VEA - Hong Kong
Counter seats galore
Rating: 17/20
Where: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
When: Dinner for 7 on 17 February 2025
Cost per Person: Tasting menu 1880-2280 HKD, Beverage pairing 580-2580 HKD
Accolades: 1 Michelin Star, #53 on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants (2025)
Why: French cuisine with Chinese ingredients, sometimes prepared in revelatory ways
“VEA” in Hong Kong's Central district is not your typical Michelin-starred restaurant. It is located on the 30th floor, but unfortunately doesn't have any views. Instead, almost all seats are along a long counter in front of the kitchen. The restaurant’s interior design evokes a Parisian brasserie, complete with French cafe music playing in the background. Is VEA a French restaurant then? Yes and no. While the cooking uses traditional French techniques, every dish prominently includes Chinese ingredients, leading to presentations that one wouldn't be able to find in France. The restaurant's name also hints at another unusual feature: it stands for “Vicky et Antonio”, the names of (male) chef Vicky Cheng and mixologist Antonio Lai. No wonder then that cocktails play a prominent role in the beverage program.
For our dinner we had the choice between two tasting menus, consisting of six or eight courses, respectively (1880 and 2280 HKD). For the two last savory courses, there were options to upgrade the menu for an additional charge, allowing one to easily double the cost of the dinner. The beverage pairings were particularly interesting - there were no fewer than five of them: a non-alcoholic cocktail pairing (580 HKD), a regular cocktail pairing (780 HKD), a wine pairing (1080 HKD), a Chinese wine pairing (1280 HKD) and a premium wine pairing (2580 HKD). We tried the cocktail pairing and the basic wine pairing, and I was surprised to find that I actually preferred the cocktail pairing. But arguably that said more about the wines, since they were very acidic for the most part (the final red wine was pretty good, though). Did the cocktails match the food perfectly? Maybe not, since they were generally a bit sweet, but they were quite enjoyable. They also didn’t seem to contain too much alcohol, either.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that the restaurant had done its homework and discovered this blog before our visit. They offered us a free glass of champagne to begin, and served an additional complimentary course. If anything, this goes to show that VEA is at the top of the hospitality game by figuring out who is coming for dinner - something that most restaurants, even three-starred ones, rarely do.
That glass of champagne was very useful during the first few bites, since the wine pairing started only a bit later. Our first food serving was a French toast topped with prawns that had been seasoned with a Sichuan pepper corn oil. On the side was a bowl of mayonnaise made with red prawn heads. The butter-soaked bread with its light crunch could have been the base of a dish in France. The lovely, creamy prawns might likewise appear in France, but were also clearly an Asian ingredient. The lip-numbing Sichuan pepper though - that was definitely Chinese. The mayonnaise had a strong seafood flavor - vaguely related to a bouillabaisse -, and was served whipped, which gave it a lighter than expected consistency. A ostensibly simple, but quite good beginning to our meal 16.
The next dish was served in an egg-shaped dish. It contained a salted fish sabayon and bok choy. This somewhat unusual combination came from a Cantonese love song that the chef had played when proposing to his (now) wife - something along the lines of “as long as I'm with you, even salted fish and bok choy will taste good”. All things considered, we counted ourselves luckily - clearly, the song writer could have picked much worse culinary pairings to immortalize. The sabayon was whipped, creamy and fishy and the chopped vegetables weren't too bad either - but arguably hard to identify as bok choy. A hint of spice was present as well 16.
Spanish mackerel had been charcoal grilled, braised between kombu leaves, and finally served cold. Next to it was some Crystal caviar, a Japanese persimmon, a sweet potato puree and a sauce containing a sweet potato extract and a lapsang souchong oil. The fish was pretty good, not too fishy and with a creamy texture, but a bit difficult to cut. The sweet persimmon, the aromatic, lightly salty caviar as well as the lovely sauce rounded out the dish 16.
The next course was also served cold. It consisted of noodles in a habanero sauce that were topped with dried scallops and crispy dried scallops. This was the first of several occurrences of dried seafood products in the meal, adding a Chinese twist to dishes that otherwise might have been considered “Western”. The noodles were cooked pretty soft - no “al dente” here -, and the sauce was surprisingly spicy. The scallops added flavor, some texture and crunch to the dish. A tasty and (at least in terms of enjoyment) straightforward dish 16.
The next dish looked more Chinese than French. A baked sea cucumber was served over a tiger prawn and a crustacean sauce. Our server sprayed this dish with a 20 year old shaoxing wine. A little bao was available for sopping up the remainder of the sauce. This preparation was a revelation for me. In Chinese cuisine, sea cucumbers are usually served with a very gelatinous texture, and are a bit of an acquired taste. Here, though, the sea cucumber's outsides were quite crunchy - the first time that I've encountered such a preparation. The prawn was quite nice as well, and the sauce elegant with a light seafood flavor 17.
At first glance, the fourth course might have looked like meat, but it was actually a fish, more precisely a local variety called “ma yau” that was in season during our visit. It had been charcoal-grilled, seasoned with black garlic, sand ginger, and then served with pickled cordyceps (a kind of mushroom), ginkgo nuts and a fish broth sauce. The fish was delicious: flavorful, tender, very flaky and quite fatty. It went well with the seasonings and the crunchy pickles, only the bitter ginkgo nuts were a bit of an outlier in the dish 18.
A little palate cleanser came next: a haw flake sorbet with a sweet and sour flavor. Haw flakes are a Chinese candy made from haw fruits (the package in the picture). Since the sorbet was missing the distinctive texture of haw flakes, it was more or less just a fruity and sweet frozen dessert 17.
For the next course, there would generally have been a choice between a daikon dish and a dish based on fish maw (the fish's air bladder). But as I mentioned earlier, we received a complimentary course, so that we actually got to try both options. The fish maw had been aged for 12 years (why 12 years? Well, that's how long this restaurant has been open). It was topped with some lime leaves, and came with a fish sauce that contained French chives, quinoa and French caviar. The fish maw also had an unexpected texture: it was pretty firm and not too gelatinous - among the best fish maws that I've ever had. The sauce was also wonderful, the crunchy quinoa added some texture, only the caviar was barely detectable 17.
The other option for this course was a daikon that had been braised in Chinese mussel stock and then fried to be crispy on the outside. It was filled with morel mushrooms, a confit egg yolk and black truffles. Surrounding it was a Perigord sauce. The dish was served very hot. The daikon was quite juicy, and the dish had lots of umami from the egg yolk. The sauce was both savory and a bit sweet. Unfortunately, the morels disappeared a bit in this dish 17.
For the next course, we again had a choice, in this case between a duck dish and an abalone dish. I was roped into ordering the abalone, since it needed at least two people to share it. The course was served as a pithivier, i.e. a puff pastry filled with abalone, sweet breads and a boudin blanc. It came with a sauce made from abalone jus thickened with fish maw. The abalone was pretty tender, with not too much of a bite. For someone who generally doesn't like sweetbreads, the ones in this dish were actually very good. They had been fully cooked, giving them a more meaty texture than the lightly seared sweet breads more common in Western cuisine. Somehow the sauce was even heavier than the pastry, making me wish that there was some component of the dish that lightened it up a bit 16.
Speaking of lighter… my wife's pescatarian replacement for this dish was essentially the duck preparation, but using lobster instead of duck, while keeping all the sides the same. Those were: a bosc pear puree, some pickled red cabbage, and a fish sauce made with spicy fermented beans. The lobster was lovely and very tender, the sauce quite savory, and the pickled cabbage added some crunch and acidity. The pear was fine, but it was an odd match for the dish - it might have been a better with the duck 17.
Our first dessert was a shortbread topped with Japanese strawberries, a vanilla cream and a jasmine tea cream. Strawberries and cream, so to speak, with the lone Chinese influence being the jasmine tea. The strawberries were fine, but not as sweet as what we enjoyed in Japan the previous week. The creamy sauces were not too sweet either, and the shortbread had the typical mealy crunch 16.
Dessert number two was an ode to maple syrup. The priced tree sap had been made into a crunchy tuile, an espuma and a parfait. The dish was finished with crunchy pecan nuts, some cream and a puree of red dates. A variety of textures (crunch from the nuts and the tuile, creaminess, foam) and of temperatures (cold and room temperature). A tasty and sweet dessert to end our dinner 18.
Well, almost. A couple of small bites not listed on the menu came next. Mochi made from condensed milk was served sandwiched between two pieces of puff pastry and topped with a salted caramel gel. The pastry was light, had a flaky crunch and the mochi was pretty good as well 17.
The truly final bite was a crêpe filled with a crunchy sugar candy and ice cream. For the latter, we had a choice between durian and coconut. I'm not even going to attempt to rate the durian - my notes said “omg quite something”. The coconut version had a pretty light coconut flavor, and went well with the sugary, crunchy, sticky, honeycomb-shaped filling of the crêpe. Tasty 17.
Overall: French cooking that prominently featured Chinese ingredients, and thereby arrived at a very consistent and distinctive menu. Everything was enjoyable, and a few dishes were excellent. What amazed me the most though, was that the kitchen managed to show new sides to not just one, but several ingredients that I thought I knew - and admittedly hadn't liked very much up to this point. It turned out that I simply hadn't had VEA's amazing versions of sea cucumber, fish maw and sweetbreads. This French take on Chinese ingredients was definitely eye-opening 17.
