DRESSSED TO IMPRESS

It’s hard enough doing deals these days, so why not let your lunch do the talking? As CHRISTINA KO discovers, when you’re dining at Amber it’s a pleasure doing business

HONG KONG’S MOST romantic restaurants – they of the candlelit tranquillity, glittering window panoramas and sparsely spaced tables – are unexpectedly, by day, the city’s favourite business-lunch locations. And while the looks of love exchanged across dainty and delicious entrées are a far cry from the firm handshakes that happen table-side during sunlit hours, it just goes to show that wooing a client is not that much different from closing the deal with a lovely lad or lass…minus, perhaps, the eyelash-batting, accidental bumping of fingers and sexual innuendo (or not, depending on how you do business).

But there’s a fine art to keeping the corporate cards coming back, one that goes beyond good service, suitably showy presentation and hotel pricing. The choice of cuisine tends to be a no-brainer: Chinese food’s emphasis on family-style service is tricky; sushi brings up raw-food complications; and the curries of Southeast Asia could lead to a white-shirt splashback situation. When it comes to refined dining, the West really is best.

At Amber, the two-Michelin-starred restaurant at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental, the art is even more elevated. The interiors are warm and understated, with lacquered-wood walls that reflect light from the windows. Thanks to cylindrical coloured wall lamps that hang along the perimeter and thick bronze carpeting, the restaurant is bathed in that namesake Amber glow. In the evening, the lights are turned down to a simmering gold – romantic, yes, and great for roving eyes and stolen kisses, but obscuring the simple beauty of the venue. The 4,000-plus golden rods that hang like wind chimes in curves across the high ceilings are intended as the focal point of the room, but are suspended sufficiently high so as not to be distracting – so many restaurant interiors make the mistake of over-designing that it’s rather pleasant to talk business without diversions such as open kitchens, strangely sharp installations or scarily abstract paintings by whoever is the currently famous artist du jour.

Starters are seminal at a business lunch, and at Amber they have the power to make or break you. The ever-attentive staff will give detailed instructions on how to dine, but by then the power structure has been irrevocably shifted. Take the bull by the horns and do the talking instead; if there’s one way to show your success and confidence, it’s by being at home at one of Hong Kong’s top eateries.

It kicks off with a signature lollipop, one that should be familiar if you’ve ever dined at Amber. This seems easy enough to eat, until you try to discuss a deal with a mouthful of gooey bliss. The crimson-glazed Chupa Chup houses foie gras, raspberry, beetroot and crisp ginger bread, and is best consumed over ice-breakers – insert your standard “how’re the kids?” “weather’s been great lately,” and holiday and/or work trip tales here.
Part deux of the amuse-bouches is the Iberian pork snout to tail and piccalilli croquet with sea salt, which arrives, much like a soft-boiled egg, in its own cup with a Lilliputian spoon. Gulp this down as chef Richard Ekkebus intends, which is in a single bite, but wait a good two minutes before you pop that ball in; it will be hot. As unappetising as it sounds to mix pig snout with pickles, the dish errs just on the right side of pungent, with a dash of hot mustard for a final kick.

The Hokkaido sea urchin completes Amber’s must-try trifecta – this dish you have to order. Served in lobster jell-o with cauliflower, caviar and a side crispy seaweed “waffle,” this is at first glance a truly baffling course, both because it barely resembles food as we’ve previously seen, and because you probably have no idea what that palm-sized seaweed chip is doing there (treat it like a chip). For a dish that combines so many fishy elements, it has a surprisingly clean taste, cool to the tongue with just a lingering dash of sweetened sea.

Spices don’t feature strongly in Amber’s dishes, with tastes infused and innovatively paired, rather, to bring out standout flavours. The kegani crab, new to the menu this month, is served with caramelised sweet-corn emulsion and brown butter dressing, and the Hokkaido corn is chosen especially for its sweetening properties, which serve to bring out almost honeyed undertones from the crab.

In duck foie gras and Tasmanian black truffle ravioli, which is doused at the table in poulard consommé, Ekkebus shows great restraint in his use of the two main ingredients. Globalisation has not been kind to these delicacies – now readily available in every random cafe, they’ve become victims of the quantity-over-quality imbalance. Here, the medley created is interesting – the texture of the foie gras receives emphasis over the taste, and the truffle is used sparingly enough that both elements work in harmony.
Then again, if you want to play it safe – not an entirely unwise move when you prefer to concentrate on wheeling and dealing rather than lunching and munching – there’s that fallback entrée, the Alaskan king salmon poached in olive oil and served with pointed summer cabbage, Girolle mushrooms and garden herb sabayon. The exquisitely finished fish can be sliced cleanly with your fork, almost with the texture of sashimi, but with an added dusting of flavours.

Better than dessert (although Malaga wild strawberries with mascarpone as a vacherin “coque” make a good case for the course) is to flaunt your clout by chummying up to Ekkebus. Like most chefs he’s both affable and chatty, and more than happy to serve up anecdotes from the kitchen to regale yourself and your VIP clients. In his role overseeing both Amber and MO Bar, he’s part of the team that arranges those famed private concert nights at the latter establishment, featuring the likes of Alicia Keys and Kelly Clarkson. He’s also cooked for celebs, including sporting legend Michael Jordan and the more topical Tiger Woods, so surely has a veritable smorgasbord of tales to tell. Disclaimer: go for the stories, don’t bug him for concert tickets.

And don’t keep him too long. Ekkebus is one of very few executive chefs who still personally tastes and plates every dish that comes out of the kitchen. He’s got work to do…and come to think of it, so do you.