I recently came across the San Pellegrino's 2011 list of the best restaurants in the world. Considering the billions of eating joints around the world, I was very intrigued in finding out what really made these places stand out. I don't think I'll be able to review even a fraction of these restaurants but there's no harm trying. Of course the best place to start would be one of the 4 restaurants in Hong Kong on the list.
So that brings me to L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon at the Landmark in Central. It's ranked at 72 on the list of top 100. It's probably worth noting that the original L'Atelier in Paris is ranked 14.
Ok. Enough with the Rankings..on to the restaurant itself...food and service.
The seating area at L'Atelier is organized similar to a sushi counter with the chefs and cooks working in the middle surrounded by a counter top with high chairs. My friend and I were the first to arrive and were straight away shown to a our seats at the counter. For a few minutes we were the only pair at the counter and it seemed like an excellent opportunity for the person across the counter to strike up a conversation and get a few brownie points on service. Unfortunately that was lost. But she was very polite in taking our orders. In an endeavor to try as many dishes as I could, I ordered the extravagant 8 course Menu Decouverte. My friend chose the 4 course dinner.
A little while later another couple arrived and were seated next to us. It was disappointing to see that they were served with a bread basket ahead of us while we just sat there waiting. Eventually we got ours almost 5-10 mins after them. In most scenarios when restaurants are full and you can't really determine who arrived ahead of you, it's not really a big deal. But at an empty counter when it's blatantly obvious you were the first there and you get served last, it does reflect a certain carelessness and insensitivity in service. So straight away L'Atelier lost a few points there.
Coming to the breadbasket itself, as you can see, it was plentiful both in variety and quantity. The breads were warm (you could see one of the servers heating them in the oven before serving them) but apart from the generous portions nothing particularly stood out in taste.
The first dish served to both of us was an Amuse-Bouche of a cold savoury tomato jelly. It was a very refreshing dish to start service with. The texture and consistency of the jelly showed some really finesse in technique as it literally liquified in your mouth into something that carried the flavour of fresh tomatoes in a manner that was neither strong nor diluted. I was quite pleased with it.
After the pleasant start, came my first course, Le Caviar. Not being used to fine dining, when the dish was first served, I wondered if I was meant to eat it or put it up on my wall as some sort of award. It looked like a plaque. Coming to the dish itself, it was a small tin with a layer of salmon (I think) at the bottom, crab in the middle and caviar on the top. The three flavors and textures worked quite well together and I could distinctly taste each element. However overall, the dish tasted a bit fishy. Yes, yes, it's probably what I should expect when I'm eating fish eggs with fish and crabs but I've always heard and even experienced that fresh seafood does not taste fishy. So I'm not sure if the dish tasted the way it should have but I did like it.
My next course was Le Crabe. It was a crabmeat "mille-feuille" layered with tomato avocado and green apple. This dish looked very pretty on the plate in a pool of cold tomato consome (i don't know how else to describe it). However it was a hard dish to eat. I think the layers of tomato were frozen and when I tried to cut through it with the side of my fork, the layers slid over each other (I wasn't given a knife with this dish). I could taste the crabmeat and the tomato, but the avocado and green apple were too subtle for my taste buds. I could see the green but not taste it. Overall this dish looked a lot better than it tasted.
Then came Le Fois Gras. I don't recall what the menu description of the dish was, but it seemed like a pan-seared fois gras served with some sort of cherry sauce. The sauce and fois gras combination was delicious. A very good combination of sweet and savoury. My only complaint for this dish was there wasn't enough of it.
After the high of the fois gras came the low of my dinner that night, L'Oursin - the sea urchin. Having never tried sea urchin before, this dish has put me off it for a while. It was served with a layer of a foamy fennel emulsion on top. The sea urchin itself was a sort of fish puree like consistency which with the bubbles in the emulsion left a very sick feeling in my mouth. The taste itself was not bad, but the combination of textures is not something I want to try again anytime soon. I just hurried through this dish (having paid a lot of the whole meal..there was no way I was going to waste food...).
Finally came my main course, L'Agneau - the lamb. The lamb itself was juicy and cooked to just the right extent. It was served with some sort of a herbs sauce which went well with the lamb. There's not much I can say about this dish is that it's probably the only dish that tasted the way I expected it to taste. As a main the portion was very small, but then again, I guess most people are quite full by the time they get to the main on an eight course menu.
Finally came my two desserts. Any meal that includes two desserts definitely gets an extra point for it. By now you're probably as bored reading this as I am writing it, so all I'll say is that the desserts tasted as good as they look above. One was mango based. The other chocolate and berry. Yummy (for lack of technical terms).
Overall the experience of dining at L'Atelier was interesting. From the dishes you could see techniques that are very refined, innovative and that take years to perfect which is why this restaurant maybe ranked among the best. However I'm not totally convinced technique always results in good flavour. I don't believe the Menu Decouverte was really worth it. I got to taste a variety of dishes but I didn't really like all of them. The Dinner Menu which my friend had seemed more reasonable at about 1/3rd the cost with more sizable portions with pretty good flavour.
In addition as mentioned before, there were certain aspects of service that were not good. Since the kitchen is visible right in front of you, the staff need to take extra precautions for appearing hygienic. I noticed a cook in front of me working very diligently on plating a very complicated looking dish with his head about 6 inches over the plate. Like in Hell's kitchen when the main chef yells out the order, the other cooks acknowledge the order by yelling back. This cook yelled back right into the dish! I'm sure in most restaurants where you can't see the kitchen all sorts of things happen. But with food, sometimes what you don't see..doesn't hurt.
Anyway...I do recommend L'Atelier. They do some really innovative things with ingredients which is always refreshing to see. However the service does lack compared to expectations.
nice review! u sound like a professional. just reminded me of this funny thing french have "le something". we have this restaurant Le Peep in the next door shopping center and it has Le Breakfast, Le Brunch, Le Lunch. we were joking how if it was India, it would sound so rude. and there is another restaurant which says de omelette. now imagine going to a small eating place in india and the waiter says de omelette. anyway...i dont have the guts to try what u just tried at this restaurant but last saturday we ate snow crab legs for the first time. removing the meat from the shell was a task! i have recently started watching hells kitchen on hulu. reached 6th season. it is getting repetitive.
ReplyDeletehope to see more reviews and blog posts from you.
Thanks for commenting Nikita!
ReplyDeleteOh..I hate eating crabs from the shell. The energy put into taking the meat out is more than the energy got from the crab! but I must admit ..that sometimes it is really tasty...especially the Chilly Crabs in Singapore :)
Chetan....Sea Urchins taste awful....I never liked the texture. Also I shall be stealing stuff from your blog and passing them off as my own in conversation with people who don't know me.
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