All You Can Eat Brunch at WHISK

For those that know me, I have never been a huge fan of Hotel Champagne Brunches or Buffets as the food is often dull & boring, with majority of the places offering the same type of food & format. The truth is, I never expect a true gastronomical experience from hotel brunches just simply because you know there is every reason to why such set menu or buffet menu is created (to make revenue of course) & the worst to come is the Champagne buffet gets you wrecked so no ones really gives a toss about the food. Hotel buffets play a very big part in the lives of Hong Kong people, check out various hotels in Hong Kong on the week nights & it is packed with animals who haven’t eaten for months.

Recently, I recieved an email from a friend of mine of whom has recently joined The Mira on the F&B side & he very kindly invited myself overself for a catchup + tasting. I want to reiterate that just because it is an invitation does not mean that this review will necessarily be a good one! I have heard many things about WHISK, blah blah blah about Justin Quek this Justin Quek that, majority of the times, I don’t even believe that the man is in the restaurant & nevermind does he actually really cook your dishes. It must have been my lucky day because on my visit, the big commanding Chef was right in front of my eyes!!

At first when I found out about the price for the Free-flow Champagne Brunch which was $550 + 10% & definitely not the cheapest considering I thought it only consisted of an Anti-Pasti Buffet, 1 choice of starter (Eggs), Soup + 1 Main Course + Freeflow drinks judging by the layout of the menu. BANG – what was wrong was that the Main Courses was ALL YOU CAN EAT – YES I REPEAT – ALL YOU CAN EAT! Just wrong, very wrong in every way as one is often difficult to resist such temptation.

So let us start with the free-flow Appetiser Corner – very neatly setup with its focus on breakfast items including croissants, muffins, danish & on the other side, antipasti which includes the usual suspects Smoke Salmon, Parma Ham, Foie Gras Terrine, Salad Bar etc. Nothing to write home about but what caught my eye was the Carving Station & instead of regular roast or ham that is being served, at WHISK, they like to carve up a whole baby pig instead. This is proper food to the max & as much as I detest a roasted pig due to my hatred towards pigs after the movie Pulp Fiction, its golden & shiny colour was calling out for my name & how could I resist this. To describe this in simple terms, I have never ever have enjoyed a roast pig as much as this, the skin was so ridiculously crunchy & crispy & the meat was so juicy & sweet! So good that I ran back for seconds, now that is special it was & highly recommend to all that enjoy a slice of roast pig or 2.

The Appetiser Corner was only the beginning of this calorie binge & the food is about to get more interesting. Next up was a choice between Eggs in Any Style with Accompaniments (Bacon, Sauteed Mushrooms & Sausage) or a Gourmet Fried Egg with Parmesan Foam with Shallot Confit Sauce & Parma Ham. Not even a remote contest & easy decision, if you are a food lover, you will go for the latter just because it sounds so much more interesting & appealing especially featuring a fried egg with Parmesan Foam, very special. Very creative, fancy & well presented this dish was taking a simple item such as fried egg to another level which I truly admire WHISK in doing which not many restaurants will have dishes like this. Personally, taste of the Parmesan Foam with the egg was absolutely superb BUT the shallot confit in my opinion was slightly on the sour side which ruined the flavour of the natural sweetness of the egg.

Next up was a cooler from a good start to the meal which was a Home-Made Soup. The sound of it should be something light, HAHA, it was not as it was a beautiful & very delicately presented Coffee Cup of Mushroom Soup + a rather generous portion of Prawn Tempura which was golden on the outside. I love tempuras & this one was special as the batter is slightly different to the ones you get in Japanese restaurants. The Prawn was absurdly large & damn, it was tasty, juicy & full of flesh, best to be dipped into the mushroom soup to be enjoyed together. Every dip of the prawn tempura into the mushroom soup was a match in heaven, so delicious & a perfect combination together!

When you think there aren’t enough food on offer, special touch by WHISK is that they even bother to arrange pass-around “canapes” during day time. I put inverted commas in the word canapes because they weren’t your average canapes – the usage of very fine seafood & hearty nibbles was the theme of the day as there were non-stop grilled prawns, Cheese baked Oysters, Fried Scallops as well as Croque Monsieur – where have you been in my life? This is a special touch – I have never seen any pass-around canapes during day time in a all you can eat brunch & the quality was decent. Special highlight must go to the Deep Fried Scallop & the Cheesy Oyster, be reminded to add a good pinch of rock salt onto your oysters for sure. Somehow I think this is a tactic adopted by the hotel group to make you eat so much that you fall asleep & to book one of their hotel rooms to cross-sell, my opinion!

Perhaps the most interesting part has arrived, regular brunches that I have been & witnessed, you tend to choose 1 main course to company your meal. But as WHISK, they like to do things differently & to completely stuff your face with good food. At first, I thought WHISK screwed up the Marketing 101 error, proof read your menus when it states - “Choices of Main Courses” – which in English terms technically means you can choose more than 1 course. Asked our lovely waitress on the day & she explained that we can order as many mains as we can eat which I was baffled & was scared to find out this truth. To make things even more interesting for photography purposes, we decided to order ALL the Main-Courses, a total of 7 main courses on top of all our appetiser buffet + eggs + soup + canapes. Quite how we managed to finish this, I did not know but I for sure know that it was an Amazing Food Battle.

What Main Courses we liked?

Braised Beef Cheek in Bordeaux Sauce – Delectable, tender & the beef cheeks were soft & full of flavour. To match with a simple Red Wine Sauce, it was very delicious.

 

Angel Hair with Sauteed Sukura Shrimps in Spicy Aromatic Oil - Simple terms, this is similar to a X.O Sauce with Angel Hair, nothing wrong with this as this is the regular home-cooking dish which I love to cook at home because it is simple & so delicious. The usage of Sukura Shrimps definitely helps to add a lot of flavour to this simple aromatic pasta dish. Brilliant & don’t worry about the portion size as it is small consisting of a few bites only.

Asian Laksa - Very difficult in Hong Kong to find a decent bowl of Laksa & my craving for this often leads me to Katong Laksa on Jaffe Road. Very surprisingly, they do a rather decent Laksa maybe because Chef Quek understands what a real Laksa is given his origin from Singapore. The mix of coconut juice + chilli oil gives it a wonderful colour & a worthy mention must be the freshness of the prawns and the fish cake which also added magic to this small bowl of laksa.

Steamed Cod in Ginger Nage - Healthy option main course this was comparing whereby the cod is steamed & is paired with a fragrant yet light ginger puree with tomatos. The fish was soft & fluffy, perfect texture which you expect from using cod. Strongly recommend this dish to ladies of whom are conscious of weight.

What Main Courses we didnt like?

Pan Grilled Seabass with Braised Cabbage & Sea Urchin Emulsion - Very disappointed with this dish as the name was fancy & attractive but however, it was perhaps slightly too overcooked & hence the flesh was extremely tough. You can observe that the seabass was over-cooked , just look at how dense the meat is. Most importantly, the sea urchin emulsion was rather weak & I couldnt taste much sea-urchin in the foam which made the fish much more difficult to be eaten given its lack of flavour.

Braised Chicken in Shao Xing Wine - Kudos to the Chefs & I admire their creativity in mixing Western & Asian dishes in this Brunch menu as this is a Chinese dish presented in a Western manner. Shao Xing Wine is one of China’s finest rice wine & its fragrant & sweet taste makes it extremely interesting for Chefs to be used for cooking & marinating. The flavour of the Shao Xing Wine was strong but however the chicken meat (breast) was dry & lacked any real seasoning which was disappointing. Perhaps a Chicken leg piece will be more suited to this dish is my humble suggestion? 

  

Grilled Hunter Steak & Fries  - Very difficult for myself to dislike a piece of steak & here is the first for sure. The steak is wrapped with a layer of bacon & is then char-grilled, sounds mouth-watering huh? But what turned out was this piece of steak which was slightly bruised in colour & slightly on the purple side & the taste was somewhat not very appealing full of burnt flavours. The fries were somewhat dull despite its golden colour & it wasn’t crispy which was slightly disappointing.

                                                                                   

We did manage to conquer all 7 main courses which was somewhat unbelievable & of course, we continued to binge through the dessert buffet after. Highly recommend to try out the Chocolate Tart, possibly one of the very best ganache tarts I have had in Hong Kong & of course, I managed to squeeze an extra one into my belly after!

Despite some minor hit & miss in the main course, I thoroughly enjoyed this experience at WHISK. I totally admire & respect on how they are very creative in tackling the brunch issue & unlike other major hotel establishments, they have gone about their business differently with this unique all-you-can-eat maincourse deal. For HKD550 + 10% including all you can drink & eat, this is an absolute steal & I was stuffed for the whole day & night. Interior & environment is also very comfy & warm, especially the live DJ on the decks adds a special touch to the restaurant. Too bad that it was raining the day we went as apparently the outdoors of the WHISK is normally used for outdoor BBQs, now that is worth a returned visit!

Happy Eating!

Geoff

Upcoming Review:: Brand New Roast Restaurant in Causeway Bay

  

Address: 5F, The Mira, 118 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui (尖沙咀彌敦道118號The Mira5樓)

Tel: 2315-5999

Food Quality (5* the highest): 3/1/2*

Price for Meal (5$ = very expensive): *** ($550 + 10% per head for a ridiculously heavy meal)