Xi Yue (八月芳), Cantonese restaurant, Taikoo Place, Quarry Bay, HK

Maxim's group has diversified their restaurants into quite a no. of branches. A good strategy to target various clientele, esp. this branch to catch some higher spending consumers in the prime commercial hub of Eastern HK. When this Xi Yue was announced to replace the old Shanghai restaurant in Taikoo Place, I was really looking forward to it as it's claimed to be authentic Cantonese cuisine, but....

1/2. the table setting. This restaurant offers some special flower tea to make it a difference from the conventional Chinese tea. Pretty good.

3/4. Three chilled (HK$108) - Abalone, cucumber and jelly fish. After I finish the abalone and some jelly fish, some cucumber were found. It turned out 3 cups of cucumber. The chef shouldn't make it this way since the middle is not one of the features when the other 2 also are cucumber. This is a very careless mistake and we were talking about "authentic" Cantonese cuisine. They should put other preserved veggie like celery, carrot, turnip, cabbage, black fungas...etc. So many to choose. One more careless mistake - it's the mustard. It's bitter. As when I asked the waiter to give me some white vinegar, his reply "our kitchen doesn't have white vinegar. What about red one?". I simply handed him the mustard and relayed to him "your kitchen didn't put enough vinegar in it and it's quite bitter. The red vinegar can't go in it.". So a kitchen without white vinegar and it's a HK Cantonese restaurant? Then what would they use for some dishes like sweet and sour pork? Only tomato sauce??

5. The menu titled it as 精選時菜炒手切牛肉 (Selected seasonal veggie stir fried with hand-cut beef). That's really "painting a leg on a snake". I don't even talk about "authentic", any Cantonese kitchen needs to train their chef to cut meat and other ingredients in practice for years. However, someone may be misled to think of this dish as something special. 6. Egg white with tomato. A very wrong cooking. The egg white was overcooked and it's like "tree peel". Besides, they peel the tomato. This is so wrong. Tomato peel has its nice aroma. Some restaurants often think tomato peel is useless and not good to chew, but they often miss this important point. Without it, it's just something very bland and most of all, they put too much sugar in it.

7. Half baby suckling pig (HK$118). When it was served, I asked the captain "where is the leg?". Then he replied "oh, our BB pig doesn't have legs.". I got stunned "har, a pig without legs? Good that it has head then!". Regardless of the legs, it's not good and they should simply send someone to go check East Ocean on how they make this one. 8. The irritating part is that they use some low class seafood sauce to be thicken with cornstarch and spread heavily on the inside of it. It turned out a muddy seafood sauce is in your mouth!

9. So what attracts the customers are this kind of deco. 10. the Entrance and as you can see on the top right "original taste". Really interesting.

*In conclusion, my friend wondered why I stayed silent after all these. Like I posted earlier in http://whispalms.blogspot.com/2010/07/claiming-horse-as-deer-peking-garden.html . I did write to the HK Consumers' council and in fact they have coordinated with me to the PR head of Maxim's group. Anyway, the back-and-forth discussions were on my main point for not misleading some innocent customers, esp. tourists. My main points to them "Maxim's is an established brand in HK and grows with most HK people. I really don't want to see some ridiculous things like these going on and to mislead our next generation.". I further indicated each Maxim's outlet has done different things wrong respectively. So it turned out it's not a single incident. The PR and I kept in communication. Anyway, I am still in touch with them on various things and for sure I'll include this one on my discussion agenda.