Hong Kong Cuisine—the Chinese restaurant in Happy Valley, that is, not the collective term—has been offering a fine dining experience in the more traditional sense for ten years. Now, following a recent interior renovation and revamp, the restaurant is aiming to drive the evolution of Chinese cuisine in Hong Kong with a new chef, Silas Li, as well as a new concept and menu. Led by Li, the restaurant will also be offering a platform for next-generation chefs to learn and develop skills while preserving the art of Chinese cooking. 

The new menu is focused on Hong Kong’s unique cuisine, reflecting its East meets West heritage by giving classic Chinese dishes a refresh using modern techniques. Highlights include a braised boneless duck web stuffed in chicken wings which is also a clever play on the Chinese idiom that refers to a chicken communicating with a duck; steamed cod wrapped in miso fish mousse with zucchini, beef consomme and carrot bubbles; and a crispy sea cucumber stuffed with tofu fish mousse that is served with mapo sauce.

Hong Kong Cuisine, 1/F, Elegance Court, 2-4 Tsoi Tak Street, Happy Valley, Hong Kong; +852 2893 3788

Sake Central is hosting its next lively instalment of Tempura Nights with chef Tomiya Yu, the former sushi and kaiseki chef of Tommy's Kitchen from July 19 to 16 and July 29 to 30. The event offers an eight-course omakase menu featuring Yu's seasonal selections of tempura including squid with uni, Japanese horse mackerel, oyster, and fig among other deep-fried delights. If the omakase is too much, there are also more casual a la carte options and bar snacks to try. Naturally, the menu is best paired with Sake Central's favourite pours to complete the experience and reservations can be made here.

Uma Nota's new Rare and Remarkable dining series is a celebration of native Brazilian ingredients that you wouldn't normally find in the city. To kick it all off, the Brazilian-Japanese restaurant presents The Root of the Amazon, a seven-course dinner created by head chef Gustavo Vargas that is centred around the versatile root vegetable, cassava. The menu includes some traditional items such as a homemade cassava bread called Pão de Mandioca which is served with smoked butter, goat cheese and eggplant miso as well as two seafood courses of deep-fried prawns and crispy soft-shell crab, along with meat dishes including grilled lamb rack and beef rump served with a cassava millefeuille.

Priced at HK$540 per person, The Root of the Amazon dinner will be available every Sunday to Wednesday throughout August starting from July 31. Wine pairing options are also available for an additional HK$290 per person.

Wagyumafia's co-founder Hisato Hamada sought to fuse two of Japan's most popular dining experiences, and in doing so, was inspired by a Hokkaido style of grilling mutton called Jingisukan—which is the Japanese transliteration of Genghis Khan, no less. Taking cues from the uniquely shaped metal skillet used in this regional dish, Hamada went to one of Japan’s leading manufacturers of aerospace parts, Yuki Precision, to develop a custom grill that can be used for yakiniku and shabu shabu.

Dubbed the Wagyujiskan experience, Yakinikumafia is launching a new menu that includes rare cuts of Ozaki beef to put on the state-of-the-art grill for yakiniku alongside a range of greens and mushrooms. Thereafter, guests can choose from two broths, the original Wagyujiskan or spicy mala version, to continue the meal shabu shabu-style before deciding to finish with either ramen or risotto made with koshihikari rice and wagyu bone soup.

The grill, which took nearly forty iterations to make, is carefully designed to impart meaty flavour to the vegetables and is finished with a micro pinning surface that cooks each ingredient precisely and evenly. There are currently two versions of the grill available to use at Yakinikumafia.

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