Grape Wine Journey

“We opened our first restaurant in London 6 years ago” according to the Head Chef, Patrick at ROKA Hong Kong, and he has stayed in Hong Kong since the restaurant opened in July last year. 

ROKA is a contemporary style Japanese Robata Grill restaurant.  I asked Patrick if he’s trained as a Japanese chef, and he told me his training span across Italian and French cuisines.   The restaurant has an open kitchen and you could see the chefs all busy at the grill throughout the evening.

A dining experience is more than just the flavors; it’s also the ambience, service and the wine menu.  Being a restaurant from UK, you could imagine they would offer an extensive wine list.  When you walked into the restaurant, it’s hard to ignore the array of wines displayed in the glass cellar. 

On the counter of the Open Kitchen, there were jars of sauces.  I noticed the Chefs were always busy dripping the home made sauce to the dishes as the final touch.

Rather than ordering from the al la carte menu, we went for the Dinner Set and also a bottle of the house sake –ROKA sake daiginjo.  The tasting notes on the sake read – “well balanced sake with flavors of banana and chestnut”.

I went for a Sake Tasting class sometime ago; the 3 ingredients that govern the quality of sake are rice, water and yeast.  The best sake would have a strong aroma of rice.  I did find a hint of rice on the nose, but banana and chestnut …. would probably need a very imaginative mind.

Lobster Tempura

The one thing that stood out from the food was definitely the home made sauces.  The spicy tuna roll had fresh garlic that accentuated the spicy flavor to another notch.  Lobster tempura with wasabi mayonnaise was Japanese in a contemporary style.  The rice hot pot with King Crab and wasabi tobiko reminded me of risotto.  It had the stickiness texture but much lighter on the palate.

Hot Pot Rice

The dessert platter was the perfect example of food presentation.  It was very tempting and colorful and it would be hard to resist the wonderful display of fruit and desserts.

Being the Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day, the dining experience was relaxing and enjoyable, and the service – very attentive!