Housed on the 26th floor of HQueens in the heart of Central, Ecriture along with Arbor are two of the brightest young stars in the city's fine dining scene this year. Ironically, both of them happened to be housed in the very same building.
Before we touched on our dining experience at Ecriture, it's important to know who's working behind their kitchen. The man on a mission here is executive chef Maxime Gilbert, the former chef de cuisine at Amber who is also the protégé of world renowned chef Yannick Alleno. Chef Gilbert cut his teeth at a number of Alléno's fine-dining establishments including La Grande Table Française (Marrakech) and the legendary Le Meurice (Paris) so it's safe to say that he knows a little something about modern French cooking.
As there's only one tasting menu ($1488) being served in Ecriture at the moment, we went straight into our amuse bouche once we decided on our wine selection. Our first nibble was a potato croquette with sour cream filling topped by caviar.
Next was an elegant serving of crispy pumpkin biscuit with pumpkin purée and pumpkin cream, a tasty "wafer" made with tiny Japanese fish topped off with herbs and vinegar, and last but not least, a steamed bun with seafood sauce (hoisin?) and a bit of ginger. That's quite an impressive collection of contrasting flavors all packed into these bite-sized nibbles.
The first course of the tasting menu was a visually stunning spot prawn dish. It was beautifully presented with a beetroot wafer on top and underneath that were delicious spot prawns, dashi jelly and purple onion.
This dish reminded me a lot of a pike conger dish I had at Florilège in Tokyo which had the same visual effects and equally impressive results. The dashi jelly provided perfect depth of flavors to complement the sweetness of the spot prawns while the purple onion added lovely acidity to the mix. That was brilliant.
The spot prawn dish was immediately followed by Ecriture's house specialty deep-fried Hokkaido scallop with black truffle. The batter looked thick at first glance but it turned out to be just perfect. Crispy but not too flaky. Underneath it were layers of scallops and nori, wonderfully matched by the celeriac purée, scallop foam made with scallop trimmings and hazelnut shavings. I don't think I have had such a delicate and well designed scallop dish before and it's certainly a dish that makes you crave for more.
As soon as we finished our deep-fried scallop, we were shown a large Japanese abalone which has been poached in sake.
Tender slices of abalone was then served with crispy Galicia beef ham, eggplant, grapefruit and a delicious abalone-liver sauce with Dijon mustard.
Our fish course was Japanese kinki, one of the most amazing fish in the sea, cooked in three different ways.
We first had the fillet accompanied by a yuzu-seafood purée topped with dried scallop in a red wine and vegetable sauce.
Very lovely texture and I love the smoky flavors from the crispy skin.
The second part of this kinki dish featured the most prized part of the fish, the cheek which was served with the liver and homemade ravioli with gorgonzola cheese filling. A flavorful broth made of olive oil, tomato, lemon juice and the bones of the kinki added good depth of flavors to the dish.
Finally, the tail. Our server told us to simply eat it like a piece of "fried chicken". As instructed, I quickly picked it up with my hand and finished it off. This was pretty tasty. The hint of lime zest really provided some nice citrusy notes to the mix.
Meat course was savory lamb fillet and chop from Adreyon, served with in-season morel mushrooms, cabbage and a reduced lamb jus. Our server explained that they only use baby lambs which have been around for 20 so days and drinking nothing but milk, this in order to preserve their succulent texture (which explains the meat is so light in color).
This was nice and gamey with the perfect proportion of fat. I'm not a huge fan of lamb to be honest but if I was going to have lamb once a year, this is THE one I want.
I had so much food at this point that I already lost track on how many dishes we had. This next dish could be our palate cleanser or our first dessert, I guess it didn't really matter.
A scoop of sake ice cream was served on a bed of silky jelly made with sake lees along with lime, lemon, orange and grapefruit. Very refreshing and clean flavors all around.
Our final dessert was a mix of spicy cacao custard, mango chutney, peanut ice-cream, peanut and hazelnut crumble all hidden under a crispy chocolate wafer. Looked like the spices used on the cacao custard were Sichuan pepper.
There was a small cup of fresh coconut milk that came on the side.
Food continued to keep coming. First, there's a kouign-amann sandwiched with sour cream.
That was followed by some Japanese strawberries sliced at table side.
And just when I thought we were done, our server came over and revealed the best kept secret around here - There's a chocolate-cognac tart hidden inside the decorative box on our table. This one even had my name written on it!
I have been spoiled with some really good food the past 10 days. After dining at HAKU, à nu retrouvez-vous and Arbor within a short span, I thought it's going to take a lot for Ecriture to blow me away but wow me they did. Not only were tonight's dishes innovative (spot prawn and scallop dish came to mind), they did it with very precise cooking. Also full marks for the tableside preparations which have added a special element to this dining experience. I know old-school tableside service is making a comeback (Fancy restaurants in France never stop doing it all these years.) and personally, I am all for it.
Food Rating: 8.5/10
Price: $$$$
Address: 26/F HQueens, 80 Queen's Road Central, Central, Hong Kong
Closest Metro Station: Central
Tel: +852 2795-5996
Website: www.lecomptoir.hk/ecriture/
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