I promised my little nugget that I’d be back from lunch very soon so I could take him down to swim. The moment I made that promise (and I intended to keep it), I knew my lunch at Kinship would be a very quick one.
Well, LL Tower wasn’t the easiest of all places to find. I ended up wasting another 10-15 minutes looking for it. But come to think of it, I’m the one who should be faulted on this. I guess the fact that I haven’t been to Soho for nearly 6 months had a lot to do with it.
I was expecting Kinship to be a small gastropub in Soho but it showed up as a good-looking casual dining restaurant with a pretty competent lunch menu. By competent, I mean small but covers a lot of ground.
Behind Kinship is a pair of seasoned chefs. Chef Arron Rhodes used to be the head chef at Timothy Oulton's dining restaurant, Gough's on Gough. He trained at some of the most prestigious restaurants in the world including Restaurant Andre in Singapore and three Michelin starred Hof van Cleve in Belgium. He’s excellent in creating modern European dishes with Asian influences. Then, there’s Chef Chris Grare who was the Executive Chef of Lily & Bloom before it switched ownership to Le Comptoir Group back in 2018.
Surprisingly, Chef Rhodes was the one taking care of the front end of the restaurant while Chef Grare was parked right inside the kitchen directing traffic.
Scallop ceviche, tomato chutney, bacon vinaigrette, pea shoots – Lunch started off brilliantly with a beautifully presented starter.
Pieces of fresh scallop were placed on top of a tower of tomato chutney. The tower consisting of sundried tomatoes and tomato puree worked wonders with the sweetness of the scallops (by dropping some lovely acidity to the mix) and there was the spicy kick from the bacon vinaigrette (tasted a bit like XO sauce) for the sublime finish. A surprisingly nice start to my lunch.
Okinawa pork belly, braised red cabbage, apple, house fermented pickles – I am guessing that the inspiration of this dish came from our Chinese braised pork belly with preserved vegetables (梅菜扣肉).
I thought the glazed pork belly was pretty nice. The extra acidity and spiciness caught me a little by surprise but all in all, a nice match with the red cabbage, apple and house pickles (despite I’m not a fan of dishes with acidity).
Milk chocolate cheesecake, hazelnut praline, fresh raspberries – I haven’t had cheesecake for the longest time, let alone chocolate cheesecake and this was very very good. It was light and airy; complemented nicely by the crunch of the hazelnut praline and acidity of the raspberries. A very well-balanced dessert.
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