Never order a pizza with the afternoon tea

EN It's rare but I have a love/hate food review at todays post. I was in Hong Kong last summer with my family for an afternoon tea meal which not to be confused with the classy fancy British afternoon tea with tea, cakes and scones because the one in HK is slightly different. It's usually warm and savory and can be seen as a late lunch meal where you eat rice, noodles, pasta and even steak and French fries at cafés or tea restaurants 'cha chaan teng'. I usually have it with a nice traditional HK milk tea. This is why I love HK cafés so much because it has Eastern and Western style of food but sometimes they need to practice more on mastering the art of Western food. Like pizza for example. Please scroll down and read my verdict of that time I had pizza at a standard HK café.

NL Het is zeldzaam maar ik heb een haat/liefde verhouding met een food review vandaag. Ik was in Hong Kong laatst zomer en had een 'afternoon tea' maaltijd met mn familie en afternoon tea in HK is iets anders dan een hightea die we kennen in Nederland. Het is namelijk vaak hartig, warm en je kunt het zien als een soort late lunch. Je kan rijst, noodles, pasta en zelfs steak met frietjes eten bij lokale cafés of thee-restaurants 'cha chaan teng'. Vaak neem ik dan ook een lekkere HK melkthee erbij. Dit is waarom ik zo dol ben op HK cafés want ze hebben Oosters én Westers gerechten. Maar soms kunnen sommige van deze cafés de plank misslaan wanneer het op Westers eten aankomt. Zoals de pizza die ik een keer had bij een van een standaard lokale HK café.

❝Zweef de cursor voor Nederlandse vertaling!

Kitchen One Café - Yau Ma Tei - Hong Kong

We Ordered:

2 spaghetti in meat sauce and egg 1 spaghetti with bacon and mushroom in cream sauce 1 pizza margarita 4 HK milk teas

On the window is a poster of a tv crew from TVB with happy faces was apparently at Kitchen One Café before and that makes Kitchen One Café even more promising.

The interior is Western modern with here and there vintage props and overall very nice and cozy looking. The table has to be my favorite because it was tiled and textured with gorgeous tiles.

Then our food came

And this is where I had a massive food envy and a sad pizza.

All our ordered dishes was below 10 bucks which included 1 free drink (we all went for the milk tea) which is to me very affordable. My pizza was only HK$35 (€4) for example.

Ok so the food at Kitchen One Café are Western styled and has lots of pasta on the menu for example. My dad and my brothers picked these rich pasta dishes and it looked so so good. I`ll have to say that the choices on the menu is big but only when you are a meateater, because there were some seafood dishes and almost none vegetarian dishes. The pizza Margarita that I have picked was more or less forced to.

This is my pizza Margarita and it was not a nice pizza at all. The pizza base for example was doughy, bun-ish texture and just weird. The dish was savory but I find the topping way to sweet. And even though it was HK$35 that came along with a free drink, I felt it was such a waste of money because I didn`t enjoyed it at all. Meanwhile I was having food envy with the food my papa and bro`s had because they were enjoying it. Why didn`t didn`t Kitchen One Café have more vegetarian options, sigh. And the pizza portion was smaller than expected which in this case does not really matter since I didn`t like the pizza anyway. I can keep continue with this unfortunate bad pizza review but I can conclude that I wont be re-ordering the pizza again. Not just at Kitchen One Café but at any afternoon tea menu of standard HK café because I feel like their strength is more in preparing rice, pasta and noodles dishes than pizzas. If you want pizza in HK just eat at a special pizza/Italian place and don`t worry HK has them too!

You deserve a 2ⁿᵈ chance

After my unsuccessful first timer at Kitchen One Café I was still willing to give them another chance (just like I am willing to give Trump a chance too, but anyways) and this time I had dinner. I have learned that the dinner menu is different than the afternoon tea menu and has different dishes. My eyes laid straight on the angel hair pasta fish roe, seafood and mushroom and I`ve ordered that. The dish is a set and includes a free soup (didn`t drink it because it has meat broth init), a salad, a bread roll and a drink which was a nice warm ovaltine. This dish is such an improvement from my poor pizza experience and was creamy, quite rich and not overly to salty and MSG.

Address: G/F., 35 Pitt Street, Yau Ma Tei - HONG KONG FOOD: ••· 2,⁵/5 INTERIOR: •••• 4/5 SERVICE: ••• 3/5 PRICE: •••• 4/5