Zuma – a fancy dinner in Hong Kong

We’re in Singapore!  Sorry for the lack of posting for the last few days.  We’ve had technical difficulties here but looks like everything is working now.  Singapore is pretty awesome.  I’ll tell you all about later… let’s backtrack a bit back to Hong Kong and a super fancy dinner we had at Zuma on Tuesday night

Zuma is just the kind of place my husband and I love.  It’s modern but not futuristic/space-like and it serves fantastic food.  We were pretty excited about it, because our top restaurant experiences have been at Nobu in NYC and Oishii in Boston (both on par with Zuma in Hong Kong).  I was a good girl and saved my appetite for the meal.  There is so much good food in Asia, sometimes it’s hard to control yourself, but there is nothing worse than shelling out big bucks on dinner when you’re not even hungry.  Oh I was hungry by the time we got there!

In fact I was so hungry that when upon sitting down the waiter offered to serve us some edamame “while we’re looking through the menu” I jumped at this “brilliant suggestion.”  Unfortunately the second I actually started looking through the menu, I realized that it would be a waste to fill myself on these babies, as delicious as they were.  Here are a few pics of the decor (it was dark in there so the pictures definitely don’t do the place justice…).

The hubs looking through the menu (I was trying to take more pics of the decor without being too obnoxious but it didn’t work )

And the edamame… I picked on it for a bit but then put it on the farthest spot of the table so that I wouldn’t fill up on it.

We asked for water and were served a bottle of Voss.  At $10 USD for the bottle, it was actually really annoying given that HK has drinkable tap water.  Oh well.  I also ordered the Rubabu cocktail: rhubarb infused sake shaken with 42 Below vodka + fresh passion fruit.  Yum!

Then the food started sprinkling in.  First up: thinly sliced seabass with yuzu, truffle oil and salmon roe.  The whole dish was spectacular!  I ate 3 of the fish pieces and both of the eggplant “toasts” with caviar (my husband doesn’t like caviar)!  The eggplant was marinated and was the perfect vehicle to scoop the caviar.  The whole dish was so fresh!  The yuzu sauce (I’ve never heard of it before this dinner) was a little sour and went really well with the mild flavored seabass.  Mmm.  I want more right now!

Then we got 2 orders of maki (we split them).  In the front here you see the zuma chirashi maki – salmon, hamachi and seabass with avocado and sesame-lime sauce.

The other maki was the dynamite spider roll – softshell crab (warm) with chilli mayonnaise, cucumber and wasabi tobiko sauce.

Both rolls were delicious but nothing special, honestly.  Oh, after finishing our cocktails we got a bottle of wine.  I probably had around 2 glasses throughout the night.

Best part – the entrees.  I ordered their specialty (I think copied from Nobu) – miso marinated black cod wrapped in hoba leaf.  I’ve had Nobu’s miso cod and I remember enjoying it, but I can’t remember which one is better.  I’d say it was at least on par with Nobu’s.  Sweet and flavorful, perfectly cooked.  It was melt-in-your mouth delicious.  I love when fish tastes like this!

I gave Adam a few bites of this and in return he gave me a few bites of his dish.  It was also very delicious!  I’ve never had beef marinated in sweet soy.  I’ll look for this now at restaurants – it perfectly sweet but not too sweet.  The dish was supposed to be spicy but neither one of us thought it was.  It was however excellent!

And finally dessert – I was so excited for this one!  I haven’t had a really chocolaty dessert so far in Asia, and this sounded just perfect!  Warm chocolate cake is my favorite!!  Here it is (a small scoop of ice cream with a sesame cracker is hiding in the background).

Mmm, look at that passion fruit oozing out!

It was very yummy but not chocolaty enough for me!  The dark chocolate bars I brought with me have been the only ones able to truly fill my chocolate cravings.  Adam loved this dessert and definitely ate 1/2 of it!  I usually don’t like sharing my desserts but he was too quick with his fork

And this ends this recap of Zuma.  If anyone ever goes to Zuma (there is one in London and Dubai I think) I’d recommend skipping the maki and getting another small dish or appetizer instead.  In any case, we had a really great time.  I love fancy dinners!

We’re chilling in our hotel room right now in Singapore.  The heat got to us and we need to recover a bit.  I’ll probably do 2 more posts on HK before moving on to Singapore.  We are having a great time here!  I can’t belive mid 90′s is the temperature they have during the winter!!!