This is a review of Chinese New Year special menu at Hakkasan

In a nutshell:
A Chinese and Asian fine dine restaurant that is part of an international chain, has nice ambience, warm and very efficient service and serves some authentic and some more fusion dishes.

Address & other details:  Hakkasan

Meal for 2: 2500 onwards

Cuisine type :  vegetarian & nonvegetarian

Disclaimer: All restaurants / eateries reviewed by YUMMRAJ were visited by YUMMRAJ himself & he has paid for the full Bill & tips also. http://www.yummraj.com does not have even one featured / sponsored reviews. YUMMRAJ believes in going to a restaurant in anonymity, as a normal guest, experience everything & give a honest account of the same to you.

I rate all the food items & then give a final overall rating which is a simple average of the individual item ratings. What the ratings stand for: 5 = Excellent, 4 = Very Good, 3 = Good, 2 = Fair, 1 = Disaster.

Short description – in case u r in a hurry:

We decided to go to this restaurant after getting to know that they have a limited time Chinese New Year set menu.

We arrived at the restaurant counter on ground floor and were led to the restaurant in a lift. As we exited the lift lobby we reached a beautifully done passage.

We were taken to the left wing where there was a huge bar area and lounge style seating.

Later we discovered that the other side had a huge dining hall with normal restaurant seating and a see thru kitchen.

We got a great corner seat and enjoyed our time there. Mid meal we realized that actress Shilpa Shetty was having lunch with her family in the next table.

The waiting staff was excellent. He was super efficient, highly knowledgeable and warm at the same time.

The menu card was a list of items with description of food

It mentioned that they do not have a policy to doggy pack food. However our server informed us that they do no more have that policy.

Food was very enjoyable and so were the beverages.

Detailed description – in case u have the time to njoy reading:

We opted for a Chinese New Year special ‘set menu’.

We started with 9 hou (monkey) drink orange , other fruits and gin based. Gin taste and flavour was in the foreground with flavours of juices in the background. Nice robust potent drink that tasted very good too.  Rate it 4.5/5

We also tried mocktail Sheng Fizz. It was nice and tangy. It was made from canned Juices. Wud hv surely been better had it been made from fresh juices. Rate it 3.25/5

Clear Soup with Shimeji mushroom & pakchoy had a clear broth that was extremely good. It was a thin soup bursting with flavours of mushrooms and other ingredients. It had carrots, tofu, edamame, baby pakchoy and more. Rate it 4.5/5

Seafood soup had prawns and scallops and almost the same veggies as above. Freshness of the seafood made them great in addition to chef’s caliber in maintaining the best texture and preventing it from getting rubbery. The broth had flavours of seafood. Loved it and rate it 4.5/5

For small bites we had Lychee with taro ring in spicy curry sauce. For the uninitiated, taro is ‘yam’ (jimikand / kochu – a root). Taro ring is made by deep frying the paste of yam. See video here – taro ring.

This is a dish that is usually made during Chinese New Year.

The ring was excellent. It had great ‘crispy outside, soft inside’ texture and a very balanced taste. In the middle was batter fried de-seeded lychees. The taste I must say, was curious.

We loved munching on these. At the base was a curry sauce similar to the Malaysian curry. Enjoyed this dish and rate it 4.5/5

The next item we had was lamb with vegetable and pine nuts. This was served on a taco like shell.

The lamb was soft, juicy, flavourful and yumm. Pine nuts elevated the dish a lot. Rate it 4.25/5

For main course we moved to baked silver cod in miso sauce. This was mind blowing good. The cod was flaky, bursting out with juices, immensely YUMM and just too good. Memorable I wud say.

This was served on a bed of steamed veggies (broccoli , bokchoy etc) and mushrooms.

Super loved the dish and finished till the last drop. Rate it 4.75/5

Next dish we had was wok fried chicken in fragrant chilly sauce. The chicken was soft and juicy. The meat had retained its fat. The chicken dish was as good as a chicken dish cud get. Flavours of chilly were enjoyable. Rate it 4.25/5

We enjoyed the above with ginger fried rice made from crispy jasmine rice. Loved it.

The rice was sticky ( rather sticking to each other). Punch of Ginger and its flavour was surely felt. Rate it 4.25/5

Stir fried ramen in spicy sauce was somewhat crunchy due to presence of mung bean sprouts. This was unstoppable and hand kept automatically moving from plate to mouth. This was surely of the fusion variety. Rate it 4.5/5

For dessert we had Golden halo – banana peanut cake base. Banana cremox chocolate ball flavoured with five spice banana ice cream. The stunning part of this dish was the unexpected looks of the different parts of the dish, use of golden Color etc.

Banana flavours wud emerge from something that wud remotely look like a banana. Similar situation with peanut.

It was a dish full of intrigue. Loved it and rate it 4.75/5

Till this it was going good except the fact that we cud not try the pork belly or the duck. We had offered to pay the extra amount if they substituted the chicken dish of the same menu with either duck or pork. However they flatly refused.

Our server asked for coffee and we ordered an espresso. This espresso (₹350) was not even worth ₹35. A regular coffee day espresso is better. The espresso machine of the hotel had been set wrong and the liquid that was been churned out by the machine was not espresso but light intensity black coffee with less flavour. Disaster. Rate it 0/5.

Overall rating of food and beverage at Hakkasan averages out to 4/5. Sans the coffee the rating is however 4.4/5.

We wud surely revisit to try the pork belly, roasted duck, braised lobster etc. Look forward to ur comments.