Lung King Heen 龍景軒 (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★★☆

I got an unexpected call from Lung King Heen (龍景軒), the famed Chinese restaurant at Four Seasons Hotel two days ago asking me to re-confirm my table for today. Then my memories started to come back. Yeah, I have made a booking there a while ago!

It's been more than a decade since I last visited the first Chinese restaurant to win three Michelin stars in the world. Of course, there's a reason behind my deliberate absence in the past 10 years (check that 12 to be exact). Let's just say that I thought the three stars were a little too generous from the Michelin brass. 

I was hoping for some good weather this morning but it just wasn't meant to be.

In fact, I could recall my times dining at different restaurants in the hotel that the weather was always dismal. I could only hope that the food here would be more memorable than today's weather.

Starting things off was a small amuse, sweet and sour bean curd.

Steamed shrimp dumplings with bamboo shoots (筍尖鮮蝦餃) – Lung King Heen always has a rotating list of about 10 to 12 dim sums on their menu. I won't call the list very extensive but there are some really good finds including their steamed shrimp dumplings. 

Very lovely bouncy texture from the shrimps and nice crunch from the bamboo shoots. Solid start.

Steamed shrimp and pork dumplings with Yunnan ham (腿蓉蒸燒賣) – The har gow was immediately followed by a pair of delicate siu mai.

Love the fragrance from the Yunnan ham on top of the steamed dumplings.

Steamed vegetable dumplings with sweet corn (甘栗雜菌餃) – This came with fillings of diced vegetables, black fungus and sweet corn. While the bite was pretty nice, the only thing I could taste was the sweetness of the sweet corn.

Baked whole abalone puff with diced chicken (原隻鮑魚雞粒酥) – One of the restaurant's signature dim sum with a braised abalone sitting on top of a buttery puff.

This certainly wasn't bad. The abalone was very tender but a little less flavorful than I first anticipated.

Steamed lobster dumplings with water chestnut and coriander (香茜馬蹄龍蝦餃) – Another house specialty around here.

While the dumpling was absolutely packed with lobster meat, I thought the flavors were again more on the light side. The water chestnut and coriander did their parts in adding more textures into the mix but provided very little in terms of flavors to bring out the best in the lobster.

Baked barbecued pork buns with pine nuts (崧子叉燒菠蘿包) – These came piping hot as if they just came straight out of the oven.

The crispy bun meshed really well with the barbecued pork and the pine nuts surprised me with the additional texture.  

Crispy noodles with prawns and scallops (蝦球帶子炒麵) – Something never gets old! Like this old-school recipe of crispy noodles. 

These were finished off with a flavorful sauce along with prawns, scallops, mushrooms, carrots and kale on top. Very addictive.

We didn't order desserts but there was the complimentary sweet treat from the kitchen to send us home with a sweet ending. I thought the cookie with lotus seed paste really tasted a lot like a mini mooncake (and I am a sucker for traditional mooncakes!) but more successful was the wolfberry red date jelly (紅棗杞子糕) providing exactly what we needed to refresh our palate.

Surprisingly, a meal here didn't cost me an arm and a leg the way I thought it would. That was the good part. But something seems to be missing throughout this long anticipated lunch. I was searching for the right words and I guess, it's the wow factor. While the ingredients were top notch and the cooking was masterful, there was no wow factor from start to finish. Everything was just very very good but from a restaurant of its statue, we were really expecting far more than just very good.  

Food Rating: 7/10

Price: $$$$

Address: Level 4, Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, 8 Finance Street, Central, Hong Kong

Closest Metro Station: Central / Hong Kong

Tel: +852 3196-8880

Opening Hours: 11:30am - 2:30pm, 6:00pm - 10:00pm daily

S. Pellegrino Asia's 50 Best Restaurants: 47th (2021)