ABC KITCHEN

The Ardent Gourmet

Restaurant Review: ABC KITCHEN

April 19, 2019

You walk into Queen Street Cooked Food Market like you were walking onto a yacht. Your hat strategically dipped below one eye. Your scarf it was apricot. STOP. How did that happen? Start over. You walk into Queen Street Cooked Food Market into a raucous party whose epicenter is a large round table with a Lazy-Susan entirely covered in bottles of hooch. People, in elevated spirits, are tilting back glasses and standing to make toast after toast. The buzz is as good as it gets and it hurt to realize you have not been invited, notwithstanding the fact that you know no one there and don’t speak Chinese. This is the real Hong Kong. It emphatically is not a rendition of Hong Kong conjured by a design group. You stroll the perimeter of the hall: shabby, tiled white like a morgue, fluorescent lit, cheaply furnished, in other words, delightful. There is an enticing Indian-Tibetan restaurant smacking out naan and enticing smells. There is a Vietnamese restaurant with a menu illuminated by hazy food photos that look as though they’ve been taken with a brownie camera circa 1960’s. There is another restaurant whose menu is completely in Chinese though its food looks tasty. There is a pizza joint that is closed. And there is ABC Kitchen (A Better Cooking Kitchen).

ABC Kitchen dishes high end European food minus all trappings of comfort, luxury, style, and service. It’s a jalopy presumably with a Mercedes engine. It’s a chefy hole-in-the-wall among other holes-in-the-wall. The waiters are bedraggled. One of them serves and answers customer inquiries on his cellphone at the same time. You approve. You can’t eat a tablecloth or a candle or mood music. The waiter isn’t coming home with you to meet your mother. What do all the externalities matter? Why pay for them? It’s the food that counts. Your wife is dubious but holds her fire. All will depend on the food.

Bread is a good bellwether. Their Parker House rolls are warm, vaguely spiced, and mainly tasteless as though they need salt. The cold chunk of butter would have sprung to life with a sprinkle of sea salt. They allay appetite, however, in anticipation of the first courses.

You go pan-fried foie gras, a small piece served with applesauce, toasted brioche, and salad. It comes out sizzling, perfectly cooked, but, oddly, almost tasteless. Some salt perks it up. Could it be that the kitchen is a little salt averse? The applesauce is certainly an easy foil for a busy kitchen, but far short of what could have been, for instance, caramelized apple or pear or quince or something figgy. The brioche is perfect. The salad, which includes some lovely bitter greens, is slightly over-dressed. In short, there are noble intentions but the dish falls short of what could have been with a bump more focus and effort. On the other hand, it is half the price of what it would have been elsewhere, no small point. Nor are you unhappy after having lapped up the last of the melted foie gras fat with the toasted brioche.

Seared foie gras with apple sauce and brioche

Your wife orders Roasted Razor Clams in lemon butter sauce. The clams are pristine, but you feel that they too are dressed by a timid hand. They need more lemon (or, better yet, minced, preserved lemon). They need a sprinkle of sea salt. In your view a strand or two of saffron would make them sing. The bread crumbs are from undistinguished bread and remind you of those pre-packed in a bag to stuff a turkey. (Or, it belatedly occurs to you, these are brioche crumbs, simply lacking the structural crumb for the job.) Someone with real chef chops created this dish, but, as with the foie gras, it’s as though the third stage booster to take it into orbit fails.

All the online reviews counsel suckling pig as a main course. First, though, you have to protest the term “suckling.” It is the mother who “suckles.” It is the baby who “sucks.” It should be “sucking pig.” Alas, everyone disagrees and you don’t choose to die on this hill. It is hot, the skin is crisp, the meat is exquisite, the gravy (no doubt made from the fat and probably stock from the bones) is rich and perfect. The sweet and sour red cabbage has a beguiling hint of perhaps clove. The mashed potatoes are superb. Your wife’s fork keeps sneaking over and only love prevents you from dealing it a blow. This dish is great!

Your wife orders sea bass atop what look like cannellini beans and bits of chorizo. The portly chunk of fish is pristine, cooked au point, and the beans perfectly al dente. The chorizo is a lovely accent in terms of taste and texture. Still, to nitpick, it needs something to elevate it from good to great. Preserved lemon comes to mind but that’s your go-to panacea and probably not right. Perhaps reduced fish stock, butter-enriched, with some herb to favor it. Tarragon? Lemon zest? Both? Once again though you’re not unaware that this dish is only half the price of what it would be elsewhere. And a fresh, perfectly cooked piece of bass is not trivial.

Some say that a souffle is the test of a chef’s mettle. It takes science and art to do right. Your wife’s Grand Marnier souffle is almost perfect (lofted high), but ever so slightly dry. You think a pinch more sugar and a soupcon of salt would help bring out the flavor of the Grand Marnier. Could the abstemious hand with the salt be the same as the abstemious hand with the sugar?

A Pavlova arrives with a layer of ice cream in a puddle of fresh passion fruit coulis decked with a medley of fruits. You violently and unsuccessfully fight your wife’s fork that snakes over to gouge a claim. It’s perfect!

You love the concept of ABC Kitchen. The place is radically streamlined for what counts (for you, at least), the food. You find its setting raffishly charming. All the food is good, some great. The price is a steal (800 HKD for your top flight meal for two with two starters, two mains, two desserts). You sense though a kitchen run by chefs who are punting. The fact that the menu has no specials seems to support this. You sense that they can punch and kick harder and you’d love to see them do so. Perhaps the venue doesn’t spark their fighting spirit.

You may come here again if you can collect a big group, friends of the grape (which you may bring with no corkage), up for a unique night. Or perhaps you’ll take an out-of-town visitor for a dose of the unexpected. You know there are price constraints, but if ABC Kitchen can somehow get the third stage booster working reliably then you and your wife certainly will return.

Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)

Food: 3.75

Ambiance: 5 (for those who favor louche)

Service: 0

Overall Value: 5

ABC KITCHEN

CF7 1/F Queen Street Cooked Food Market, 1 Queen St, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

+852 9278 8227