The Tai Pan at The Murray (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★★☆

After finding a place for my little one's birthday two weeks ago, I have another challenge to pick a restaurant for our Valentine's Day celebration this week. I started off with a list of about 20 restaurants, some of which were newcomers in the first two months of 2018 and slowly trimmed it down to just a handful of options. At the end of the day, The Tai Pan was the obvious choice having realized that few could match its glowing credentials.



Located on the garden level (UG/F) of the brand new The Murray Hotel Hong Kong, The Tai Pan is a modern European restaurant with a sleek and contemporary setting. The Murray is one of the most highly anticipated 5-star hotel openings in the city for years so naturally, I have high hopes for its restaurants as well. 



The Tai Pan's food menu is an European inspired one featuring a nice mix of local and imported produce. A set lunch menu is available during lunch hours offering a choice between a 2-course ($450) and 3-course set ($550).



For my starter, I went with a refreshing dish of king crab served with celeriac remoulade and crisp romaine lettuce.



This was a pretty nice way to start off the meal with a combination of clean flavors. The celeriac remoulade with diced green apple provided some mild acidity to the equation which was complemented nicely with a pommery mustard dressing.



My main dish was Iberico beef ribeye served with buttered mash potatoes and mushroom duxelle.



I thought the ribeye was well-cooked and fairly flavorful (though not as flavorful as I hoped) so some simple seasoning of sea salt, fresh pepper and red wine sauce already did the trick for me.



Jelloman had lamb loin "Navarin" as her main course and she thought it was pretty decent. Like my ribeye, the meat was pretty tender and juicy but its flavors weren't nearly rich enough.



There's always room for dessert and this turned out to be another dessert trolley experience (after Sabatini). Here, we have a choice between tiramisu, chocolate mousse, lemon tart, blueberry cheesecake and panna cotta all handcrafted by their in-house pastry chef (according to the menu).




I had the tiramisu because as everybody knows, I'm a tiramisu maniac. This was fairly decent but personally, I'd like to see a bit more mascarpone and perhaps less ladyfinger (but that's just me!).



Better was the pistachio panna cotta with lots of fresh strawberries in it. Jelloman always has a knack of picking the better dessert.



Well, I was expecting a little more than two chocolates for our petite fours but that was all we could muster (one chocolate per head!).



Not a bad debut at all. Just a few tinkering here and there and they could be one of the best new restaurants in 2018 when everything was said and done.

PS. After the meal, I had a nice walk to Wanchai mainly to check out what Bakehouse has in store for me. But sadly at 2:30pm, everything was SOLD OUT except for a pair of sour dough bread. That was so depressing~



Food Rating: 6/10
Price: $$$$
Address: Level Garden, The Murray Hong Kong, 22 Cotton Tree Drive, Central, Hong Kong
Tel: +852 3141-8888
Closest Metro Station: Admiralty / Central
Website: www.marcopolohotels.com/en/niccolo/articles/the_tai_pan.html


The Tai Pan, modern European restaurant The Murray Hong Kong Niccolo Hotel Cotton Tree Drive one of best new restaurant 2018