The FoodMeUpScotty Top 10 of 2015 - Best Restaurants

Food Me Up Scotty 2015 Top Ten

It's hard to believe that my first year in Hong Kong is at an end.  It was exactly twelve months ago today that I hoped off the Qantas flight and stepped into my new life in Asia's most dynamic culinary city.  There are only a handful of cities around the world that truely have a reputation as being an epicentre for the culinary pursuits and Hong Kong just happens to be one of those few.  As a food blogger, that has meant that I've been like a kid in a candy store.

I've had time to reflect on my first twelve months and the amazing restaurant and dining experiences in which I've managed to partake.  While there have been well over a hundred restaurants I've checked out in my first year, there have only been a handful that I've repetitively revisited throughout the year, one of which has made my list.  

As you'd expect from a food capital, Hong Kong is home to many restaurant guides that have helped identify the standout dining establishments.  The Michelin Guide, the SCMP Top 100 Tables, the Hong Kong Tatler are all well known guides that mostly get it right but sometimes get it very wrong, with one of my favourite restaurants of all time losing it's Michelin Star.  I have to say that I'm excited to be living in a city that is part of the Michelin family, but I've also come to understand that the guide is fallible.

Tate Dining Room and Bar - a standout in a city with standouts

http://www.tate.com.hk/about

There is a mind boggling number of restaurants in Hong Kong, in fact, it's pretty hard to get your head around how many there really are.  Practically everywhere you go, every building, has a dining room of some kind.  To put that in context, there are over seven million people and around 6,000 skyscrapers in the greater Hong Kong area.  Open Rice, Hong Kong's main online restaurant guide, lists around 79,000 restaurants, so finding a restaurant is not a problem.  Finding a great restaurant is the challenge.

Walking around, I see lots of restaurants that I'd like to get back to and visit, but with so many around, I often forget which ones I want to get back to.  We were walking up Elgin on Saturday night, just looking around, when we walked past a stylish little dining room that looked the goods.  It helped that there was a cute little horse head that held up a quaint little sign that stated the restaurant open.  Triggering a memory, I checked my list of Michelin Starred restaurants I wanted to visit and sure enough, the little restaurant was on my list!

Tate Dining Room and Bar is the creation of Vicki Lau, a graduate of New York University in Graphic Communication.  With an obvious flare for the creative, Vicki commenced a recreational endeavour at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu, one of the worlds most prestigious hospitality education institutions.  It was a decision that would set the course of Vicki's life and out her as one of the Region's most creative and influential chefs.  Combining an appreciation of design with the culinary arts, Tate has won a coveted Michelin Star from 2013 through to 2015, culminating in being named Asia's best female chef.