His pick for tonight is SAAM. Located on the hilly Graham Street in Central / Soho, SAAM is a little difficult to describe but I would call it a melting pot of different cuisine.
Owner-chef Patrick Dang's name looked awfully familiar. As it turns out, he has recently helmed Cocotte and worked at Mo Bar (2005-06). Apart from Hong Kong, the well-traveled chef has also been around Shanghai and different regions of Australia.
I did my homework on the name of the restaurant before coming here. It means “together” in Afrikaans. Let's hope everything would be "coming together" nicely this evening.
There are two prix-fixe menus available on this night, $488 for 3 courses and $688 for 6 courses. We decided to explore Chef Dang's cuisine in greater lengths so the 6-course menu was what we ended up having.
Before dinner officially started, we were offered a basket of Turkish bread together with a nice dipping sauce made of white beans, yogurt and wine. That's pretty decent.
Our first nibble was a black olive gazpacho. I was a little misled by its clear color which got me thinking it would be very light but it ended up being the exact opposite. Pretty intense and carrying a good depth of flavor.
A further amuse bouche followed - a pan seared scallop with salmon roes, lime juice and a touch of wasabi. A very simple nibble that was well thought and designed. Not bad at all.
Now that our palates were warmed up, it's time to get serious. First up was one of the chef's latest hits - cuttlefish noodle with Canadian sea urchin, mentaiko, salmon roes and seaweed in a warm yuzu foam. The sea urchin was probably not among the best we've ever tasted but it was working magic with the cuttlefish noodle, salmon roes, seaweed and yuzu. A very impressive dish (7.5/10).
Our second starter was veal tataki served with cauliflower, osetra caviar and radish. I thought I heard our server mentioning cauliflower consommé but we couldn't find it anywhere on the plate. This was decent and I especially enjoyed the crispy potato on top giving the dish a lot of bite (5/10).
I loooovvveeee white asparagus so I was really looking forward to this dish. White asparagus was wrapped nicely with savory country ham and the mélange with morel mushrooms, tarragon, green peas and potato foam added an interesting spin to the mix (5.5/10).
Neither V nor I is a fan of fish but we both agreed that this line caught bass grouper from New Zealand tasted better than it looked (or smelled). Of course, it didn't hurt to have a strong supporting cast too, with crabbrandade, piquillo, artichoke and sherry doing the honor (6/10).
Our last savory dish was the Australian Ranger Valley Wagyu beef that was served medium. The meat was very tender and juicy although slightly lacking flavors if we wanted to be picky. The only knock was perhaps the zucchini and cottage pie as they looked a little out of place sitting next to the Wagyu (6/10).
We can each pick one dessert from the list of three and I went with the 70% Guanaja chocolate pudding with salted caramel, hazelnut and black berry. This looked like something we had at Liberty Private Works not too long ago. Very nice contrasting flavors (6.5/10).
Coconut pavlova with textured coconut, mango, lime and yogurt was the one to pick if you're into more refreshing flavors (5.5/10).
This was a very interesting dinner indeed. There were certainly some bright spots here and there. Although I couldn't single out a dish that managed to wow us (apart from the cuttlefish noodle perhaps), I thought everything was technically sound. Service was also very good from start to finish, which I found slightly surprising from a small place hidden in the quiet Graham Street. To sum it up, this is a real sleeper and a pretty good place for a reasonably priced prix-fixe menu ($688).
Food Rating: 6/10
Price: $$$
Address: G/F, 51 Graham Street, Central, Hong Kong
Closest Metro Station: Central / Hong Kong StationTel: +852 2645-9828
Website: www.saamhk.com
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