Blue Brick Bistro by Yoku Moku HongKong (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★☆☆☆

It was not long ago when the Japanese luxury confectionery brand, Yoku Moku, first landed in Hong Kong offering us some fine selection of cakes and cookies including their signature "Cigare" cookies. In late 2015, they decided to launch their line of casual bistro and they picked the right place to do it too at the newly renovated Lee Tung Avenue where the old "Wedding Card Street" used to be.



Blue Brick Bistro in Wan Chai marks the very first Yoku Moku restaurant opening outside of Japan. The food menu promises a great deal of Japanese ingredients but prepared and cooked using modern European cooking techniques. Knowing there's always a lot of things to smooth out in the first month of operation, I decided to wait it out before coming to check them out up close and personal this week.



This ambiance has "fine dining" written all over it but a casual 4-course lunch only costs $118. Is this too good to be true!?



Our afternoon at Blue Brick all started with a cup of bean soup. It tasted pretty beany and that's about all I could remember.



Out of the five main dishes, I chose the confit sea bass fillet with sesame, asparagus and miso foam. This was a decent dish with the most interesting component being the miso foam but the rest wasn't particularly exciting.



Dessert was a scoop of red bean ice-cream and of course tea or coffee was also included.



Just when I was enjoying my scoop of ice-cream, I suddenly remembered this was supposed to be a 4-course set so where's my starter (smoked salmon) which should be served in front of the soup?

So I called our server over and let him know the terrible blunder and after trying to convince me to take a refund on that part of the meal without success, he disappointingly went to the kitchen and inform his colleagues of their misfortune. After waiting for another 10 minutes, my starter was finally ready to be served. Smoked salmon with red radish salad dressed like a bouquet of flowers and showered in a honey mustard dressing. Hm....



Nice to see that their signature rolled butter cookies were also part of the set. Not bad.

Despite the additional waiting time for the missing starter, we still got enough time to walk around the street and that was when we spotted this new bakery which had this "internal training" sign on. Turns out the name of the new place is called Le Pain Quotidien Bakery and Restaurant, Belgium-based bakery and cafe ready to be launched in a few days. Wow, I am looking forward to their pastries already!



Food Rating: 4/10

Price: $$

Address: Shop G35, G/F, Lee Tung Avenue, 200 Queen's Road East, Wanchai, Hong Kong
Closest Metro Station: Wanchai
Tel: +852 2865-0355
Website: www.yokumoku.com.hk