Valentine’s Day Dinners: Romance your loved one with a truly spectacular meal

There’s no better occasion than Valentine’s Day to show that special someone in your life just how much you appreciate them. To help, Hong Kong’s finest eateries have put together a smorgasbord of romantic menus to enhance the day even further. Below, we highlight some of the best Valentine’s Day dinners to be had come February 14th. Best book fast to ensure your evening is one to remember.

Épure

There is no doubt that the right ingredient can immediately transform any romantic Valentine’s dinner. With that in mind, the French fine dining restaurant Épure is offering a special eight-course Valentine’s day dinner menu with the much-coveted Black Truffles as its central motif, created by Executive Chef Nicolas Boutin. Besides, this one Michelin starred restaurant’s view of the Victoria Harbour adds to the intimate dining experience. Call (852) 3185 8338 or email reservations@epure.hk to book your table.

Location: Shop 403, 4/F, Ocean Centre, Harbour City, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.

Price: HK$2,088 onwards + 10% per person.

Takumi by Daisuke Mori

On a day to celebrate the love shared by two people, Takumi by Daisuke Mori, a restaurant that brings together two different cuisines – French and Japanese goes well with the theme. Crafted by Michelin-starred Chef Daisuke, the nine-course menu served on Valentine’s Day features dishes like HIDA Tenderloin Sandwich, Hairy Crab Shogoin-turnip and Blue Lobster Rolled Pumpkin and Nori. There’s also a wine-pairing option of four glasses of wine for HK$880 or six glasses for HK$1,180, both of which will be subject to 10% service charges. For more details click here.

Location: Shop 1, G/F, The Oakhill, 16 Wood Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong.

Price: HK$2,080 + 10% service charges.

Madame Fù

If you believe in the popular phrase ‘sharing is caring’, the Valentine’s Day dinner menu served by the contemporary Chinese restaurant Madame Fù definitely looks set to please. The five-course menu features dishes such as Seafood Honey Bean Dumplings, French Blue Lobster with Dan Dan Noodles and Wasabi Angus Beef with Okra and more. With four out of seven rooms specially decorated for Valentine’s Day, there’s no doubt the atmosphere and culinary treats here will help enhance the romance of the evening. Click here to make your reservation.

Location: Madame Fù, 3rd Floor, Barrack Block, Tai Kwun, No.10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong.

Price: From HK$1,800.

The Tiffany Blue Box Cafe

Be it gifting your partner a beautiful piece of jewellery or surprising them with a remarkable dinner, with the creation of The Tiffany Blue Box Cafe, the American brand Tiffany and Co. knows how to put exquisiteness in both. Starting with the rich taste of Iberico Ham with Green Asparagus Panna Cotta and ending with the cafe’s homemade Lemon Madeleine and Dark Chocolate Madeleine, the five-course meal is sure to impress your taste buds and your date’s too. Click here to book your table.

Location: 2/F, Shop No. 7-8 One Peking, No.1 Peking Road, Tsim Sha Tsui.

Price: HK$1,688 + Perrier-Jouët Champagne: HK$150/glass.

Mott 32

If you are looking to eat to your heart’s content with your loved one, the long-lauded modern Chinese cuisine Mott 32 could be the perfect destination for Valentine’s Day. The Central-set restaurant’s nine-dish set menu includes mouth watering dishes like Foie Gras with Chinese Hwa Tiao, Egg White, Pumpkin Soup, and Baked Red Date Puff with Red Beancurd. Served exclusively on February 14, this feast is surely a wholesome gastronomic journey. Click here to make your reservation.

Location: Standard Chartered Bank Building, 4-4a Des Voeux Road, Central, Hong Kong.

Price: HK$1,480 + 10% per person.

The Landmark Mandarin Oriental

Everyone likes to have choices and those at the luxury restaurant The Landmark Mandarin Oriental offers that to you. If you choose to go on an afternoon date, the eatery offers a selection of pastries including Green tea matcha cheesecake, Coconut and mango bowl, and more, which you can pair with a bottle of pink Moët & Chandon rosé champagne. If you are looking to dine later in the evening or even midnight (till 1:00am), The Landmark Mandarin Oriental’s bar Please Don’t Tell serves Caviar tots and Moët & Chandon champagne or a classic Martini cocktail and a dessert of your liking. Both these dining options will be available from February 11 to February 17. Make your reservations via email – lmhkg-mobar@mohg.com or phone – (852) 2132 0077.

Location: The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, The Landmark, 15 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong.

Prices: From HK$338 to HK$1,998.

Hue

Be it satisfying your visual senses with a panoramic view of Victoria Harbour or treating your taste buds with its mouthwatering menu, the contemporary Australian restaurant Hue has it all. This Valentine’s Day, Hue will be serving a three-course dinner menu in the evening (6:00pm and 6:30pm seatings) and a four-course menu at its 8:30pm seating. With options like Beetroot salad with goat’s milk curd and luxurious truffle for starters and Yam and ricotta dumplings with pickled squash served with truffle and burnt butter sauce for the main course, you can relish in a satiating, soul-satisfying Valentine’s Day dinner menu. Call (852) 3500 5888 or click here to make your reservation.

Location: 1/F Hong Kong Museum of Art, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, HK.

Price: Three-course dinner menu: HK$880+10% per person; Four-course dinner menu: HK$980+10% per person.

Arcane

Located in a quiet corner in Central, the one Michelin-starred hotel Arcane is a great dining option for couples looking for an intimate meal. Indulge in a six-course tasting menu with dishes including Seared Hokkaido scallop with roasted carrot oil, yamaimo, salsa verde and mustard frill; Slow braised wagyu short rib with sweet potato purée, brussels sprouts and maitake mushroom and other delicacies. With contemporary art work by Flowers Gallery filling the room, this restaurant provides the right ambience for a romantic dinner making it to our list of best Valentine’s Day dinners.

Location: Arcane, 3rd Floor, 18 On Lan St, Central.

Price: HK$1,388.

Takumi by Daisuke Mori joins hand with Polish artist to create limited-time art menu

April may have been the official ‘art month’ in Hong Kong, but its lingering effects are still coaxing creatives in the city to push the boundaries of their imagination. One such creative mind is celebrated Michelin-starred Japanese chef Daisuke Mori, whose hidey-hole restaurant Takumi by Daisuke Mori, tucked away in Wan Chai, is collaborating with Polish designer and artist Mariusz Malecki of Studio Ziben fame to create a special eight-course art menu to bring together the worlds of high design and haute cuisine.

Just like Malecki uses everything from discarded wood to scraps of cloths for his collages, similarly chef Daisuke Mori has painstakingly constructed each part of the degustation menu to be a perfect fit for the larger composition of the meal which pays a homage not just to Malecki’s artworks but also to his vision and inspirations.

For instance, there is the langoustine with beetroots gelée and parsley roots purée, a refreshing dish in itself, but made more nuanced by the use of beetroot gelée – a hark-back to Malecki’s Polish roots, with this particular vegetable being a common element in Polish cuisine.

Another such dish is the black rice risotto with squid ink and silver point – co-created by the artist and chef Mori – which is rich both in terms of its looks and its flavours, with chunky pieces of squid adding further to the richness of the risotto.

The set dinner is, however, only available till 18 May, but knowing chef Mori, it won’t come as a surprise if there are more such artistic collaborations up his sleeves in future.

Takumi by Daisuke Mori, Shop 1, The Oakhill, 16 Wood Road, Wan Chai, +852 2574 1299

Text: Suchetana Mukhopadhyay

Takumi by Daisuke Mori plates up well-finessed Franco-Japanese cuisine

It’s no secret that every Wan Chai eatery is desperate to snaffle passing trade by being bolder, glitzier and more in-your-face than its neighbouring rivals. Should such one-uppery and ostentation leave you with no appetite, then one of the district’s more discreet dineries – Takumi by Daisuke Mori, a bastion of well-finessed Franco-Japanese cuisine – should maybe loom large on your ‘to nosh’ list.

Takumi by Daisuke Mori is an intimate dining experience — *The 12-seat Takumi by Daisuke Mori offers an intimate omakase experience*

Set squarely at the less-travelled end of Wood Road, this craftily-concealed cuisinery is fronted by an unassuming, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it access point. Once home to Wagyu Takumi, Chef Daisuke Mori now holds sway here, with his new restaurant having won a Michelin star of its own for two successive years.

Maintaining that it’s his experience on the global gourmand trail that gives him his edge, he says: “I’ve worked in many places across the world and that really opened my eyes, making me willing to experiment with different ingredients and cooking styles. At Takumi, though, we’re solely focussed on fusing Japanese simplicity with a typically French aplomb, while using only the finest produce both countries have to offer.”

*Homemade pasta with Japanese sugar tomato, “mi-cuit” Aori Ika*

Keen to see if his philosophy truly delivered, our chef-selected tasting menu opened with Homemade pasta with Japanese sugar tomato, “mi-cuit” Aori Ika. The mi-cuit (a French technique that outwardly sears an ingredient while leaving it tender within) Aori Ika squid was perfectly complemented by the tender sweet tomatoes, with a judicious basil oil reduction neatly binding the dish.

With Mori’s innovative East-meets-West flair immediately to the fore, the dish was served unexpectedly cold. Given the summer heat, this proved to be an unusual, yet wholly-refreshing, departure from the norm.

What else to follow but Pan-fried hairtail, baby corn and French green pea? Having never partaken of the hairtail fish, this was a revelatory introduction. Most memorably, the fish’s unusual ground sourdough crust gave each delicate bite that added crunch. Served with a kinome-miso sauce, the dish calls to an underwater garden.

For the soup course, Chef Mori presented Black abalone with shiitake consommé, with Hong Kong’s most-loved mollusc proudly taking centre stage. Seared to secure a caramelised and slightly smoky texture before being be-brothed, these succulent sea snails were amply garnished with ginko nuts and black truffle shavings.

Scarcely had the consommé been consumed than the Grilled Wagyu tenderloin made the grandest of entrances. This particular premium beef would quell the quibbles of even the most quarrelsome critics, even before its custom-picked condiments – including Salsifis puree, Aomori garlic confit and fresh wasabi – hoved into view. Arguably amounting to five different dishes in one serving, the only complaint – and, I suspect, a common one – might be that is there is not nearly enough on the plate to sate the inevitably-drooling diner.

Finally, it was dessert time, with Chef Mori unveiling his summer special Hokkaido melon with Sauternes wine and basil sorbet. Pitching symmetrical spheres of Hokkaido’s famous Yubari melon, marinated overnight in sweet Sauternes wine, against a cold melon soup, with a striking basil sorbet mediating between the two, this took us well into premium pudding territory.

It was a fitting finale to a fantastic feast and an apt testament to the Chef’s finesse in subtly fusing Japan’s finest ingredients with weaponised French preparatory techniques. This dish, as with the entire menu and the establishment itself, proves that tactical, bold – but informed – blending is the gift that, in the right hands, just never stops giving.

Shop 1, G/F, The Oakhill, 16 Wood Road, Wan Chai. (852) 2574 1299.

Text: Tenzing Thondup