black dots) and alpine garlic.

We were rushed through the first four dishes so it was nice to finally get some time to sit back and enjoy a cup of tea before dessert.

My dessert was a timeless combination of chocolate and banana.

The variation of chocolate was matched with slices of caramelized banana, homemade banana sorbet and long pepper. Pretty decent but no surprise there.

The other dessert was a peach themed one, with a scoop of homemade peach sorbet and soy milk, finished off by the extra heat of a ginger foam. This one was obviously more unique (in terms of its ingredients) but I liked mine a little bit better.

The two main courses were definitely the highlights of our meal this afternoon. The rest of the dishes were reasonably good but I thought they tried to be a little too cute with some of the contemporary twist. All in all, it's not a bad experience by any means but for a budget of $800-$1,000 per head, I could easily have a very good meal at Caprice or Gaddi's with much much service offered.

Food Rating: 6/10
Price: $$$$
Address: Shop 219, 2/F, Elements, 1 Austin Road West, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
Closest Metro Station: Kowloon
Tel: +852 2333-0331

Website: https://tirpse.com.hk/
Opening Hours: 12:00pm - 11:30pm daily