HKK London’s Year of the Rooster Menu Reviewed

Where: 88 Worship Street, London EC2A 2BE, http://hkklondon.com/

Cost: The Year of the Rooster menu is priced at £93.88 (a vegetarian menu is also available at the same price), with beverage pairing (cocktails and wine) at £58 and the Orchard Flight (non-alcoholic drinks including tea and fruit juices) at £28.  

About: The 28th January 2017 marks the Year of the Rooster, and to celebrate HKK is offering a Chinese New Year (CNY) 8-course tasting menu until 12 February 2017, and then lightly modified until the end of March.

Records suggest that the Chinese Imperial feasts in classical times often lasted for several days, and consisted of hundreds of dishes incorporating exotic and luxurious ingredients. HKK’s Chinese New Year banquet, created by Hakkasan and HKK’s Executive Head Chef Tong Chee Hwee, takes inspiration from this tradition, with modern interpretations of ancient dishes eaten by the royals. 

The menu features authentic Chinese ingredients such as sea cucumber, abalone and yu fungus as well as other fine ingredients like caviar, foie gras, lobster, fresh truffle and edible gold. The feast ends with a Century egg, a reinvention of the Chinese thousand year old egg; the HKK Century egg is a dessert flavoured with hazelnut, sesame and coffee, but more on that below.

One-Michelin starred HKK is one of London’s finest Chinese restaurants, and a personal favourite. Its ‘Duck & Champagne’ tasting menu (£49 per person) available on Saturday lunch times only featuring its glorious signature cherry-wood smoked duck in a 4-course tasting menu with a bottle of Louis Roederer Champagne thrown in per couple, is still one of the best deals in town. You can see my earlier review here.

What We Ate and Drank: HKK’s Year of the Rooster menu starts with a dish called ‘The Emperor's Bite of Spring’ - this was a golden rice pancake with king crab, white truffle, winter bamboo shoot, carrot and daikon, providing a range of textures and different flavours.

To accompany our first dish, we were served a glass of Amabuki – this was an elegant and light rose sake with subtle wild berry notes, made from blending white sake with red rice. The sake is made at the 300-year old Amabuki Brewery in Saga, in the southern island of Kyushu in Japan.

‘Monk Jump Over The Wall’ is a traditional Chinese soup, and HKK's creamy version had green abalone, scallop, ham and sea cucumber. The soup was delicate but highly flavoursome (give me seafood and pork in a dish any day!) with the Japanese yam, ginseng and goji berry adding contrasting textures in a many-layered dish.  

With it, our first wine was an Arbois Pupillin from Jura, a Chardonnay, from Domain De La Renardiere which showed great structure, minerality and steely green fruit flavours. 

Next was the ‘Touch of the Heart’  - a trio of dumplings: lobster and pickled Chinese leaves, king crab with XO sauce, and jade green dumpling of seabass and shrimp. Accompanying the dim sum trilogy, we had juice of honeydew melon, celery and ginger, served with a dinky glass jug of Peruvian Pisco. Creative as it was, to my mind it cried out for some ice despite the refreshing tartness.

The Imperial Cherry Wood Peking Duck is the signature dish of HKK, and a must-eat dish in my opinion. The process of preparing this dish takes 2 days - first the duck is salted with lemon grass, before being showered in hot water, lemon juice and vinegar. It is then dried for 24 hours to separate the skin from its fat before being roasted in cherry wood, carved and served at the table. 

This elaborate process gives a skin that is as crisp as caramel, and full of aromatic flavour. We were served two morsels of HKK Peking Duck as part of the CNY menu - the first morsel had a generous slab of foie gras, topped with just the crispy skin of the duck and a slice of kumquat. The second had a pancake with breast of duck, leek and cucumber, topped with spoonful of Imperial caviar. This was an utterly delicious, sophisticated dish, worth a visit to HKK in its own right!

To accompany our duck, we had a glass of Reisling 2010 Auslese, by Joh Jos Prum, Wehlener Sonnenhur, from Mosel, Germany. A deliciously rich, off-dry wine with green apple and petroleum notes, this was a classic example of its kind.

Moving on to the first main ‘Scallop Noodle’ had black yu fungus, lemongrass and royal chicken stock, Chinese broccoli and Japanese pumpkin. The scallops were admirably meaty and with a delectably charred flavour. 

With it, we were served a glass of Clos Mireille, a Provencal Rose blended from Syrah, Carignan and Grenache from Domaines Ott. This was a well made wine with delicate strawberry flavours, but a bone-dry nose. Following the semi-dry Reisling seemed a bit too much of a contrast for my palate.

The final savoury dish was ‘Eight Treasure Chicken’, featuring guinea fowl, ginko nut, mangalica ham, shiitake mushroom and a salted duck egg yolk, all wrapped up in a crispy tofu skin. Dinkily presented in a cellophane parcel, at the table a little jug of osmanthus wine was poured over dry ice to give a suitably dramatic appearance to the dish. 

The flavours in the dish were rich and concentrated, the result seeming greater than the sum of its parts, and with its partnering wine, this was for me the climax of the evening.

With the chicken, we had a glass of Morey Saint Denis, Aurelien Verdet, a 2009 Pinot Noir from Burgundy. It had a complex nose of red berry fruit, leather and cedar, rich fruit on the palate and with a long, savoury finish. 

The pre-dessert was a light and airy Kumquat and Carrot Cake served with vanilla cream, orange foam and poached kumquat.

With the pre-dessert, we had a glass of Moscato d'Asti 2015, from G D Vaira, Piemonte, Italy. A slightly spritzy wine, this was light, refreshing, and medium sweet, with muscat grape flavours.

The "Century Egg" was in fact a delectable sweet white sesame mousse, served with vanilla ice cream, caramelized hazelnut, sesame seeds and a coffee lady's finger, edible gold and a kataifi nest to resemble feathers. This was a great end to the meal - witty, creative, and a delight to the eye and the palate. 

With the final dessert, we had a glass of fine old Scotch whisky - a Glenmorangie Signet, made with chocolate burnt malt. The whisky is matured in white American oak, and then cask-aged for 20-70 years. It is 46% alcohol, so is served with a pipette of water to release the aromas.

Likes: Highlights for me were the Imperial cherry wood Peking duck, the Eight Treasure Chicken and the dessert of 'Century Egg". 

Dislikes: Some of the beverage pairings were not to my palate, although at best they were sensational. I would have preferred a wine flight to the mix of spirits, cocktails, wines and sake. 

Verdict: HKK London Chinese New Year Menu, the Year of the Rooster, is another triumph of flavours, colours and textures, and it is not to be missed. The menu is only available until 12th February 2017, so hurry! Highly recommended.

The Exquisite Year of the Monkey Chinese New Year Menu at HKK

Name: HKK (Chinese New Year Menu)

Where: 1 Snowden Street, London, EC2A, http://hkklondon.com/

Cost: The Chinese New Year menu is available from 25th January until 20th February 2016. The food menu costs £88 per person with an option of £48 per person for drinks pairing.

About: One of my favourite Chinese restaurants in London, HKK is one of just a handful of restaurants I visit regularly whenever I crave top quality Chinese food.  

February is a great time of the year to visit such restaurants, as most will devise some exquisite menus to celebrate their most important calendar event of the year – the Chinese New Year. With that in mind, I hastened along to HKK for a sneaky peak at their 2016 Year of the Monkey menu and what is on offer until late February.

What We Ate and Drank: We kicked off with the Prosperity Platter which included a very refined version of the traditional prosperity salad. Typically served to start a family New Year meal, all the guests stand and toss the salad high in the air with their chopsticks while saying auspicious things to bring good luck, health and prosperity in the new year. HKK's version combined julienned pumpkin and daikon, crispy salmon skin, green and red seaweed, peanuts, pomegranate seeds and olive oil, all topped with some real gold leaf.

The second element of the platter was the 'fortune wrap' – this was a delectable dried Japanese oyster in Chinese leaf, with a scattering of black moss. The third and final item was a lovely little cube of Welsh organic pork belly, with a thin, crisp layer of fat, grilled and lightly spiced with sea salt, mustard and goji berry.

We opted for the drinks flight at £48 per person to partner each course. The Prosperity Platter was partnered with a glass of Japanese Mio sparkling sake. I love Mio sake and often serve this at my supper club - it made a deliciously refreshing, low-alcohol start to the meal, with delicate stone fruit and brioche on the nose, and an off-dry finish. 

The Tai Ji supreme seafood soup was served yin and yang-style, with one side consisting of crab roe and vegetarian shark fin, the other of egg white in broth, with winter bamboo, scampi and scallops served separately in a spoon. To eat, all three components are mixed together. This was warming, with delicate flavours of freshest seafood, and a refreshing crunchy texture from the winter bamboo.

To accompany, we had a glass of Clos la Cariziere Muscadet Sevre et Maines 2014. I'm not normally a huge fan of Muscadet, but this was a fine example, with a nose of green apple, lemon, and some luscious pineapple and tropical flavours on the finish. 

The Chinese believe that it brings good luck and happiness in the coming year to eat dumplings just after midnight - shaped like ancient Chinese gold or silver ingots, they are believed to bring prosperity. And who am I to argue, just give me the dumplings, please! HKK's dumpling trilogy included white (deep fried dumpling of chicken and abalone), orange (steamed dumpling was of scallop and Chinese chive) and green morsels (steamed dumpling of Dover sole with Imperial caviar).

Cleverly, the pastry cases were naturally coloured with gai lan juice (for the green dumpling) and carrot juice (for the orange). These were very well made, with finely textured cases and delicate, well flavoured fillings.   

We had a 'bitter fortune' cocktail with Tanquery Number 10 gin, Aperol, rhubarb liqueur and fresh grapefruit juice. Deliciously astringent, this was able to cut through the diverse flavours and textures of the dumplings.

Next up was HKK’s wonderful roasted cherry wood Peking duck - the signature dish of the restaurant. The duck is prepared over 2 days, with a complex, multi-stage process that ends with skin as crisp and thin as caramel, with the flesh still utterly succulent. Served with a delicious little salad of micro-herbs and fragrant pea shoots, this was as wonderful as I recall from an earlier visit. If you would like to try this amazing duck over a four-course lunch with a bottle of Champagne thrown in, the restaurant offers a special Peking Duck menu on Saturday lunch times only, reviewed here.

The duck was matched with a glass of Tsarine brut rose Champagne, that had refreshing strawberry and redcurrant notes.

My favourite course of the evening was HKK’s lobster noodles with an XO sauce, dried prawns and scallop, Parma ham, garlic and shallot. It was served with 'longevity noodles', symbolic of a long and healthy life. The lobster was magnificent - a generous serving, tender and with many layers of umami flavours from the dried seafood and XO sauce.

To accompany, we were served a glass of Chablis, Domaine Bernard Moreau et Fils, 2012. Full bodied, and aged in French oak, this was a rich, creamy wine with gentle tropical fruit on the finish. It had more than enough depth of flavour and complexity to match the richly flavoured lobster. 

To finish the mains, we were served an outstanding dish of Welsh lamb with Sichuan mala sauce (spiked with toban jan, a fermented soybean chilli sauce) that came with rice and pumpkin cakes, shiso leaves, and romanesco broccoli.

With the lamb, we were served a glass of Ribeira del Duero from Dominio de Atuata, Spain, 2011. Made from Tempranillo grapes, this had intense mint, black cherry and vanilla notes, but was well structured with plenty of tannin to balance the rich sweetness of the fruit. 

For our pre-dessert, we had vanilla and mandarin 'Tangyuan dumplings', with osmanthus and orange infusion. The round dumplings, and the bowls in which they are served, are said to represent family unity. With a crisp white chocolate shell and mandarin glaze, surprisingly filled with vanilla ice cream, this was wonderfully refreshing, served with pomegranate, lime caviar, an orange and osmanthus infusion, micro-coriander and a glass of orange and osmanthus iced tea.

To accompany, we had a glass of Diplomatico Reserva 8 year old rum from Venezuela which had plenty of spice and vanilla and made for an unusual but interesting pairing.  

Dessert proper was a green apple parfait, with cardamom cake, crispy apple noodle, apple sorbet and puree. This was an inventive, chefy with a surprising mix of textures and apple flavours, not so sweet or heavy as to overwhelm our palate at the end of the meal.

We were served a glass of luscious Samos Grand Cru 2014, Muscat Petit Grain, from the Greek island of Samos with our apple dessert.

To round off, we were brought the 'Tray of Togetherness' - these were a selection of delectable petit four, including grapefruit jelly, lime marshmallow, pandan choux, almond financier, white chocolate and passion fruit truffle, red bean choux, smoked salted caramel and dark chocolate truffle and yuzu jelly. I am not sure we were meant to have them all, we were asked to choose the ones we wanted, and of course I had to try the lot! They were all exquisite, but the salted caramel in particular was the star of the show in my opinion.

Likes: All the dishes were cooked with great skill, and were gorgeously presented. For me, particular highlights were the Peking duck and the lobster dish, but there wasn't a weak dish on the menu.

Dislikes: None

Verdict: For a great way to see in the Year of Monkey in 2016, I can't think of many other places I would rather be than HKK. This special Chinese New Year menu runs only until 20th February 2016, so hurry along if you fancy a fix of brilliantly cooked celebratory lobster, cherry wood roasted Peking duck and a selection of fine wines and Champagne. Highly recommended.

Duck & Champagne Menu at Michelin-Starred HKK - The Rolls Royce of Peking Duck Experiences at Unbeatable Value

Name: HKK - Duck & Champagne Saturday Lunch Menu

Where: 88 Worship Street, London EC2A 2BE, http://hkklondon.com/#home

Cost: The Duck & Champagne menu is available for Saturday lunchtimes only, at a cost of £49 per person. The menu is for two to share and includes a bottle of Louis Roederer Brut Premier NV Champagne (which alone costs £79 on the a la carte menu) as well as a 4-course meal including a whole cherry wood roasted Peking duck (valued at £88 on the a la carte menu).

The Duck & Champagne menu cost £98 plus service for 2; if the Peking duck and bottle of Louis Roederer Champagne were to be ordered together from the a la carte menu, they would cost £167.

About: Tucked away in the City, a 5 minute walk from Liverpool Station, the 1-Michelin starred HKK is part of the renowned Hakkasan Group of restaurants. I was intrigued to learn of HKK’s new Duck & Champagne menu, launched in October 2015, and so hurried along to give it a try.

The menu features a whole HKK’s signature cherry wood roasted Peking duck, which takes 48 hours to create, using myriad cooking techniques - each 1.8kg, 65-day old duck from Southern Ireland is marinated in a glaze of Chinese five spice, lemon grass, sugar, and garlic, then showered with boiling water, vinegar and lemon juice. It is then hung to dry for a minimum of twenty-four hours at 3°C a procedure that ensures that the flesh separates from its skin so that it can be made so divinely crisp during cooking. After this drying process, the duck is placed in a custom-made glass-windowed firestone oven for one and a half hours over a cherry wood fire until the meat is succulent and the skin glossy and crisp.

What We Ate: We went of the Duck & Champagne menu which includes a Blue Crab salad, a whole cherry wood roasted Peking duck served three ways, egg-fried rice in a duck & abalone supreme stock and dessert. 

The Blue crab salad, dramatically served on dry ice, featured a pani puri shell filled with dragon fruit, pineapple and melon. On top sat a chicory leaf, and a piece of meaty blue crab, served with a dressing of vinegar, coconut, chilli and peanut. Pop the whole thing in the mouth for an explosion of crunchy texture, tropical fruit and sweet crab - sublime.

The main event was the cherry wood roasted Peking duck. The chef brought the whole duck to our table on a trolley (I loved this element of theatre when dining at HKK), and cut three choice delicacies for us to start with.

Crispy skin from the duck’s shoulder which we ate with organic brown sugar; breast served with a cress salad in sesame and vinegar & a streak of oyster sauce; and finally a manto bun filled with duck leg, leek, cucumber and hoisin sauce, with imperial caviar from Osetra.

While enjoying these delicacies, the rest of the duck was taken back to the kitchen to be carved. It returned expertly sliced and boned, served with slivers of cucumber and spring onion, plum sauce and freshly made sesame pancakes.

HKK’s Peking duck is in a league of its own – the crispy duck skin cracked in my mouth like thin caramel, the meat so utterly succulent, flavoursome and sweet. I've eaten Peking duck with pancakes hundreds of times, but never had anything approaching this level of sophistication and flavour.

To accompany, we were each served a little sphere of egg-fried rice stuffed with Palma ham, topped with dried XO scallop, and a deliciously rich duck and abalone supreme stock.

The dessert was a Nashi pear and Champagne mousse - a base of white chocolate mousse with pear puree, topped with a Champagne sorbet, and finished with cocktail candy and 24 carat gold leaf, bathed in a Chinese honey and Champagne consommé. This was a stunningly beautiful, refreshing dessert, served in a solid stone bowl - a reminder (as if it were needed) that these guys can cook.

What We Drank: We started with a couple of cocktails, both priced at £12.50. The pomegranate margarita blended tequila and plum sake with pomegranate and grapefruit juice, agave syrup and Absinthe. This had rich plum and pomegranate aromas, and a crust of Himalayan salt and grapefruit gave it a stimulating grip.

The Boulevardier was a reinterpretation of the Negroni, blending bourbon, cocchi di torino and Campari. I rarely drink a whisky-based Negroni, and this was an interesting and appetite-stimulating variation on a much-loved (by me, at any rate) theme.  

With the lunch menu, we shared a lovely bottle of Louis Roederer Champagne - elegance in a glass.

Likes: The Peking duck is sensational - a truly extraordinary elision of taste and texture, and probably the finest duck dish I have ever eaten. For a very reasonable price, the menu also includes imperial caviar, XO scallop, blue crab and a fine bottle of Louis Roederer Champagne. Elegant dining room, excellent service. 

Dislikes: None

Verdict: For the Rolls Royce, crème de la crème of Peking duck experiences, I can't think of anywhere else but HKK. For melt-in-the-mouth duck skin that crackles like caramel, meat that is sweet and tender as ambrosia, and a bottle of Louis Roederer Champagne thrown in at under £100 per couple, HKK’s Duck & Champagne menu is the place to be. It is excellent value for money too. Very highly recommended.

London Restaurant Review - Min Jiang at the Royal Garden Hotel

Exquisite Chinese cuisine with eye-popping views

Words and Photography by Simeen Kadi

The popularity of hotel restaurants have waxed and waned over the last half century and a decade ago most of us locals wouldn't be seen dead in a hotel restaurant (OK, Claridges, the Met and the American Bar at the Savoy are exceptions) for fear of being taken for a hapless tourist. Today, some of the capitals most starry hotels also house some of our most lauded eateries. I must say that I still feel a little uncomfortable walking into a London hotel for a meal. Somehow they seem to be outside national boundaries, occupying some rarified no man's land, like first class lounges at airports or very exclusive shopping malls – fraternised by the international uber-elite. So, it was with a little reservation that I visited Min Jiang, a rooftop restaurant in the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington.

The restaurant does have the overdressed look of a 5 star hotel with Chinese art and 'Mingness' embellishing the sleek neutral tones. But then there is the view. Looking East there is all of West and Central London laid out, right down to the Shard, twinkling in the clear night sky when I was there.

And then there is the food! But first, we tried some of their cocktails. The Golden Dragon
was a gently eastern mix of Vodka, Triple Sec, lime and mango juices while the more robust Chilli Caipirinha combined aged rum with lime and sugar with the oriental addition of chilli.

To go with the drinks we enjoyed a selection of dim sum which were exquisite – the finest dumpling casings stuffed to plumpness with delicate prawns, scallops, crab and water chestnuts. These were beautifully crafted dumplings and not your run-of-the-mill Chinatown product.

And then, as I go weak at the knees at the very prospect of Hong Kong soft shell crab, I did the right thing and gave into temptation – I was not disappointed. Bi Feng Tang with Garlic and Chilli, to give it its proper name, was crisp and zingy with crispy garlic and Sichuan pepper, one of those memorable experiences which stays with you.

Min Jiang's culinary heart is in southern China and features the cuisines of Sichuan province alongside Cantonese dishes. While the food is not unbearably spicy as some Sichuan dishes can be, there is an unmistakable intensity and flavour that comes from the use of Sichuan pepper and chilli. Dried Sichuan chillies featured in many of the dishes we tried and were aromatic and heady, rather than eye-wateringly painful on the palate. Named after the Min river which flows through the abundant Sichuan province, Min Jiang may have tempered their dishes slightly for Western palates but they still do this venerable cuisine proud.

The main event, however, was still to come. At Min Jiang the Beijing Duck is roasted in a wood-fired oven and is, by their own claim, legendary. Prepared by an army of chefs from Beijing, each duck takes 48 hours to craft as it is stuffed with apples and dried in order to ensure a crispy skin. The birds are an unique breed raised only by one elderly couple in the Irish county of Monaghan (they turn their feathers and down into pillows and jackets, in case you are interested).

The Beijing Duck ritual occupies no fewer than three chefs as whisper-thin pancakes are prepared alongside fine shreds of cucumber and leek. Here, we also get another trio of accompaniments of a delicate garlic paste and strips of lightly pickled carrots and radish alongside a rich Hoisin sauce. If you are so inclined, you can ask your waiter to roll your pancake for you as every waiter has undergone intensive training in how to deliver the perfect Beijing Duck pancake using nothing more than a pair of chopsticks. The staff here are very knowledgeable and even gave me a mini lesson in Chinese dining etiquette.

We watched our duck being expertly carved by a chef who began by stripping off the crispy fat from the neck which was served to us in little dishes along with some sugar. This is a long-held tradition in Beijing where figure-conscious women deluded themselves that dipping the fat in sugar made it taste less oleaginous and therefore less fattening – go figure. I loved the crispiness of the skin but am not fully convinced of the sugar dip.

If you order the Wood Fired Beijing Duck, you get the remainder of the meat served in other dishes to follow the pancake rolls. We opted for diced duck on lettuce leaves and fried rice with duck which were both great ways to use up the parts of the fowl which couldn't be carved into slices. We also enjoyed other main course dishes from the menu, a stand out of which was the black cod and the beef in pepper sauce. The Alaskan Black Cod was marinated in Sha Cha sauce – a commonly used Chinese stir-fry sauce made from garlic, onions, dried shrimps and soy sauce - and roasted to perfection. The rib eye of beef was succulent with a wallop of peppery flavour.

Details: Min Jiang is on the rooftop of Royal Garden Hotel on High Street Kensington http://www.minjiang.co.uk

Expect to pay around £50 per head with a glass of wine
The Wood Fired Beijing Duck is £58 for a whole duck and £32 for half