Twists and Clout

Hotel Icon’s Above & Beyond may not look like a Chinese restaurant, but it sure tastes like one, says CHRISTINA KO

I WANT IT ALL. That’s the first thought that pops into my head upon entering the lounge on the 28th floor of Hotel Icon in Tsim Sha Tsui East. The lounge leads into the property’s flagship Chinese restaurant, which is named Above & Beyond. As yet, I haven’t even seen the menu.

I want for myself the eerie bronze antelope. I want the nightscape of Hong Kong, painted by artist Kim Sung-ho. I want the collection of funny miniature terracotta soldiers frozen in kneeling and standing positions, each accompanied by its own My Little Pony friend. I want the teeny pagoda replica, the model of a motorcycle and even the white armchairs embossed with circular patterns. I only mention this seemingly irrelevant lust for home decor because it’s rarely experienced in a Chinese restaurant. And that’s exactly what Above & Beyond wants.

Only about half of the decor is overtly oriental, and that fits in neatly with the restaurant’s philosophy. The idea of a lounge, in fact, is incongruous in a Cantonese establishment (where are the giant fish tanks?), and while many interior designers talk loudly of rebooting the Chinese restaurant, no one has done the job that Conran & Partners has managed in conjunction with local designer Freeman Lau, who curated the hotel’s collection of objects and art.

The restaurant proper begins beyond the lounge. It’s striking in its simplicity and its use of browns and greys (typical golds and reds are conspicuously absent). Slate-hued marble, mahogany leather booths and a sliver of mirror make up one end of the long corridor; full-length windows dominate the other. A wine room is encased in marble and glass, and features a long table and chartreuse dining chairs. Then there are three multi-purpose private rooms, which could function as well for hip board meetings as for dinner functions.

The cuisine, too, challenges the traditional (though not as boldly as the design). Chef Joseph Tse brings humour and 37 years of experience to the table, breathing new life into the likes of sweet and sour pork, and beef tenderloin with goose liver.

The reason for Tse’s defection from his role as chef de cuisine at Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong lies in Hotel Icon’s unique position as the city’s first teaching and research hotel, a designation that could be viewed as misleading. Far from being overrun with confused trainees, the property commands even higher standards than your average five-star hotel (it does, after all, bear the burden of training the next generation of hoteliers). Nor are the stiff brand guidelines that give many establishments that robotic, cookie-cutter vibe anywhere to be found, allowing a pleasant shake-up that’s evident in both Above & Beyond and the rest of the hotel.

“I hope to bring my experience to the younger generation,” says Tse, exhibiting no small amount of well-earned bravado. “I want to keep Cantonese traditions alive.” Students who enter his world go through 10-week rotations that expose them to every aspect of a hotel kitchen, from chopping to food presentation.

Eighty-plus percent of what appears on the menu is Cantonese with a twist. The crispy-fried sweet and sour pork, for example, is wrapped around a slice of pineapple, and paired with slivers of pear infused with red wine vinegar, which also features in the sauce. The result is crunch and sweetness that intensifies into a multilayered savoury symphony, cut and complemented by the cool of the pear. The rest of the menu traverses the highlights of regional Chinese cuisine, admittedly sometimes dumbed down to pander to a global audience – the handful of Sichuan dishes in no way match the fiery spiciness of cuisine in their home province.

Other dishes more than compensate, however. Steamed coral crab with glutinous rice is a meal in itself, with plush crabmeat that’s utterly worth the effort of cracking shells, digging for buried meat and sucking unceremoniously on your juice-moistened fingers. The rice, so often an afterthought, is also exemplary in texture. Sticky enough to live up to its name but not so chewy that it’s a chore to eat, it boasts the clarity of flavours that is Tse’s calling card.

Equally finger-licking good is the smoked Bresse pigeon with oolong tea leaves. The tea and smoky flavour intertwine to infiltrate the body of the pigeon completely, providing an aroma that’s an alluring preview and contributor to the thick and complicated smokiness that activates the taste buds and nostrils like a fine whisky.

Large parties attending Above & Beyond are afforded the luxury of being served banquet-style. Circular tables and lazy Susans are in short supply, in favour of bench tables to maximise the number of diners enjoying window views. Thanks to sommelier Nigel Chan, care has also been taken in the thoughtful and boundary-pushing beverage selection. Chan takes the teaching aspect of his role seriously, not only training tomorrow’s wine professionals in the custom-built Vinoteca Lab, but also creating a wine list to test the limits of patrons’ adventurous palates while educating them on emerging wine regions. Old World wines are present and plentiful at Above & Beyond, but so too are bottles from Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia.

Chan admits that the Hong Kong palate is faithful to tried-and-tested brands. To encourage experimentation, more than 30 wines are offered by the glass, and banquets are great opportunities for pairing, despite the inherent difficulties in matching wines with Chinese dishes.

“There’s difficulty because of the number of courses served, as well as the diversity,” Chan explains. “It’s difficult to find wines that are flexible enough to complement the journey.” Instead, and rather than using the textbook reds-with-meat, whites-with-seafood formula, Chan focuses on textures and acidity to find harmony. He couples the sweet and sour pork, for example, with Château Béla. The Slovakian white is, perhaps, an unlikely candidate given the use of red wine vinegar in the dish, but Chan insists it to be a winning companion to the dish’s citrus notes. He enhances the wine’s sweetness by serving it two or three degrees above chilled.

Unusually, there’s no twist ending to the meal, and the double-boiled pear with osmanthus served with Chinese petit fours is simply executed, and means there is no guilt in doing dessert. It might be the gastronomic twists that initially attract diners to Above & Beyond, but it’s the sum of all the parts that will bring them hurrying back.