Airside Cafe (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★☆☆

It's been a while since we last had a new shopping mall of this size in Hong Kong. For weeks, Airside was raring to go and it finally happened over the long weekend. 

Everyone in the city was super excited about the opening as seen by the huge turnout.



I have been doing my homework since last week on some of the new restaurants available at Airside. There were some familiar names including Airside Cafe, which was under the ownership of Cafe Deco. Remember that name?

Looking at Airside Cafe's food menu, this is very similar to the one at Cafe Deco Pizzeria, another brand under the same group that offers contemporary Italian dishes with an Asian twist. I wonder why they didn't open another Cafe Deco Pizzeria here instead.

There were a lot of frustrations seen from the customers here. At 12:30pm, a ton of dishes including oyster croquette, fries and mashed potatoes were already sold out. I don't know how they survive through until dinner service. Then, it was the slow service. My neighbours waited more than half an hour for a simple pasta dish and when they saw the small portion, they couldn't help but keep shaking their heads in disbelief. Of course, I didn't even mention about the folks lining up at the reception. I know there's an unexpected number of customers showing up at the mall but perhaps, the hostess should simply jot down their names and phone numbers so they could be contacted whenever a table gets freed up?

Anyways, we didn't have such problem cuz I never wait in a queue for more than 5 minutes. Two days ago, I have already made necessary arrangement to ensure that we have a table for lunch. Hassle free.

Fettuccine carbonara, egg yolk, parmesan – Like I mentioned just now, this was seriously small but at least we didn't wait for half an hour. The fettuccine pasta was nicely tossed in a creamy carbonara sauce with the pancetta providing some lovely bite.

Cured hamachi, spiced kombu butter, chives – The hamachi tartare was served with these crispy crackers on the side.

Apart from the spiced kombu butter and fresh chives, there was a mix of radish, green pea purée and salmon roes there to match the sweetness of the hamachi. I like it.

Beef cheek, dark beer, celeriac purée, glazed carrot – The cheek was seriously tender and I like how they paired it with a rich and gluey sauce made with dark beer and presumably the beef jus. 

Three Yellow Chicken, mushroom, barley, fermented cabbage – Every French/European restaurant seems to be doing Three Yellow Chicken these days so why not here as well?

The chicken itself was nicely executed preserving the juiciness and tenderness of the meat rather well but the assorted mushrooms and barley didn't seem to be part of the dish at all. Weird!  

With this small portion, this kid easily took down the entire fettuccine carbonara on his own.

Instead of ordering more dishes at Airside Cafe and risking the chance of waiting for an hour for a single dish, we decided to venture elsewhere for dessert. Little nugget spotted these Basque cheesecakes at a bakery shop and he got grandma to buy a trio of them for him.

Delicious and very filling, he said!!! 👦👦

Food Rating: 5.5/10 

Price: $$$

Address: Shop L322-L323, 3/F, AIRSIDE, 2 Concorde Road, Kai Tak, Kowloon City, Hong Kong

Closest Metro Station: Kai Tak

Tel: +852 2117-1912

Opening Hours: 12:00pm - 9:30pm daily