Wineshark HK Restaurant Review - Alfie's

Alfie’s is a modern British restaurant located in Prince's Building, the result of a partnership between Alfred Dunhill and the KEE private members club. Opening in 2010, it serves breakfast, lunch, drinks and dinner. If you don't know the exact location and accessing from the ground level, it may be quite difficult to find it as the entrance is in fact via the Alfred Dunhill store, and going up a flight of stairs to the first level. There is another entrance on the first level but again it can be easily missed.

Although I haven't been to the restaurant before, in fact the place is not new to me. For those of you who have been a customer of UK wine merchant BBR you may know that they used to have a shop at that same location. When I was studying for my WSET Level 4 it was where I spent a lot of weekends doing wine tasting. Time really flies...

The decoration is a modern British bar on one side with some dining tables on the other. A bit noisy but should be expected from such a setting, we had a decent table looking over the footbridge between Prince's Building and Alexander House which is reasonably comfortable. The night was also not too busy.

On the food I ordered Tomato Soup with mozzarella and Ivy ordered Pumpkin and Lemongrass Soup with prawn skewer, which were quite nice. I liked the sourdough very much but because we did order quite a lot I could not take another slice. Appetizer for sharing was Prawn and Dorset Crab Cocktail, as well as Seared Hokkaido Scallops. Frankly both were not particularly impressive, and the scallops were simply too salty for me. There were also some liver sausages(?) accompanying the scallops which reminded me a bit of those Chinese ones...

The mains we had the signature Fish and Chips, as well as Roasted Barbarie Duck Breast. While some friends were saying the fish and chips were some of the best in town, I found them a bit too oily for my liking (sorry!) and the tartare sauce is also not sour enough to balance the oiliness of the fish. A credit to Alfie's for using fresh halibut, however. The duck breast was only just so-so. Overall on the food it was quite disappointing. I had two glasses of Newton Vineyard Chardonnay from Napa, which were typical California Chardonnay with good oakiness and body, and did pair quite well with the dishes ordered. 

The service was nice in general, with the serving of wine and water, speed in serving dishes, cleaning up and checking in with us on the food quality all done professionally and up to standard. The waitress did offer to take a photo for Ivy and me which I thought was one good touch. 

Finally on the price. It was a full meal and we could barely move afterwards, as each dish was of quite big portion. Total $1,591 for two, considering the food quality and everything, not very good value over money. 

My overall rating for the restaurant is 48/100.