ISONO Eatery and Bar - the more casual Spanish spot

http://www.isono.com.hk/

One of my top rated restaurants from 2015 was Vasco, Spanish fine dining.  You can read all about it here in my Top 10 of 2015. While Vasco is the ultimate in fine dining, there is a much more relaxed and casual feel about ISONO, the Spanish style tapas restaurant run by Drawing Room Concepts, the team behind Vasco and numerous other restaurants around Hong Kong.

Located on the sixth floor of Soho's very own arts precent, PMQ, ISONO eatery and bar shares many of the same traits as its more distinguished older brother.  The menu was created by Executive Chef Paolo Casagrande, drawn from his memories and experiences as a child in the Mediterranean.  If you're not familiar with Paolo Casagrande, his main game is at the Two Michelin starred Lasarte in Barcelona, but he lends his expertise and name to both Vasco and ISONO.

We'd been eyeing off checking out ISONO for a while, but it took one of those serendipitous moments to eventually get us in for dinner.  We were at a genuine loss one night walking home from work....  We simply had no idea about what we felt like for dinner and were getting a little frustrated trying to pin down one restaurant to visit.  It just so happened that we were walking along Hollywood Road and only a few steps away from the PMQ.  With no reservation, we hedged our bets that we'd be able to score a table as a walk in.

Mecca Bah - when it all goes wrong, when do you pull the plug?

http://www.meccabah.net/

You're out at a restaurant and things are not going well.  At what point do you realise that you've made a huge mistake?  At what point do you move past considering storming out and actually storm out?  I was able to contemplate these and many other similar questions recently when we visited the Mecca Bah over at Emporium in the Valley.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  We had had a particularly difficult week at work and were in need of a nice meal to take our minds off our recent long days in the office.  Of course we have our favourite spots that we could have easily visited (Hello Esquire), but being a food blogger, I want to check out new places a lot of the time.  I have a long list of restaurants that I want visit, either for the first time, or go back to because I've not been since starting my blog.

I started down my list which started off with an old favourite of mine, Kingsley's Steak and Crab house, which is just across the street and would have been very easy to get to.  Amazingly, for the second night in a row, there were no tables available until after 8pm.  Scratch that.  Next up was a spot that I had never been to, Byblos over at Hamilton but even more amazingly no one answered their phone and after three attempts, I gave up and moved down my list.

Gerards Bistro - Even at the Best new Restaurant things can go wrong

http://www.gerardsbistro.com.au/

There seems to be an increasing instance of restaurant shopping in Brisbane.  Restaurant shopping is where people book into several restaurants on a busy night, usually a Friday or a Saturday night, then decide on the day which restaurant they will go to.  This usually happens when there is a group of people involved, so the potential loss for restaurants is huge when people don't turn up.  This was such a big problem in Melbourne that many restaurants are moving to a no reservation policy.  Not cool.

We experienced the results of an environment where restaurant shopping happens at one of the better restaurants around town last weekend, Gerard's Bistro.  Restaurants are forced to call people who make reservations for confirmation and if they can't get onto you, the assumption is made that you won't be turning up and your booking is cancelled.  In hip new restaurants like Gerard's, the spot is filled up pretty quickly.  So picture this, we turn up for our 7:30 reservation for TB's birthday dinner, which has been booked months in advance and are told that we don't have a booking.  Pretty disappointing indeed, but  what was worse was that TB was made to look and feel silly with the question asked 'Are you sure you're not confused?'

We had all been to Gerard's many times and were a bit incredulous that this question would be asked, damn you restaurant shoppers, but after some investigation were told that we did have a booking but it was cancelled in the afternoon, after they 'called' TB and she cancelled the booking.  I'm not sure who was called, but the fact that we were all standing around at our allotted booking time should have been an indication otherwise.  I'm not sure who was called but it was not us and we were left with a conundrum, wait at a very busy Gerards for a table to open up or look elsewhere.  Right, look elsewhere in the Valley at 7:30 on a Saturday night, not likely.