Justin Crap? lunch at Snappers

We had eagerly reserved our table about a month back when we heard reknown home grown chef, Justin Quek (of Les Amis fame) was bringing his whole team of staff from Taiwan to host meals at Snappers, Ritz Carlton for 3 days. Therefore, our expectations for the set lunch at $64 were pretty high..and I guess perhaps why we were even more dissapointed when the food turned out to be on the whole quite ordinary.

The entre on the set was a herbal duck consomme with herb cream foie gras dumpling. While waiting for that to arrive, the bread tray came along and all of us choose the good-looking olive buns..Sprinkled with rosemary and other herbs and topped with halves of olives, the bun was yummy :)

The starters finally arrived in time to stop us from finishing the whole lot of olice buns...I confess that until today, I am still not a foie gras fan and so, did not enjoy the super-rich foie gras filling in the dumpling. On the other hand, I found the soup quite enjoyable, tasty even..but M and A thought it was rather salty :p



Next came the seared romaine lettuce with king oyster mushroom and autumn dressing. Anything with mushrooms can't really go wrong..however, definitely more taste could be added into this dish - maybe it was supposed to be more on the subtle side so that it did not affect us from enjoying our mains?

For mains, we had a choice of poached ocean fish with ginger nates and fresh herbs OR grilled seared stirloin with bordeaux sauce. I choose the meat and the other 3 ladies went for the fish. This took really long to arrive and until today, we are still not sure if the fish was overcooked or is ocean fish supposed to have the texture of white steamed chicken? is was so tough that you needed the use of the knife to slice it. The herb sauce was the saving grace of this dish. My beef was ok, not much to shout about and even presentation wise - was unimpressive.

After the unsatisfying mains, we looked forward to dessert and were pleasantly surprised to be told by the waitress that there were 2 desserts which will be served and one was a "surprise" dessert..wooo..that sure piqued our curiosity. Shortly after, she came out carrying a plate with 2 open egg shells sitting prettily in a base of black sesame seeds. We took a shell each and under the layer of foamy froth, we discovered an excellent chocolate mousse and when we dug into the bottom of the shell, there were bits of hazelnut..YUM!

The 2nd dessert was a jasmine infused jelly with bits of pomelo and sides of a yogurtish sorbet. I found this a bit too sweet and something I could get from any of the local HK cha chan tengs.

Trying to end this with some good things to say..well, the wait staff, all flown in from Taiwan were a pleasant polite lot..always smiling and very accommodating (although service was really really slow!). And that choc mousse was really something else :).