Hong Kong Restaurants: Azure Restaurant Slash Bar, Hotel LKF, Hong Kong - Go There with Friends

Published in The Peak Magazine, Asia Edition, April 2007

I will always be in love with Hong Kong.

If New York is the “city that never sleeps,” then Hong Kong is the “city that never stops”... never stops growing, never stops changing, never stops entertaining!

I know. I lived there for eight years.
I still miss the one o’clock power lunches where harden deal makers conduct religiously their due diligence.
And, I miss the old fashioned hotel cigar stewards (usually female) who would dip my Cohiba into an aged cognac before handing it to me with a perfectly symmetrical five millimeter burn.

I learned about Azure Restaurant Slash Bar from my FF fraternity brother, Paul. Like all brothers, Paul is a bon vivant.

In his pitch to me, he cautioned me that only “those on the list could get in.” That was all I needed to hear! I decided immediately to check it out after Paul arranged for the owner to put me on the list.

My dinner reservation at Azure was on a Thursday night. The place was bustling.

Hip touches like the Azure's resident DJ (who spun tracks throughout my 3 hour long dinner) are indications that Azure is clearly the place to be. Nearly every table was filled by 9pm with Hong Kong’s rich and powerful and young.

I didn’t bother with the wine list and instead challenged Alex, the restaurant manager, by asking him to bring me the house wine. Alex gave us a few glasses of a full-body Shiraz from Sonoma’s famed Geyser's Peak Winery. It was a great red!

My Hong Kong dinner partner, Robert, a media mogul, liked his vegetarian tempura made from zucchini flour and stuffed with nicoise, pesto and smoked ricotta. I preferred my appetizer of tuna tartar with crab meat and basil and rocket leaves and salmon caviar.

We had a cold weather dish called cauliflower cream soup flavoured with white truffle oil and wild mushroom fricasse. It was a double success as both of us consumed our bowls in record time! (The main menu carries a carrot and coriander soup which my soup-loving friends swear by.)

One of our entrees was roast garupa with what Chef Cedric Alexandra calls a “virgin sauce” and linguini in saffron and roasted asparagus. I never did find out why it was called a “virgin sauce,” but I liked the saffron sauce better anyway.

That next entree was the grilled veal medallion with a mushroom Marsala cream sauce and sauteed radicchio. I thought it was better than the garupa. (I’ve heard a lot about the Boston lobster dishes… one on a papaya salad and the other with cannelloni and parmesan….....all of which I plan to try on my next visit!)

At dessert time, Nancy, a high powered talent agent, joined us as we were presented with a beautiful looking plate consisting of a chocolate cake in the shape of a Egyptian pyramid filled with molten chocolate and some banana caramel ice cream and brandy snaps on the side. This dish was made for chocolate lovers – which, surprisingly, I am not – so I eyed with envy the red berry millefeuille with ginger chibouste cream on the regular menu without ever taking any action.

In the best of Hong Kong tradition, the evening ended with us talking deals and nursing a few more glasses of the Geyser Peak Shiraz.

Azure Restaurant Slash Bar is well worth a quick trip to Hong Kong. Azure’s cool look, cool food and cool people make the place a cool hot spot not to be missed.

If you need to get on the list, just let me know when you're planning to go and I'll see what I can do.