The Ocean and Pure Berlin Collaboration: The 4 Hands Dinner

http://www.theocean.hk/#home & http://www.pure-berlin.com/en/about.html

Service and luxury begin long before you enter the front door of The Ocean restaurant over in beachside Repulse Bay.  It's a little known secret that I'm about to expose, but there is a limousine service available from the newly opened restaurant by fine dining restaurant group Le Comptior.  With a fleet of Tesla electric motor vehicles, the group combines luxury and an environmentally friendly approach that is reflected in the group's food philosophy.

Since my first visit to The Ocean, which was a little bit of a mixed bag (see post here), we've been over to Chef Agustin Balbi's fine dining seafood restaurant a couple of times.  It's fair to say that we've come to love the inventive styling of Chef Balbi and his dedication to creating delectable and creative plates of food, centering on seafood.  

So it was great excitement that we travelled from our apartment courtesy of the limousine service to the special collaboration event planned by Chef Balbi and the way-out-crazy-dudes from Pure Berlin.

If you've never heard of Pure Berlin, then your probably not alone, but the avant garde concept group  out of the German capital are looking to establish Germany as the next international culinary trend destination.  Chief idea maker of Pure Berlin and food designer Miles Watson (actually a Kiwi) had decided to take their ideas on the road and the collaborative meal at The Ocean was a stop on the tour.

The Ocean Repulse Bay - A tale of two lunches

http://www.theocean.hk/#home

I should have known something was up.  We'd just placed our orders and one of Hong Kong's hottest new dining spots and I wasn't feeling the love from our waiter.  There had been a level of enthusiasm from our waiter as he'd taken down SC's entree and main choices, in fact, he'd enthused that they were exactly the choices he would have made.  I'd received no such assurances when I'd placed my order.  As I said, I should have known something was up.

But I get a head of myself.

We'd picked probably the worst day imaginable to check out the new fine dining seafood restaurant over at Repulse Bay.  The sky was angry that day my friends, stormy clouds abounding and precipitation falling from the sky.  By the time our taxi dropped us off behind the Pulse Shopping centre, it was definitely anything but a great day for the beach.

Arriving for our 1pm lunch sitting at The Ocean restaurant, we were walked to our table in the middle of the restaurant.  I noticed a couple of things, there was an immense feeling of space in the dining room, with huge comfortable seats, arranged facing floor to ceiling windows, that in summer would provide spectacular views of the beach and islands further out.  There was a decent amount of space between the seats too, giving the feeling that we were alone in our own little paradise.

Porterhouse by Laris - a brilliant lunch set menu

http://porterhousebylaris.com.hk/

In my short time in Hong Kong, I've had some of the most amazing, and most expensive meals of my life.  I mean, seriously expensive meals where I've walked out of a restaurant in shock and with 'buyers remorse'.  This is a symptom of a lot of great restaurants, but largely the fact that practically all food has to be imported to Hong Kong.

It's why I am completely amazed by the fact that you can go to some of those same amazing restaurants for lunch and get a similar feed for a fraction of the price.  I'm not really sure why, but there is a thriving lunchtime food scene in Hong Kong and it's really, really cheap.  I was again reminded of this phenomenon recently when we went out for a team lunch and hit up new spot Porterhouse by Laris.

Located in the newly renovated, and might I say now impressive looking California Tower in Lan Kwai Fong, and established by Aussie Chef David Laris, Porterhouse is a contemporary and upscale steak house more akin to the Australian version of a steak restaurant than the currently stylish 'Steak Frites' places dotted around Hong Kong.  No stranger to working overseas, Chef Laris had spent time refining his trade in London's Mezzo before moving to Shanghai and establishing his own award winning restaurants.

London - MazeGrill, the more casual Gordon Ramsay

https://www.gordonramsayrestaurants.com/maze-grill-mayfair/

London is the home base for Gordon Ramsay, so I made it my mission to visit one of the great chef's restaurants during my recent visit.  It turned out to be easier said than done!  First on my list was the three Michelin starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsey, a must for any foodie visiting London.  Nope, no chance of getting in!  Next on my list was one of Gordon's first great restaurants, Petrus, and while I could secure a seat at around 9:30pm, it was a bit too late for a reservation.

And so I worked down the list of Gordon Ramsay restaurants until I was able to secure a seat.  I ended up getting a table at Maze, not the Michelin starred Maze, but the more casual MazeGrill located in Mayfair.  You know the old saying, beggars can't be choosers!  I was just happy to be getting along to a Ramsay restaurant at all, and thankfully, I ended up having one of my best nights in London!

I'd had some time to kill and found myself wandering around Mayfair for about an hour before my allotted reservation time.  Wow, you can certainly get a feel for the wealth of the area, it's quite a spectacular little patch of Planet Earth.  After getting my fill of seeing the wealthy side of London, I made my way to the beautiful old building that housed MazeGrill to get my fill of some delicious food.

Sky Bar - seafood-oyster-dessert, two out of three ain't bad?

http://www.mrsteak.com.hk/TheSkyBar.aspx

So far in Hong Kong, I've not had the best of runs when it comes to seafood.  More often than not, I've ended up a little sick after chomping down on a seafood meal.  I wanted to put an end to that trend, so we decided to check out the Sky Bar, a little spot in Causeway Bay that is known for it's seafood.  Part of the Mr Steak Concept group that runs a heap of steak restaurants around Hong Kong (and one that I would later visit), The Sky Bar takes a bit of a different track and is a bar restaurant that dabbles in a little bit of every style but is mostly about the seafood. 

Getting to The Sky Bar meant traversing the city to get to Causeway Bay, which is probably one of the busiest and most densely populated parts of Hong Kong.  It's always a bit of a challenge, especially since the usual pace of people walking about is slow and very slow!  Not only is Causeway Bay one of the more densely populated spots on the planet, it's also the most expensive commercial real estate on the planet and I wondered if the Sky Bar location would factor into the pricing of the meal.

After surviving the crush, we arrived at the Sky Bar at was apparently staff change over time.  We were shown to our seats and given menus, then promptly ignored for about 15 minutes while the staff settled in for a team meeting and pep up session.  It was kind of amusing to see but also a little frustrating as we wanted to eat!

The Pawn - The British invasion continues

http://www.thepawn.com.hk/

In 1997, after over 150 years of ruling Hong Kong, the British handed back control to China amongst much fear and anxiety. That anxiety was largely unfounded.  In 2015, it seems as if Briton's imperialist aspirations have returned, only this time it takes a very different form.  It's UK chefs that are taking control of Hong Kong, and it's the dining scene that is seeing an invasion of the UK's top chefs.  

When you think of the UK chefs establishing themselves in Hong Kong, it's usually names like Gordon Ramsey (see post here), Jamie Oliver and Jason Atherton (see post here and here) that spring to mind.  However, they're not the only well known celebrity chefs expanding their global network of dining establishments.  Tom Aikens may not be the first chef you'd think of when talking UK chefs, but that could be about to change.  One of the stable of well known chefs that have dominated Great British Menu, Tom was over visiting his Hong Kong outpost, The Pawn.  Of course, we had to get along and check it out.

The Pawn is located in one of the last remaining heritage buildings left in Wan Chai. The Pawn recently went through major renovations, which thankfully kept much of it's heritage charm. Aikens, working with HK group the Press Room Group, has collaborated as consultant chef and brings his uniquely British take on casual fine dining.  The dining room sits atop two bar areas, which we had to traverse to get to the restaurant, having failed to notice the main entrance on Tai Wong Street.  Instead, we'd taken a dark and narrow staircase up through one of the bars, before finding our way to a rickety elevator to take us the dining floor.

A night at the Spandau Ballet - Gold by Harlan Goldstein

http://www.hongkongin360.com/virtualtours/gold/001/

We have discovered that dining in Hong Kong is slightly different to Australia, in that it is more difficult to just walk in to a restaurant and ask for a table without a reservation, even if the restaurant is mostly empty.  With this in mind I had decided to make a reservation for dinner at Gold by Harlan Goldstein on a Friday night.  Unfortunately on the night in question FMUS was still suffering from a stomach bug, so we had to reschedule to the following week.  Finally that night was here, and we headed in for what we hoped to be a good meal at the flagship restaurant of one of Hong Kong's more prolific restauranteurs.

Harlan Goldstein is a New Yorker who worked under 3-Michelin starred chef Jean Banchet in Chicago, before travelling to Asia and working at some of the top hotel restaurants in the region.  He moved to Hong Kong and, after working at the Aberdeen Marina Club, has now opened his own stable of restaurants in Hong Kong.  We had eaten at one of his other restaurants very early in our Hong Kong experience (see post here) and were impressed with the simple yet tasty dishes served.  We were hoping that with a Michelin star, Gold would top our experience at Penthouse. 

Dot Cod Seafood Restaurant and Oyster Bar - Our first HK meal

http://www.dotcod.com/

Wow, it seems like an age since I've sat down at my computer to share some of my latest foodie adventures. In fact, when I sit back and reflect, it's probably been a month since my last update, which for me is a lifetime!

I guess a lot has happened in the last month and it's taken me a while to settle down and find the time to write about my food escapades. While I haven't been writing, you can be sure that there has been eating!

Where do I start, well, to begin with, I'm sitting in a serviced apartment in my new home of Hong Kong - yep, that's right, if you didn't know it, I've moved to Hong Kong.  New year, new job and new country.  Exciting.  But what does that mean for my blog?  Well, FoodMeUpScotty has always been about my food adventures, so now they're just a little more exotic than they used to be.  International food blogger has a nice ring to it :)

Right, down to business.  Our flight to HK was awesome and our QANTAS flight produced some pretty decent food by Rockpool head, Neil Perry.  While the food was OK, by the time we landed in Hong Kong, we were still pretty hungry. So, after the ride from the airport to our apartment and a quick test walk to my new place of work, we found ourselves on the hunt for a late dinner.

We were in Central Hong Kong, with absolutely no idea where to find food, where to find much that was open and just a little tired and cranky from the flight.  We'd spied a set of steps leading down to a little restaurant called Dot Cod and while we didn't necessarily feel like seafood for dinner, our hunger got the better of us and we found ourselves gravitating towards the entrance of the restaurant.

G20 Global Flavours - Il Centro

http://www.il-centro.com.au/

http://www.visitbrisbane.com.au/global-flavours

Well, the G20 has been and gone and it went of without a hitch, pretty much.

It was interesting living in the CBD and watching the city clear out and on the Friday and Saturday of the event, Brisbane was indeed much like a ghost town....  During the day. At night, the city came alive with all of the dignitaries and city dwellers out and about seeing what was going on.

However, there was more to the G20 event than the leaders of the world coming to our fair city to discuss, well I'm not really that interested in what they discussed, but there was more going on than met the eye.  Given that the eyes of the world were on Brisbane, it's was (and still is) a huge opportunity for us to showcase our fair city and all that it has to offer.

In conjunction with Brisbane Marketing, many of Brisbane's best restaurants have joined the party by participating in a month of foodie celebrations.  Global Flavours is the culinary celebration of Brisbane's international-standard cuisine and local produce.  I'd been asked to help promote this once in a lifetime event by doing the tough job of visiting some of the restaurants that are involved - yeah, I know, but someone's gotta do it.  You can also get involved by visiting one of the city's participating restaurants and enjoying the best that Brisbane has to offer during the month of November.  See the complete list here.

Aqua Linea - Riverside dining at Teneriffe

http://www.aqualinea.net/

With so many restaurants in Brisbane to check out, it can be quite a daunting experience to find a dining spot that I've not visited.  Sometimes, it's pretty easy. The bright and shiny new restaurant opens and you just have to check it out - often leading to an amazing experience (see post about Black Bird here).  But as strange as it seems sometimes, there is not a new restaurant opening every week of the year in Brisbane, so at times I need to look for established restaurants that I've missed out on visiting.  My favourite way of picking such a restaurant looking through the latest edition of the Entertainment Book.

The thing I love about the Entertainment Book, and the reason why I spend the $65 dollars on purchasing it each year, is that it's a great way to save money.  All of the restaurants included give some sort of discount, be it a main meal for free or a discount on the entire meal.  That's a pretty sweet deal when you eat out quite a bit!  

We listed out a few restaurants that looked pretty good and then after checking out the restaurant websites, decided upon Aqua Linea, which had a pretty awesome looking menu and some spectacular looking food photos on the site. The first time we'd noticed Aqua Linea was during the first ever Teneriffe Festival when the streets around Teneriffe were closed off and we could walk around and explore the area.  It was also a restaurant that came to my attention when a buddy at work asked for a list of restaurant recommendations, then decided to ignore the list and head over to Aqua Linea instead. 

Tides Waterfront Dining - stylish dining in Caloundra

http://www.tideswaterfront.com.au/

Caloundra is not a spot that you would usually associate with Fine Dining or hatted restaurants, in fact, when I think of Caloundra, I usually think of pub dining and RSL clubs.  We've spent a lot of time up at Caloundra over the years, primarily because both of SC's sisters and their families live up that way. In all the time we have been visiting, I never thought to look for a top restaurant to visit, and it wasn't until we were spending the day in the beachside suburb for an unusual activity that we decided to look.

Roller Derby is not the usual type of activity that I would be interested in, but SC's youngest sister 'Bill' had recently started hanging out with a rough crowd (well, not completely true) and their thing was Roller Derby. 'Bill' had been practicing this arcane and unusual sport for some time and the time had finally arrived for her to get involved in her first formal game.  If you're not sure what Roller Derby is, you're not alone but it's essentially one of those American sports that was popular in the 70's which has made a resurgence.  The sport (I use the term loosely!) involved a bunch of females on roller skates, skating around an oval and trying to knock the crap out of each other.  I'm sure there are some complexities and rules to the game, but that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

Knowing that I'd likely not be too interested in spending my evening watching this, SC cleverly packaged up the day with a lunchtime visit to an award winning beachside diner.  Hitting all of the right buttons, SC had found a lovely restaurant that recently retained it's Australian Good Food Guide chefs hat.  Tides at Caloundra is one of only seventeen restaurants on the Sunshine Coast that have been awarded chefs hats and proudly display on their website that they are the only Caloundra restaurant to have one.....  How could I not be tempted to check it out?

Casual Dining - The Fox Hotel

http://www.thefox.com.au/

**Please note, the all you can eat mussels offer has now finished - sorry

I'm not really a pub kind of guy and I'm definitely not going to head over to a public bar and sit down to have a few beers.  I get the concept of a pub/bar/hotel, it's a place where you go and hang out with mates, sink a few beers and quite often, get on the punt. Yeah, there is a list of things that just does not excite me.

That doesn't mean that I don't love having pubs around, I think they are essential to the vibe and the life blood of a city.  Architecturally they can be amazing and given that many hotels and pubs around have been built in the 1800's they often have a long and interesting history.

The Fox Hotel is one of the original pubs to be built in Queensland and was constructed in the late 1800's and was originally known at the Terminus Hotel, ostensibly as the end of a tram route.  Like many old buildings in Brisbane, the old Terminus Hotel has had its fair share of good and bad fortune, including almost burning to the ground during the 1920's.  Over the years, it's also had many facades and taken on many different forms, including a stint as a backpackers hostel.  Not too many of the ventures have lasted too long and as a consequence, the Fox Hotel has been through renovation after renovation, trying to hit the right market.

I'd been to the Fox Hotel to check out one of it's more recent ventures, the Meatball Company (see post here) and thought it was not too bad, but as fortune would have it, the Meatball Co has made way for a new restaurant - Fish Lane Bistro.  But this post is not about a pretty cool looking new bistro - it's about quite possibly the most amazing food offer in Brisbane, the all-you-can-eat Mussels deal.

Smolt - My Hobart Experience

http://www.smolt.com.au/

Hobart is just about as far away as you can get from Brisbane, excluding Perth of course, and I recently had cause to visit the capital city of the 'Apple Isle' for a whirlwind 24 hour period.  There are not a lot of direct flights to Hobart from Brisbane, but I was lucky enough to score a direct flight that would leave me with enough time to grab a late lunch.  So the question any reasonable foodie will ask in a situation like this is 'where do I go for lunch?'  

There are quite a few lovely looking restaurants in Hobart, but there is not a big blogger scene in the city, so I didn't have as many points of reference to do some research.  Of course I did a little bit of a poll on Twitter and had a few good suggestions (thanks Lani) but most of the great restaurants in Hobart are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.  Not being able to chose the day of my visit, it was a Tuesday and I had to deal with the hand dealt to me.  While I was somewhat limited, there were still some great options available to me and I had to decide on one.

There is a really cool area on the harbour at Hobart called Salamanca Place, which is well known for its Markets and shops, so I thought that this would be a great place to start looking.  Salamanca Place consists of rows of old sandstone buildings that were formerly warehouses for the port of Hobart Town, now converted to restaurants, galleries and 'ye olde worlde' shops.  I have to say its really cool looking and there is nothing in Brisbane that really compares, in fact it really reminded me of the Rocks in Sydney.

Helm Surfers - A surprise packet on the Gold Coast

http://www.helmbarsurfers.com.au/

This has been a very cold and very wet winter so far and I have not enjoyed it at all.  So when I had the opportunity to head down to the Gold Coast to check out a new restaurant, Helm Bar and Bistro, I was pretty happy to leave Brisbane behind, for a few hours at least.  It's pretty amazing really, as cold and miserable as it can be in the Queensland capital, just sixty odd kilometres down the road is a completely different story.

We were pretty lucky really, it was one of the few weekends where the sun had been out and while it was still pretty cold, there is nothing worse than heading down to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast on a rainy day.  It has been ages since I last visited the Gold Coast, the glitz and glamour of the nation's holiday strip does nothing to excite me.  In fact the last time we went down we had a pretty disappointing meal at a (then) hatted restaurant.

I alway forget how easy it is to get to the Gold Coast nowadays, with a pretty good road that is going to get better once the fourth freeway lane opens up and traffic flows even better.  What I always forget though, is how painful the bottleneck is when you get off the Pacific Motorway and head towards The Spit, it was like a car park.  It was also pretty painful driving into Surfers as well, with heaps of roadworks and lots of crazy coast drivers.

Riverbar & Kitchen - new kid on the river

http://riverbarandkitchen.com.au/

Every once and a while something good comes out of something bad.

A while ago, Brisbane suffered through its worst flooding in over 30 years and many of Brisbane's riverside restaurants and bars were impacted.  The Boardwalk Bar and Bistro was one of the unfortunate restaurants that was not able to recover and the spot remained vacant for around 18 months.

Sometimes misfortune leads to opportunity and Matt Moran has taken that opportunity with both hands, picking up arguably the prime spot on the Brisbane river to launch his new establishment with partner Peter Sullivan.  This is the second venture for the pair in Brisbane, with Aria Brisbane now being one of Brisbanes best restaurants.  Riverbar and Kitchen departs a little from the fine dining of Aria and is a much more relaxed environment that has already become a favourite of the Brisbane afterwork set.


As luck would have it, I had two Christmas events in two days at Riverbar and experienced both the afterwork feel on Wednesday night and then lunch on Thursday, pretty serendipitous really.  Both times I have been at Riverbar and the numerous times I have been out for a jog and run by, I have never seen it quiet, in fact it's pretty much always packed.  There are not many new openings in Brisbane that can lay claim to that......

Wednesday night was an industry event and there were a heap of my peers from the Contact Centre industry gathered together to enjoy a drink and a feed to celebrate the year that was.  As usual it was great to catch up with people from my industry and share experiences and, on this night, share a meal.  The style on the night was to be big plates of share food brought out to the tables along with 'finger food' and there was plenty of it to go around.

First up were Cajun Chicken Pies with Avocado which were quite nice; creamy sauce with well cooked chicken and crunch pastry.  The avocado added a nice dimension and for a chicken 'party pie' it was pretty good.  The next finger food out was Peking Duck Pancakes with Shallots, which were OK, a little dry with no real sauce on offer to offset the dry ingredients.  The duck was nicely cooked and the pancakes fresh and tasty.  I had a couple of these and enjoyed them, but where was the dipping sauce?  Pizza was next and what better way to have pizza than on a 10 foot long wooden board with the pizza placed in pieces in a straight line?  Even better, my favourite, Margarita!  The pizza was pretty good, nice crispy base and a lovely rich tomato sauce and melted mozzarella.   It's amazing how may restaurants get a simple margarita wrong, happily Riverbar is not one of them.

My favourite bite of the night was the Salt & Pepper Squid, Coriander & Lime which were supremely cooked and literally melted in my mouth.  I have not had better cooked calamari and they had a lovely heat to them with a little chilli, just delicious (orgasmic with a squeeze of lemon).  It's amazing how a simple bucket of prawns can make you smile, but we had at least three buckets of prawns, so my smile was big!  Cooked perfectly and peeled for us, they went really well with the cocktail sauce provided, my second favourite dish of the night.  Sticking with fish there were deep fried shrimp which were not that interesting and I didn't really enjoy, they were a bit too much like a cheap Chinese dish.

Last of the dishes I tried was a bucket of fish and chips with tartare sauce.  I am not sure what fish was on offer tonight but it tasted OK, but the batter was a bit soggy with big tartare dollops on the fish.  Not a pleasant texture and the chips were the same, a bit soggy too and definitely the worst of the dishes tonight.

Because I loved them so much, I have included another photo of the calamari.  Seriously, get down to Riverbar and order some.

Next day was a celebration lunch for the project team I have been working with and was a more traditional sit down affair.  The menu at Riverbar & Kitchen is split into a number of sections;  Bar food (sampled last night which is pretty much share plates), Pizza, Salads and Mains.  Prices range from $28-$30 for mains and about $15-$18 for everything else.  Most of us decided to have mains, but a couple of the team shared some bar food (which I talked about earlier)

My selection for lunch was the Wood fired prawn, romesco sauce and lime and when the plate was first delivered my initial thought was that it was a generous plate of prawns.  The prawns were large and five of the six were perfectly cooked, with one of them being a bit under and a bit slimy.  The romesco sauce was delightful, with a rich tomato flavour that worked really well with the prawns, however, there needed to be more of the sauce to balance out the dish.  There was a lot of salad here as well, which as it turns out was used to 'pad' the dish, making it look more substantial than it was.  I think for the price, another couple of prawns would have been appreciated.

There is no doubt that Matt Moran is onto another winner here with Riverbar and Kitchen.  It's a fantastic spot and was crying out for another reasonably priced option in amongst the fine dining that surrounds it.  Overall the food was pretty good, but not without its faults.  My one under-cooked prawn was a shocker but probably the biggest issue was the timing of the meals coming out.  There were about 9 of us there for lunch and pretty much none of the meals came out together.  Some of us were finished before others had their food delivered.  Ours was not the only table that was experiencing this, with general comments and observations from other tables showing the same occurring.

I'm being a bit critical here as the Riverbar and Kitchen has not yet been open a week, but am positive that these teething issues will be resolved, after all, how many new restaurants are packed out so completely in the first week, with standing room only?

Riverbar and Kitchen is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner 7 days a week and there is no doubt in my  mind that it will continue to be a favourite for some time to come.  I think I will wander down over the weekend to check out the breakfasts!

@FoodMeUpScotty

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BS had the Linguine, asparagus, pesto & herb.  Well cooked pasta and asparagus that could had done with some
more of the tomato to help balance out the pesto and herbs.  Quite a small size as well

KK had the seared kingfish, ginger, ponzu and miso.  This looked beautiful on the plate and was extremely tasty

Pretty much packed out everytime I have been by.  This is a great sign for the Riverbar and the Eagle Street
precinct in general

A definite nautical theme throughout, which is well suited to the river