Forum - Hong Kong
Dining room with a shrine to abalone
Rating: 18/20
Where: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
When: Dinner for 2 on 20 April 2023
Cost: Tasting menu 2380-4080 HKD
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars
Why: Very good Cantonese cuisine; an amazing signature abalone dish
Over the past few months, I've visited a fair number of three-Michelin-starred restaurants in Asia. And while the food was mostly great, it was a bit unfortunate that the majority of them didn't serve any local food. For example, all three-starred restaurants in Singapore are European, we had French and Chinese food in Japan and Italian food in Hong Kong. So it was with some relief that we finally got a match between cuisine and place. Behold: Cantonese food in Hong Kong.
Forum is located near Causeway Bay on Hong Kong's main island. The restaurant's signage prominently displays the year 1977, so it has been around longer than some of its guests. It is situated on the second floor of an office building and an escalator deposits aspiring diners right in front of the maitre d'. It's a bit of an awkward spot to wait for one's table, but after entering the dining room the interior looks like any other restaurant. Well, almost. A centrally placed table bears a huge display of dried abalone, as well as some not-too-subtle product placement: stacks of the chef-founder's canned abalone and matching fliers. This little shrine to abalone foreshadows the restaurant's signature dish - apparently the chef has been perfecting its preparation for decades.
The windows across from the abalone display have a view of the office building next door; which was covered with scaffolding on our visit. No wonder then that even the chairs near the windows had their backs to the uninspiring vista. But we came here for the food, and not for sightseeing, so no complaints.
Speaking of food, the restaurant offered two tasting menus, as well as an a la carte menu (for larger parties in private dining rooms, there were several more tasting menu options). I had pre-ordered (probably unnecessarily) the “Forum Three-Michelin-Star Set Menu”, which was the cheaper of the two tasting menus. So our only remaining task was to decide on drinks. There is no wine pairing here, but the wine list is pretty extensive for a Chinese restaurant, with about a dozen wines by the glass and plenty of half-bottles available as well. I followed our sommelier's suggestions and ended up with three wines by the glass, and they were all very good. Recommended.
Forum doesn't really do frou-frou fine-dining stuff like amuse bouches, petit fours, or, for that matter, explanations of any dishes that were served (to be fair, our sommelier spoke great English and was happy to answer any food-related questions). So instead of appetizers, we started out with a bowl of excellent, freshly roasted, crunchy cashews. To anyone who thought that cashews are merely the lowest common denominator of airline food, this simple bowl would make them reconsider. Some XO sauce and fermented black beans were also provided as condiments - we put them to good use later.
Soon, the first course of our tasting menu appeared. A crab claw had been coated with minced shrimp before being breaded and deep-fried. On the side we found a dash of a fruity sauce and a small dressed salad. Thanks to the end of the crab claw sticking out of the deep-fried ball, we were able to eat this dish like a popsicle. The crab and shrimp meat were quite juicy and very flavorful, and I liked the very evenly applied breading that had a perfectly fried consistency without feeling too fatty. This was pretty much as good as it gets for such a dish. Where the course fell a bit short were the sides. The tiny salad was pleasant, but nothing particularly special, and the sweet sauce was also a bit nondescript. The XO sauce made for a better condiment 17.
The second course was also my second encounter with Buddha jump soup. Ignoring the dish's mythical origins, it was pretty much a soup made out of many, many ingredients, yielding a complex flavor while remaining almost a clear soup. Pieces of the ingredients were added to the bowl as well. In particular, we found a shark fin, tendons, a chicken foot, a sea cucumber, some bamboo, a mushroom and a scallop. Maybe not a surprise given the ingredients, but the broth was more seafoody than meaty. It had lots of flavor, but was still light - there were only trace amounts of fat present. A very good dish, but I'd give the edge to Sazenka's more powerful version that we had a couple months prior 17.
Next came the restaurant's signature dish - the famed abalone. A dried Japanese abalone and a goose foot had been slow-cooked in a special sauce. Next to them were some steamed lettuce leaves and a small amount of rice. And wow - what a sauce! Cooked down to a silky texture and full of taste, savoriness and umami, it suffused the abalone and the goose foot. The abalone was very good and had a slight bite to it. Even the goose foot was quite nice, and while there were only trace amounts of meat on it, the gelatinous webbing tasted intensely of the sauce, so no complaints here. I finally understood why you would want to serve abalone and goose feet together - both need a lot of cooking time to get the right texture, and they both inherit the flavor of the sauce that they're being cooked in. Regarding the sides: the lettuce was probably meant to lighten up the dish, which it did, but it felt a bit too plain without any seasoning. Adding some of the black bean condiment helped in that regard. I wish that there had been more rice to soak up the remains of the sauce. Overall, so much better than a similar dish that we had in Taipei three months ago 19.
Lighter flavors prevailed in the following course. A custard made of steamed egg whites came with some pieces of lobster. There was some ham in the light sauce that covered the custard, as well as some shavings of dried ham on top of the lobster. The custard had a nice consistency, and the lobster was perfectly cooked - not chewy at all. The ham provided some needed saltiness. A deceptively simple, but very well executed dish 18.
Two pieces of braised duck were served with mushrooms and taro. The sauce was very good with a hint of acidity, but it didn't quite pack the punch of the abalone sauce. The duck had a very, very well done consistency, and was lacking flavor, since it had been cooked separately from the sauce. Copious amount of said sauce, or better yet, the XO sauce, improved matters. I wasn't a big fan of the taro with its starchy consistency and absence of any taste, but my dining companion (who was more versed in Cantonese cuisine than me) quite liked it. Overall, I preferred the sauce to everything else on the plate: the duck, taro and the oddly textured mushroom that came with it. A weak 17.
Another soup course was next. I don't know whether it was by coincidence or by design that the meal almost had a mirror symmetry: soups as second and second-to-last courses, braised dishes as third and third-to-last courses. In any case, we received a “supreme soup” with pieces of tomatoes, an onion-lookalike Chinese herb, mushrooms and yams. The clear broth was light, but still flavorful and definitely meat-based - no vegetarian dishes here today. The solid ingredients created a harmonious whole, they combined seamlessly when eaten together. There was some crunch from the vegetables and mushrooms, sweetness from the “onions”, and fruitiness from the tomatoes - all playing very well together. If I had to nitpick, then I'd say that the yam pieces were a bit too big, and that this soup seemed a bit simpler than other courses. But it was definitely enjoyable, so who cares 17.
For our final savory course we received the least traditional dish of our dinner. Thin noodles were served warm with some scallion oil. However, there was an unusual addition: a tin of caviar. I tried the noodles by themselves first: the scallion flavor was disappointingly subtle, and the dish seemed a bit oily all things considered. What was missing was some seasoning. But thankfully that's exactly what the salty caviar provided, and lo and behold, the noodles and caviar went together beautifully. Not only was there the delightful caviar taste, but its saltiness brought out the scallion flavor among the noodles. Mixing the cold caviar and warm noodles also created a nice contrast - I'd suggest adding the caviar spoon-by-spoon and not all at once. A very, very good dish. My only wish would have been for more caviar (but isn't that true of almost every dish containing caviar?) 19.
On to the desserts, of which there were two, served simultaneously. We started with the hot one, a soup containing pears cut into little spheres, dried mandarin peels and some snow fungus. The soup was very sweet, and the edible peel nicely soft, but the fungus provided only texture. This was a good dish, but taste-wise it had just a single (and very sweet) note 17.
What was announced as a split pea cake was actually a coconut milk custard with some pieces of split peas mixed in. A bird's nest sat on top of the custard. Said nest must have been soaked in sugar syrup - it was very sweet -, but that went quite well with the less sweet custard 17.
Overall: Delightful high-end Cantonese cuisine with a couple of stellar dishes and a consistently high quality throughout. Forum’s signature abalone dish alone makes it worth a stop. Compared to some other three-star Chinese restaurants that we've visited recently, Forum was significantly better than Le Palais in Taipei, but I slightly preferred Sazenka in Tokyo, however the difference is small enough to be mostly a matter of personal taste 18.
Masters of Abalone