New Punjab Club — Restaurant in Hong Kong Island

New Punjab Club is a Black Sheep restaurant on Wyndham Street in Central and a recent recipient of a Michelin One Star rating for 2018. We had our first meal here recently and came away finding the restaurant to be a fun venue, serving up great South Asian (Punjab) cuisine.

The restaurant is open for dinner each night as well as lunch (12-2.30pm) on Friday and Saturday and can accommodate 40 diners at a time. It is a really popular place with locals at the moment so best to reserve in advance on their website to secure a table.

Seating area is neat with red leather wall seating for groups of 4 and centre tables for parties for smaller parties. Walls are adorned with contemporary South Asian inspired artworks that add a nice vibe to the restaurant. Staff are dressed in a regional themed attire. They are knowledgeable, polite and timely with their table service as well.

Menu features foods that originate from the Punjab Region of Pakistan and India. The dish names may be different but if you are familiar with Indian cuisine, you should be able to pick up the menu fairly well. Waitstaff are happy to describe dishes if helpful and can recommend which pair nicely together.

Dishes are definitely made for sharing. I might suggest 2 to 2.5 orders per person, depending on your appetite. We tried sampling from various sections of the menu and found everything to taste very good during our meal.

From the Nashta section we tried two orders. These included the Samosa Chaat, a beautiful serving of smashed samosa with yoghurt, tamarind glaze and pomegranate. The dish falls on the sweet side side of the scale, balancing nicely with the the more savoury Keema Pau, a minced mutton served in spicy gravy along with milk buns. The Keema Pau was savoury, richly flavoured and fun to eat.

We also tried the Ankurit Kala Chana Salad, which was as delicious as it was delightful to look at. A lot of intelligence goes into this particular salad made up with hen peas, moong beans, charred corn and held together with a pungent, spiciness that really binds the salad flavours together nicely. This is an excellent salad, perhaps the best executed dish on the night.

From the Sabzi menu section, we tried the Chana Masala, a bowl of chick peas, slow-cooked in cumin and ginger. This was another very flavourful dish, about as nice a chana masala as we'd have in years. Tandoori Roti was well baked and good with the chana masala as well as for mopping up the extra Keema Paul curry.

The restaurant highlights their Tandoor menu section, from which we tried the Lahori Seekh, a kebab of minced wagyu infused with fragrant black cardamon and served with chilli chutney. This was a good tandoori main, leaving us eager to sample more from this section of the menu next time.

For drinks we very much enjoyed the mango lassi. Properly thick and with the right amount of tart, this was authentic and tasted great. We were equally happy with the London No. 1 Gin and Tonic drink served with Indian tonic water.

After nearly 90 minutes of enjoying numerous tasty dishes and well made drinks, we left New Punjab Club very happy with our meal. This was the best South Asian dinner we have had in Hong Kong in a very long time, something we look forward to...

Food was excellent. So why the three-star rating?

To be sure, the famous keema pau was a lovely start to the meal, whilst the tandoori wild tiger prawns and chicken curry were cooked and spiced expertly. However, given that this is a Michelin-starred establishment, our dining experience fell short of our expectations.

The service from the front of house staff was undoubtedly professional, but not friendly in the slightest. That's not to say that our servers were rude, per se, but for a restaurant with one star, you would expect more than just somebody taking your order and then placing your food in front of you without saying anything at all other than the name of the dish. Just because the ingredients of the dishes are listed on the menu does not mean that the servers should neglect describing the dish. I'm not even asking for a thorough explanation of the cooking method or the chef's inspiration for creating the dish (although other starred establishments often do include this when serving their dishes). It doesn't seem too much to ask for a short description of the dish, even just listing the main components of the dish, instead of just placing the food in front of the guest and curtly saying "murghi salaan".

At no point in our meal did any of our servers ask us how our food was. Whilst I think some establishments struggle with the opposite issue of having overly eager servers who interrupt your conversation a little too often, you would at least expect somebody to ask "how was everything?" at one point during your meal. That didn't happen here.

Pacing between courses was also very rushed. We finished our meal in a little over an hour. There were only two to three minutes between each course, if that, and it seemed like we were being rushed through our meal so that the restaurant could close. Whilst I could understand being rushed if we were the last remaining patrons and it was near closing time, or if we had overstayed our two hour time slot, neither of these had been the case here. There were still many other tables that had yet to finish their meals, and we were the last seating for the night so nobody needed the table after us. A better rhythm would've been five to ten minutes between each course. Whilst fifteen would make guests hungry and irritable, two to three minutes makes guests feel like they're at a local cha chaan teng—albeit without the affordable cha chaan teng prices that make the infamous "HK-style service" acceptable.

The saviour of the day was the gentleman who was responsible for greeting guests at the door. He made us feel very welcome from the get go, and even though we felt disappointed by the service, when we left, at least we smiled when he enthusiastically bade us farewell.

Having read other reviews that have highlighted the warm and personable service that others have received whilst dining here, I sincerely hope that what we experienced was a one-off. However, I'm not sure that this would matter given that the service we experienced (or lack thereof), especially at this price-point and at this level of reputation, do not really inspire an eager revisit. Shame, as the food was truly...

Where should I begin?!! I went to The New Punjab Club for my birthday and I had high expectations for it, as I knew it was a Michelin star restaurant. And WAW I wasn’t disappointed AT ALL !!

First of all, the environment, decoration and feeling of the place is just perfect: neat space, colourful paintings, cosy couches, large tables and clever lightening focusing on the food: everything is made so you can enjoy so much sitting there that you never want to leave.

The staff is VERY nice, smiling a lot and playing around with the customers, for my pleasure! They are also all very knowledgeable about the food and take pleasure in explaining how certain dishes were made and where the ingredients come from. Seriously, I felt sometimes that I was listening to story like a young kid about to sleep, with all the details in the storytelling by our waiters!!!

And then.. THE FOOD... Oh my God... WAW !!!!! I love Indian food of course but this is all the things I like re-imagined to the smallest details and to the next level. We ordered a usual classic of mine: samosas, butter chicken and chicken tandoori , plus a salade to rest our tongues from all the spice from time to time. And OMG !!

The samosa? Not just regular samosas with some sauce on the side, NO! They come mixed with marvellous yoghurt sauce mixed with pomegranate and crispy noodles!!! The whole mixture delivers an explosion of tastes and senses on your tongue as you are chewing the samosa, cracking the noodles and savouring the sauce at the same time !! It is a real highlight !!!!!!!

And the chickens? Both tandoori and butter LOOK very classic but I swear to Baby Jeezus their seasoning and texture have definitely something special to them. Never have I tasted such a good butter chicken, and I have tried A LOT of them !! On top of that we had a butter nan each that was SOOO BIG that we couldn’t finish it !!

Finally, it was my birthday so the staff made sure to offer me a sweet gift in the end and take a nice picture of my couple 😍😍😍 All on the house !!!

I cannot think of anything else than saying WAW when I think about that restaurant. All I know is that I want to go back there again soon and try many other items on their menu. The lamb especially looks AH MAH ZING, I saw it on another table and was MAD I didn’t get it too !!

Yes!! I HIGHLY recommend everyone to try it for both the food, experience and environment. But mostly for the...