Tag Archives: The Press Room Group

The Pawn restaurant review – the Pawn identity

Posted on October 28, 2010 | 4 comments

UPDATE: The Pawn has since been renovated with an entirely new menu!

So we’ve talked history, we’ve worried about heritage and we’ve waxed lyrical about the views – but what about the restaurant itself? Well, it’s safe to say that The Pawn acquits itself fairly nicely on the food front as well.

So what does The Pawn have in common with The Press Room Group’s other restaurants (The Press Room and SML)? Amazing attention to detail, that’s what. Part of what makes all three of those places real dining experiences is that no expense has been spared on the décor, the ambience and the little niggly things that all contribute to giving you a great feeling about eating there. Consequently, The Pawn makes the most of its old shophouse setting – airy high ceilings, balcony seating, long iron-grilled windows and decoration that totally fits with the simple grandeur of the place.

It feels like a comfy dining room. Not a posh snooty one where you daren’t clatter your cutlery, not the one in your gran’s sitting room with the conked-out sofas, but somewhere nice in-between. The chairs are proper rustic wooden dining chairs, with embroidered cushions and arts and crafts style engravings, but all slightly different so it’s obvious they weren’t just bulk bought from Ikea. There are strips of beautiful bespoke floral wallpaper (designed by HK artist Tsang Kin-Wah) that, when viewed up-close, is basically pretty graffiti. There’s lots more honest brown furniture that feels old without feeling ancient, like it had a life before The Pawn rather than being created especially for it, whilst the famous HK pawnshop symbol recurs throughout, on their personalised crockery, restored on the wall outside and even on the platter that your bill arrives on. Add a few Hong Kong touches, like simple dangling plastic ceiling lamps and views over bustling Wan Chai with the audible dinging of passing trams and you have beautifully-executed design that’s obviously had hours of thought poured into it but that still feels relaxed and unobtrusive, rather than fake and try-hard. As you may be able to tell, I loved it.

Meanwhile, the menu is pure British gastropub. Ham hock, bone marrow, liver, hearty portions of red meat and mash in various guises, sticky toffee pudding, apple crumble… but all posh-ed up, with modern chef-y twists and served in a becoming manner, hence just about justifying charging $180 for a plate of fish and chips.

The lunch deal, however, is pretty amazing. $150 for three generously-sized courses of such quality is fantastic value and bizarrely, cheaper than ordering any single main from the a la carte menu.

I started things off with pumpkin and ginger soup, definitely only suitable for those that don’t mind their soups being sweet. Despite it being part of the set, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they hadn’t stinted on portion size and despite it being a piping hot day, I was pleasantly surprised that my piping hot soup still felt summery. It was rich, thick and creamily sweet and I loved the warm fuzzy kick that the ginger gave. There were also two glazed crispy toast type things providing a snappy crunch that complemented the soup perfectly.

Onto my main of Dover sole, with a lemon butter sauce, mash and assorted leaves. When my boyfriend tasted it, he commented ‘The sauce is the best thing on there.’ He was absolutely right, begging the question: why wasn’t there more of it?! One of my pet hates (can you tell I watch too much Masterchef?!) is when sauces are dribbled about for artistic effect rather than actual consumption. Yes, it looked pretty, but it tasted even better and I wanted more! My fish was nicely-cooked and, combined with what little drizzle there was, tasted lightly lovely, but the mash was oddly cold and there was too much of it (a problem endemic with mash in general). And, to me, leaves will always be just leaves.

My boyfriend had the fish and chips. I tested the waiter was genuinely curious and asked what type of fish it was – sole again, apparently. Given how thin sole is, chef did well to fry this without making it dry and flaky. It was soft and moist, coated in golden crispy batter that was just about the right thickness. We knew it’d be a good ‘un when my boyfriend stuck his knife in and it crackled and crunched nicely! The boring peas would have been better as mushy peas, with some appropriately chef-y twist like mint and again, the overall portion was huge. But the chips were the star. In Hong Kong, you’ll get served a lot of supposed chips, with very few of them equating to anything like a British chip. French fries, frites, wedges, criss-cut, curly, julienne, slightly fatter frites but still definitely not chips, very obviously formerly-frozen chips out a bag – we’ve seen it all. These chips were the real deal. Reassuringly fat, crispy on the outside, meltingly soft on the inside, piping hot and made from quality spuds, they were just about the closest I’ve come to real chips so far in Hong Kong. Steak-cut slabs of gold.

Finally, dessert. Otherwise known as heaven. It was a banana walnut cake with toffee sauce, which I was ordering mainly for the toffee sauce, hoping it would be similar to the a-maz-ing butterscotch sauce in SML’s profiteroles. I don’t even like banana walnut cake… I’m now banana walnut cake’s biggest fan. Often, banana can be an overpowering presence but here it was a pleasant fruity undertone and the earthy flavour and crunch of walnuts ran through the cake, in addition to some very Chinese candied walnut clusters on the top (often seen as appetisers in Chinese restaurants). The sponge was light and I’d practically scoffed it all before I realised I’d started. But oh, the toffee sauce! I’m in raptures just reliving it now. Sticky, gooey, dark, rich, sweet, syrupy caramel. I would have licked the plate clean if I could (and as you can see, I gave it a good go with my spoon!). My boyfriend kept catching me give little gleeful grins as I set about demolishing it; I think I was hugging myself with delight by the end. Imagine the infamous scene from When Harry Met Sally and you’re probably not far off.

So yes, the prices are a little steep. Yes, the food is not really aiming at Michelin-starred ingenuity. And yes, you’re paying as much for the atmosphere as for the ingredients. But for a special occasion, a luxurious lunch or just because you fancy treating yourself, I think it’s worth it. And if you really can’t stretch to it, just shimmy up to the roof garden instead!

The Pawn, 2F, 62 Johnston Road, Wan Chai, 2866 3444

Banner photo from Urban Renewal Authority’s website

4 Comments

Posted in Food, Hong Kong

Tagged British cuisine, chips, eating out, F&B, fine dining, Food, gastropub, HK, Hong Kong, photos, restaurant, review, The Pawn, The Press Room Group

Pawn Again: views from The Roof Garden @ The Pawn

Posted on October 27, 2010 | 2 comments

When I used to work in Wan Chai, my colleague and I used to dawdle about the streets until the dying seconds of our lunch hour, bemoaning the lack of pleasant public spaces in the area where we could sit and avoid returning to the office for as long as possible. Little did I know that one such place did exist and could have saved us from being harangued by strippers and grimacing over grotty tattoo parlour displays in the streets of WC.

The Roof Garden (and yes, those are real plants and they’re gorgeous), on the third floor of The Pawn restaurant, is a quiet haven from the heaving hubbub of Wan Chai. It offers spectacular views over the city, a chance to drink in the different styles of architecture and savour the fact that somehow, a little piece of old Hong Kong has been preserved. Admittedly, preserved by becoming a set of swanky restaurants, but preserved nevertheless.

Photo contrasting the old Woo Cheong Pawnshop with the new development, from HK Man’s Flickr, which you need to check out like, now. Hundreds of amazing photographs like this comparing old and new HK.

The Pawn occupies the former premises of century-old Woo Cheong Pawnshop (hence the name), a set of four tenement houses (known as “tong lau”) originally built around the turn of the 20^th century. “Tong lau” were unique to Hong Kong and Southern China, balcony-type shophouses featuring a mixture of Chinese and Western architecture, where the ground floor was usually devoted to a family business whilst the upper levels were residential. These ones have four stories, with high ceilings, French windows to the balconies, verandahs facing Johnston Road and other typical Tong Lau features that you can see in some of my photos, like the balustrades and decorative urns on the roof, which have been restored and revitalised. Columns on the ground floor supported the upper levels, forming a covered pedestrian arcade – a feature more HK buildings today could do with, saving us from the beating sun and dripping air cons!

Another nice little detail – the shophouses did not have toilet provisions. Instead, the “nightsoil” was collected by government scavengers at night from the pail latrine (i.e. a bucket). How do I know all this stuff? Well, upon visiting the Roof Garden, you’re met by an attendant from the Urban Renewal Authority (who bought the building in 2003 and helped restore it), bearing a pamphlet snappily entitled “Welcome to The Pawn Roof Woo Cheong Pawnshop Building Cluster”, full of such interesting facts and photos! Apparently, this was a response to The Pawn not exactly encouraging non paying-customers to enjoy the Roof Garden but I certainly had no such problems on my visit. Sadly, the attendant didn’t speak much English so couldn’t answer any of my other questions – like whether some of the racks on the roof were actually from the Woo Cheong Pawnshop itself (they definitely looked rusty enough!).

The preserved terrazo front sign for Woo Cheong Pawn Shop

It’s easy to get frustrated with Hong Kong’s attempts (or lack of) at historical preservation. Many old buildings have ceded to anonymous modern developments already and it always seems to be an uphill battle to prevent sites of historic interest from being ripped apart and swiftly following suit. Although it isn’t exactly ideal that these century-old tenements have survived as a luxury commercial development sold to the highest bidder (with Woo Cheong shunted out elsewhere in Wan Chai to make way for them), I’d rather concentrate on being happy that it’s survived at all, that a stunning part of it is easily and freely accessible to all and that The Pawn has put real effort and thought into making the most of its setting and history (review of the restaurant itself here!).

[And what with The Press Room Group paying homage to the pawnshop, having previously done so with The Press Room itself (its name references the Overseas Chinese Daily News / Hua Qiao Daily newspaper, the 1920s residents of that building), perhaps they’re getting a taste for this kind of thing?!]

View showing the orange lift going up the side of the Hopewell Centre, which at the time of its completion (1980) was the tallest building and first circular skyscraper in Hong Kong

As for the Roof Garden – well, the pictures speak for themselves, don’t they? (As ever, click for enlargements.) It’s a spot of serenity with absolutely breathtaking views and a humbling sense of heritage. (And it would be absolutely great for a private party as well, they have a bar and everything!) There is also a small computer screen attached to one of the columns downstairs as part of the Wan Chai Heritage Trail (quite how it hasn’t been carted off by some hobo yet I’m unsure) which details some of the history of the area – including jaw-dropping maps showing how much land has been reclaimed. Basically, I’d have been standing in the sea!

Amazingly, we also had the place all to ourselves for the entire duration of our visit – so get yourselves down there before everyone else gets clued in and savour this hidden oasis set in the midst of our concrete jungle.

Ding-ding!

Photos showing the redevelopment and restoration

The instantly-recognisable HK pawn shop logo. Wikipedia reckons it represents a bat (signifying fortune) holding a coin (signifying benefits). The character in the middle is the symbol for pawn shop, the two upper characters the name of the family who own the shop.

Roof Garden, 3/F The Pawn, 62 Johnston Road, Wan Chai.

For more information and photographs about the restoration and preservation of 60-66 Johnston Road, check out the Urban Renewal Authority’s website here.

2 Comments

Posted in Hong Kong

Tagged best views in Hong Kong, heritage, history, HK, Hong Kong, Johnston Road, pawn shop, pawnbrokers, photographs, photos, pictures, preservation, redevelopment, restaurant, Roof Garden, rooftop views, shophouses, The Pawn, The Press Room Group, Urban Renewal Authority, views, Wan Chai, Woo Cheong Pawn Shop

The Press Room restaurant review – read all about it!

Posted on June 16, 2010 | Leave a comment

UPDATE: The Press Room is now closed.

Many reviews of The Press Room seem to begin and end with their frites (chips to us Brits). Or should that be FRITES!!! And yes, they are delicious but there’s more to The Press Room than that.

Aiming for a modern European brasserie style, with menus on blackboards and pictures scattered at random on the walls (a random-ness I’m sure took hours to achieve!), it has a nice relaxed atmosphere. For dinner, the lights are dimmed and it’s a rather cosy kind of darkness, even when the place started to get packed around 8pm.

When the boyfriend and I arrived around 7pm, we were the first diners in, meaning our service was second to none. Bread (below right) was served almost immediately and our dishes (all hot, I should mention) arrived within 10 minutes of their being ordered, with mains rolling up almost as soon as we’d polished off our starter.

We both opted for the 2-course menu at $260, where you can choose any starter/soup/dessert from the regular menu, with a choice between lamb, sea bass, skate, pork belly or hanger steak as your main. Go with your significant other, with one of you opting for starter and one for dessert, and (as long as your partner isn’t a total gannet) you effectively get a 3-course menu that, given the quality of the food, is a bit of a bargain.

We started with escargots de bourguignon (snails to us Brits, normally $92; above left, click for enlargement ). At many HK restaurants, these are often cooked to the point of apocalypse and arrive at your table dried-up, shrivelled, rubbery imitations of their former sluggy selves, with some overpowering cheese sauce drenched on top attempting to disguise this fact. Here, they were cooked perfectly, allowing their unique texture and subtle taste to shine through. Garlic butter is the norm for escargots but there was an interesting addition of almonds here that was just as tasty – a shame that there wasn’t the usual bed of mashed potato to mop this scrummy juice up!

We tried to use our bread to soak it up and alas, this was the only disappointing aspect of our meal. My boyfriend (ever the comedian) commented that ‘this bread must have lost its absorbing properties a day ago’; I don’t think the bread was actually stale, just that fancy bread that was never soft to start off with. Not a fan – given that the menu is vaguely Gallic in its feel and the French practically orgasm over the breaking of the bread, I did expect better.

Anyway, onto the mains. Only one word: divine.

For those seeking a few more words, I had the roast pork belly with pomme purée (mash to us Brits), apple sauce and cider jus (sauce to us Brits, $202 ; shown left, click for enlargement). The pork belly was absolutely sublime – stupidly delicious, ridiculously soft and tender and dreamy, with fantastically crispy crackling on top. I hate restaurants that give you one artful drizzle of sauce that isn’t enough to wet your upper lip never mind your whole dish, so I was very pleased at the amount of cider jus, which had just the right amount of tang to bring out even more lush flavours from the pork. One of the best mains I’ve had in HK, no question.

The boyfriend (a chip connoisseur fyi) went for the hanger steak and frites (above right, $248). Again, there was a decent amount of sumptuously rich red wine sauce to complement the beautifully tender and juicy strips of steak. It came on a bed of spinach that my boyfriend, not being one for greenery, largely ignored so I have no idea how that tasted. And, of course, the frites…

They arrive in their own canister, they’re so special. What more can be said about them that hasn’t already been said? Crunchy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside, just the right side of salty and with the texture and taste of having come from a quality spud. Chips that have some skin on are always the best kind, aren’t they? You may remember me being similarly cock-a-hoop about the chips at SML – SML, The Press Room and The Pawn are all run by the same group, so I’ve only got to try the latter to confirm that their chips are uniformly good (edit: I have and they were!). What’s more, they’re incredibly more-ish; even though I couldn’t finish my mash, I found my fingers creeping to them far too often! The chip connoisseur was happy too (less happy that I munched my way through so many though!).

We rounded things off with the baked chocolate (above, $78) and quite frankly, I could have put away two of these on my own. I’m not entirely sure what it was – some hybrid between cake, sponge, brownie, fudge and warm chocolate – but it was definitely good. The consistency was wonderfully smooth and light but the hit of richness felt like pure chocolatey goodness and its soft creaminess contrasted well with the crunch of the tuile biscuits. The raspberry sauce was a little too tart for me but the waiter did offer to leave it on the side rather than pouring it over, so it’s my own fault (tbf, it did look prettier)!

A few hints for any prospective diners – the Hollywood Road address may fool you into getting off at Central MTR but it’s actually way closer to Sheung Wan (albeit uphill – work up that appetite!) and pretty easy to find as it’s just a stone’s throw along from Man Mo Temple (even if you have no idea what it looks like beforehand, you really can’t miss it). I also noticed an early-bird dinner offer, which looked amazing value, but even so, try and get there earlier if you want a quieter dinner as it clearly attracts a lot of custom from folk in Central getting straight off work.

I’m practically chomping at the bit to visit again, in case this review leaves you in any doubt. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers but do believe all the good stuff you’ve heard about The Press Room – it offers a quality dining experience. And the FRITES!!! aren’t bad either.

The Press Room, 108 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong, 2525 3444

SML restaurant review – does my tum look big in this?

Posted on March 16, 2010 | 3 comments

UPDATE: SML is now closed.

Originally, this was going to be a write-up for one of my fave restaurants in HK, Tapeo on Hollywood Road, Central. Alas, once the tapas arrived, I was simply too ravenous and dug in without a second thought to the camera kicking about in my bag (so until I visit again, let me just tell you their Squid a la Plancha is the most tender, flavoursome squid I’ve ever eaten and their platter of Manchego cheese, honey and toast is more divine than words, photos or thoughts can ever do justice to – we polished off two plates, one rather spuriously as ‘dessert’…).

Never fear though because the restaurant I am going to write about is pretty much the next best thing to a tapas joint, without actually being one. SML is one of those genius/ridiculous concepts that seems so head-smackingly obvious, you wonder why it hasn’t been done before (and yes, I’m expecting to be inundated with people telling me it has been). All dishes come in the eponymous ‘small, medium or large’ sizes, meaning complaints about portion sizes at least will not be gracing your end-of-meal comment cards. Cute concept, right?

The menu features dishes from nearly every cuisine you can think of; basically, an international tapas! I think you’ll get a fairly good idea of this from our selection (we ordered small everything), which basically reads like we threw a handful of pushpins over a culinary map of the world and ordered accordingly. I would describe the food as solidly good rather than great – true of the truffle prawn toast ($38) and lasagne ($43), with the creamy, meaty lasagne being the better of the two. The Jamaican coconut chicken curry ($48) was an aberration to nearly every element of its description though; there was very little Jamaican, or even coconut-y, about this ‘boil-in-the-bag’ curry and the chicken was distinctly unappetising, two huge hunks still on the bone and when cut open, revealed gristle, fat and disturbingly pink meat.

We tried to correct our mistake by going for the sizzling chicken fajitas ($67), a little pricey given you only got two wraps (although enough filling and dips for more!) but tasty nonetheless. The star of the mains was, in fact, a mere ‘bits n bobs’ player – the chips with sea salt, truffle and some sort of unidentifiable, probably very fattening but obviously therefore delicious dip. These were fresh and hot, soft yet crispy and guess what, the only things we ordered in medium ($26). You can take the girl out of Britain but you can’t take the Brit out of the girl… I swear that you could sprinkle that sea salt on paper and I’d probably lap it up though.

Desserts definitely require further exploration, as we only had room for the pot of chocolate ($27 – unremarkable and with two bricks of fudge on the top that we weren’t fans of) and the to-die-for profiteroles ($20). Well, in the small size, that should read profiterole singular but the pastry and cream was feather-light and it came bathed in a gorgeous butterscotch sauce, like melted Werther’s Originals floating to heaven. I’m not ashamed to say I practically licked the bowl clean. The drinks menu, with an extensive list of lip-licking cocktails, is also worth a look although I’ve heard the sizes for wines is a bit of a joke (one gulp max even at large, apparently).

The quirkiness of the concept is followed all the way through, from the décor to the small design details. So I loved the little messages on the crockery (‘scrumptious’, ‘more please!’, ‘still hungry?’) and the ingenious way the menu was split up – the mains divided into Land and Sea (for where the animal making up your dish roamed when it was alive), Liquids for soups, Bits n Bobs for sides, Raw & Green for salads and Happy Ending (keep those perverted sex jokes to yourself!) for desserts. The ambience was lovely and relaxed, with some interesting little features; pictured are the punked-up Lego ‘SML baby’ outside the restaurant, the cool light fittings and one of the sweet $10 Ikea cacti that are thrown about the place with artful abandon.

It’s the little things that are ultimately what make the big picture great (as is always the case with Press Room Group restaurants, like The Pawn and The Press Room itself), so I can safely say it is those small touches and quirky twists that will have me coming back to SML again. Well, that and the angelic butterscotch sauce of course.

SML, 11/F, Times Square, 1 Matheson Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, 2577 3444; open 11.30am-11pm.