kikusan — Restaurant in Hong Kong Island

Surprise find on a quiet weekend!

I was out in Landmark to grab a few tees next door when I stumbled across this place. Feeling hungry skipping breakfast, I peek into the menu and saw they offer a great deal for tea time.

I ordered 2 sets from their tea menu and a Xiao long bao. Their Dan Dan Noodle’s broth was very rich and savoury. You can taste the nutty flavour from the peanuts before getting hit by the spiciness from the chilli oil.

It’s not overpowering but if you can’t take spicy then highly recommend you to opt for something else. The set comes with sake chicken which is very tender and flavourful. There’s an a la carte option for the chicken itself.

Another set I opt for the dim sum set where you can choose 2 options of your choice out of the 4 items offered.

One of which was the red oil wan ton, it was extremely flavourful super rich in taste but oh my it’s so so so spicy. I was tearing up after being greedy coating the whole wan ton with the dressing. Not for the faint hearted.

Their spring roll it’s so crispy so crispy so crispy that I have to repeat myself 3 times. Highly recommend.

Xiaolongbao itself is also filled with relish broth yet the taste is very different from the famous Din Tai Fung. It’s lighter and less meaty, goes well with vinegar.

Tea set comes with a drink of your choice. Portion is definitely adequate to fill you up. It cost me just about HKD 130 per pax and the tea set range from HKD...

The new revamped kikusan is a let down compared to before. Possibly due to post COVID decrease of traffic or other reasons.

One of the issues was the decrease of sushi dishes which it was infamous for. Like the rolls and such. The majority of it was discontinued probably due to few health and hygiene issues it caused before. Another was that their quality of food has dropped. For example we got a tonkatsu set. Half of the tonkatsu was pure fat. Inedible at all. We asked the manager what's going on.

She just replied some of the meat has more fat and probably on this batch but both of our sets was pretty much more fat than meat. The price was steep too. Also the side dishes of dumplings were either so dry despite coming in fresh or they didn't even bother mixing the spicy sauce with the dumplings.

It's still a decent lunch spot since it's nice atmosphere or meeting up colleague and friends. But not worth the price of another time in the...

Seems that Kikusan also suffered by Landmark's rebrand into a luxury mall and had to raise their prices to become more on-brand with the mall, however, while their prices increased, the quality of their food did not get an upgrade, I won't be coming back.

Used to come her often, also during the pandemic and just visited for the first time after their "re-launch". I was shocked to see that they raised their prices by like 50%. Before their re-launch it used to cost 90$ or so for dan dan ramen + tonkatsu cutlet and now it's 188$ for a "lunch set" which includes e.g. 3 dumplings or 2 spring rolls as starter + a tea but only one is free, the others you have to pay extra. They used to charge 5$ for unlimited Oolong hot or cold which now costs 10$. Totally not worth it for the food anymore, go somewhere else. The Tonkatsu was 60% just fat, if you charge me that much I expect quality and service was bad, nobody refilled...