I wanted to try out all the milk tea around the area to find if there's any that is close enough to the taste you'll find in HK. Having tried a lot of milk teas that are too thin in texture, I was taught to order "kao", as in "concentrated" is their terms. My friend told me that usually in tea shops they would add water to their "concentrated tea base" when they prepare the drink, so ordering "kao" means that they do not dilute it with water and it will be more concentrated. This was my first time ordering milk tea "kao", but still it doesn't seem the taste I was searching for.

Although the milk tea was not my taste, the lady at the counter was really friendly. Traditional little coffee shop, a place to hang out after lunch.

Arrived at 12:25pm on a weekday and there was already a long queue. We waited for half an hour in the queue before we got a table. The restaurant has relatively little seatings with its size as they have spaced out the tables so there's a lot of space in between tables, so you won't feel it too crowded. Something different about this restaurant is that they are efficient, they would pass you the menu while you're in line and take your orders when you are able to get a table. When we got seated, the food came really quick. Impressed by their efficiency.

The pictures in the menu looks delicious, took us some time to decide.

We ordered Sambal Kang Kung, which was still too spicy despite the fact that we asked them to make it less spicy. Can't imagine how spicy it was originally. Maybe they mistook our request as more spicy? This dish was the first to arrive and luckily we ordered a rice, that came in time to go with the vegetable to kind of neutralise our taste buds a bit. However, we couldn't take it after finishing 1/3 of the dish and asked if there was anyway to make it less spicy. They said they will make a new one for us, but we felt it was a waste so we asked if they can just do something to it to make it not spicy at all. Not sure if they made a new dish for us or they "re-fried" it after running through water, as they didn't tell us, but our instinct tells us that it was the same dish (although it looks slightly larger than the dish we sent in). The taste was not as "concentrated" as before, less the spiciness. It taste like its been run under water and the dish was less fragrant. Good that we ordered a rice.

The beef dish (came in a hot plate) was spicy, but nothing compared to the vege.

We tried the Pad Thai with Prawn, portion was quite generous, both taste and presentation was great.

The chicken rice noodle wrap (forgot the name) - although we ordered as an appetizer, it didn't come until last, so by the time we got to eating it, we were already full.

Service is ok, nothing much to brag about apart from the efficiency of food. Waiters and waitresses were not particularly attentive, eg. refilling the water, guess they are too busy during lunch time to go around to refill waters, and since we were seated at the last table, they were not too accessible to us either.

Worth a try, but if you don't want to wait, arrive early to avoid the crowd.

I'm more of a flavoured coffee person rather than a black coffee person. My friend, who is really into coffees, is a fan of this place.

I always stick to my choice of mocha when I visit this place as the chocolate flavour is very rich here. Tried ordering just chocolate instead of mocha, but maybe the coffee really enhanced the flavour of the chocolate, plain chocolate just wasn't as nice. Even my colleague agreed with it.

Their chocolate banana cake is also something that I would sought for when I pay my visit, but of course not every visit, too much calories coming along with the delicous taste, evil ! As good as the chocolate flavour in the mocha, this cake is rich in chocolate flavour (don't really taste the banana, did I remember wrongly the name of the cake?), best eaten when its warmed up.

There was this one time when I came during evening time around 6, they have live music - guitar solo while singing........ cool

This is my second time visiting the restaurant, chose this restaurant as it's one of my friend's favourite dinning place.

The restaurant at this location has 3 stories, and I was seated on the 2nd. They have about 6-7 tables on this floor so you can imagine the area is not too big, but they enhanced the spaciousness by adding in a big full length mirror on one of the walls which makes it very comfy for such size.

We ordered the following:-
1. Parma Ham with Melon
A must-order for my friend. Generous slices of parma ham (as you can see from the picture) but too little melon (only 3 small pieces of melon, which is hiding under the parma ham in the picture ). We had to cut the melon to veryyyyyyyy small pieces to go with the parma ham, and in the end we had to eat the parma ham on its own as we ran out of melon to go with it.
Guess we couldn't really complain about it as they were already generous with the parma ham, though it would have been nice if there were more melon pieces. (hope they don't serve more melon at the expense of cutting the portion of parma ham )

2. Tomato and Mozzarella Salad
Pretty straight forward, as seen in picture - big chunk of cheese with slices of tomato.3. Vongole
As nice as expected, Vongole has always been one of my favourites. Generous on their clams again, really fresh, sweet and juicy, done just right.

4. Homemade egg noodles with crabmeat
I'm always tempted to order homemade pastas whenever they are available, and this was one of the recommendations from the waiter. The cream sauce was really thick 5. Tiramisu
Must have on my friend's list!

We might have ordered too much for 2 pax, but my friend really wanted the Tiramisu so we packed the remaining crabmeat egg noodle home instead of stuffing it in.

No wines were ordered as we came after a happy hour session, so refraining from alcohol consumption

Everything seems perfect except one thing: the waiters are not too friendly and they don't carry a smile on their face. No "heart"....... Thought restaurants should be part of the service industry, is it not? Despite the service, would still come back for the food.

Been to the one at Dempsey Hill before but first time here. Chose the outdoor seating, next by the fan, to get some "wind". Since the outdoor seating is sheltered, so it wasn't really like sun shinning over my head.

We ordered coffee to start with to wake us up, macchiato and mocha. They have a thick layer of chocolate syrup at the bottom, it makes it feel fat by seeing the amount of syrup they put in, but the good thing is, you get to control the amount of chocolate that gets stirred into the coffee.

Since we're not too hungry, we only ordered a mushroom soup and a lasagna. I personally think the mushroom soup is normal, but my friend thought it was great. It was not the creamy type that you would usually get, it feels more wild. It came in a big shallow bowl, which looks quite cool, the portion was more than we expected. The presentation of the lasagna looks really appealing, and it tastes really good too.

Note: We took a taxi there but the taxi driver didn't know where Palais Renaissance‎
is, he said there was no 390 Orchard road, so we got off somewhere around it and asked a hotel. It's actually opposite to the Hilton.