Wineshark HK Restaurant Review - Tai Woo Seafood Restaurant

This is a traditional Chinese restaurant that I remembered my family used to frequently visit when I was still a kid. When it first started it brought a new wave of modern Cantonese style cuisine, focusing on seafood and more high-end dim-sum, successfully opening a new market then.

Now many years later, they continued to command good royalty for many customers, as evidenced by how quickly the restaurant was occupied on the night. I came around 6:15pm, very early for dinner in HK standard, but already there were a few tables. And by 7:30pm essentially 85% of the restaurant was full, which was a good turn-out for a normal weekday evening.

We ordered a three-course set which included Sesame Chicken Baked in Salt, Baked Red Crab with Ginger and Spring Onion, as well as Steamed Fish. The chicken was decent but not particularly impressive, with plenty of sesame on the skin of the chicken. The skin was crunchy but the meat was a bit rough in texture.

The red crab was also just so-so, being of quite reasonable size but I think the supposedly rich ginger and spring onion taste was a bit lacking. If I want to sample the delicate taste of the crab meat I probably would go for a steamed crab. So this dish for me could not deliver that more intense flavors one would expect.

The fish was in my opinion the worst of the three. It got a bit of muddy taste and while we did not assume we would have a premium wild fish because of the price tag, the overall quality was still disappointing in view that this is a seafood restaurant and this would be their most basic dish. The meat texture was rough, and even the soy sauce did not give the right enhancement to the overall taste as it should be.

There was also a Deep Fried Egg Roll with Honey Sauce included as dessert. The egg roll was crumbly on texture, and reasonably good in taste.

And the restaurant also provided a Red Bean Soup for free. It was not overly sweet but could only be rated as acceptable.

Service overall was fair, with the staff attending us to replace the plates when we were eating the crab. And because I didn't drink the red wine included in the set they also offered to swap for a jar of orange juice for us.

The bill was $920 for the above as well as two bowls of rice, and in my opinion not cheap, especially considering the quality.

My overall rating is 55/100.