TEST KITCHEN — Restaurant in Hong Kong Island

To be fair I feel 3.5 stars is more appropriate but there is no "half" option so I'm going to be slightly harsh and go with 3 stars. The two of us visited Test Kitchen just this Friday. It's an interesting concept and one that I appreciate. It's an opportunity for any chef to use the space to display their culinary skills! As a result food will always change and may be potentially a little inconsistent. The place has an industrial chic vibe and its setup is part of an old building that is having some life breathed back into it. Great concept and aesthetically quite appealing but just one thing really bugged me that night. We were seated at the large communal table on the ground floor, right in the middle of two groups of four. Due to the high ceilings and plentiful concrete around us, there was no sound insulation at all. Voices bounced from all corners. In some restaurants, they can get away with it where patrons are sitting closer but here the communal table is quite wide so it is hard to carry out a conversation without raising your voice or waiting for a pause from your stranger neighbour 🙄. As a party of two, perhaps placing us at the end of the table may have been slightly better. Or if there were more couple bookings, perhaps sitting side by side makes more sense. It is worth checking out but I would be very conscious about the seating next time. Perhaps better if you can just take the entire table with a larger booking. I did notice that the table on the second floor didn't suffer as much with the acoustics. I think there was a third floor too but did not go up to see. As for the food that night, $1000pp all in for 3 starters, two mains (fish, beef), sides and a dessert. Plenty to eat and food was quite good. Service was generally on the better side. Staff was friendly and attentive enough. Had the setup been improved it would have been quite a spot on night. A little disappointing overall. I think some tweaking can go a long way. If there is another interesting chef in the future I might try again but highly unlikely a choice...

I have never written any review in Google. This is my first one. And the main reason is that I have had my worst fine dinning experience in my life time. The chef that tonight was chef Marco Antonio, who they mentioned "he has cooked at some great kitchens around the world".

Some highlights of my bad experience: horrible time management: the entire dinner took 4 hours to finish. I believe they can make it in 1.5 hours if they have enough man power one chef is serving 27 guests in the entire night. Yes. I can tell you they are making a risotto for 27 persons in one pot. You can imagine the quality. The portion of each course is not well balanced. Look at the cabbage in the photo. While they served us a very big bowl of rice (I can't say it's risotto, sorry) The presentation is horrible. Even my 5 years old daughter can make a better look. Waiters were not professional. They will just give you the food without saying anything. Some will introduce a little bit if they are in good mood. One of the course was a salad (It was too horrible that I forget to take photo). The salad clearly could be made by anyone. Why do we need a chef? For the main course, it was Poach Seabass. It was a small piece and it was cold in the middle. You can imagine how busy the chef was. Poor restaurant decoration. Simple and not elegant.

TLDR; The cost is $1480 per head and they only have one chef to handle 27 guests. You can see how eager they want to earn money by sacrificing...

The concept of test kitchen is to create a truly unique dinning experience but i think my experience was actually mediocre or actually disappointing.

I do wonder if it was because the menu (afro chicken) was not as pricey as the others or our bill was too small for the chef or the owner to care?

I ordered the full chicken set and dessert. The chicken was actually barely cooked through as there was blood coming out when cutting. The chicken was well seasoned but the batter was actually quite hard and thick. The chicken was quite small and there seems to be more crust than meat at the end. The sides were nice, enjoyed the pickles and cole slaw. The milk buns were cold and a bit stale, would be nice if slightly toasted. I didn’t pay too much attention to the sauce when the staff told me that he didn’t even try it himself…

So what’s wrong with the dinning experience? Since it’s a private kitchen concept i expect a little bit more interaction or dialogue about the food. No one come over to ask us about the food, not the chef nor the owner. The kitchen was not busy, there were only 2 tables including us. The staffs were just standing there, the owner walked down a few times but didn’t bother to make any contact. Where is the unique dinning experience? I don’t feel the passion from the chef or the owner’s vision/mission about Test Kitchen.

Will i go back? Definitely no. Will i recommend? No. Don’t...