View from the back of the restaurant to the front
Rating: 16/20
Where: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
When: Dinner for 2 on 30 September 2026
Cost per Person: Tasting menu 980 HKD ($125), Wine pairing 680 HKD ($85)
Accolades: 1 Michelin Star
Why: Tasting menu where every course uses tofu and soy milk
In a small alley in Hong Kong's Central district is “Mora”, a one-Michelin-starred restaurant owned by chef Vicky Lau. We had previously been to her main restaurant, two-starred Tate Dining Room, but I had always been more curious about her second restaurant. That’s because Mora has a unique theme: all courses, from appetizers to desserts, are based on soy milk and tofu, which appear in different forms in every dish. Soy beans are naturally versatile - the uninitiated might not even suspect that edamame, soy milk and tofu all come from the same source. Clearly, soy beans are already prevalent in East Asian cuisines, but it's still rare to see an entire menu purposefully built around them.
Looking for Mora, we walked past many closed store fronts on a dark pedestrian street, and were starting to wonder whether we were in the right place. But luckily, we soon came upon the lit windows of the restaurant - seemingly the only establishment in the area still open at 7pm. The restaurant's interior was decorated in a simple, timeless style, and the long dining room was split into three sections, with an open kitchen counter at the very end.
Mora served a single tasting menu for dinner (980 HKD, about $125), with a vegetarian option available for pre-order. My wife's pescatarian menu was created by leaving out minor meat ingredients and substituting the corresponding vegetarian courses whenever that was not possible. Drinkswise, there was a compact wine list featuring eight wines by the glass, and seven different teas. A five-glass wine pairing was available as well (680 HKD, $85), consisting of one sake, two whites, a red, and a dessert wine. These wines were decent, but not mind-blowing. Our sommelier suggested that if more than one person were to drink, he'd recommend getting a bottle instead - probably not a bad idea.
Our dinner started with a welcome drink: a kombucha made with ginger and kaffir lime leaves. The kombucha had a bit of a rose flavor, and was not fizzy at all. Not bad, but somewhat different from what I had expected 15.
Two appetizers followed, served stacked - one had to finish the dish on top before opening the serving vessel to reveal a second dish underneath.
We started with a tartlet filled with soy milk, sliced cherry tomatoes, pickled cabbage, and a soy “mascarpone cheese”. This dish had a creamy sauce and great flavors: it tasted strongly of tomatoes and had a distinct cheese flavor. Consequently, it felt more Italian rather than Chinese, but was otherwise very good 17. The following dish was a bowl of soft tofu that was topped with edible flowers and a soy sauce jelly. Compared to the previous dish, the flavors here were very light. The jelly in particular didn't taste of much at all. The mousse had a very light, fresh soy milk flavor, with some inherent sweetness. Its texture was remarkable, though: not dense at all, it was almost airy with bubbles inside. I would have preferred a dish with more oomph, but this was quite elegant and very well done 16.
The following course was an optional add-on for 98 HKD ($12). Since it was one of the chef's signature dishes, we ordered one portion to share, and the staff graciously split it into two bowls. At the center of the bowl were some udon noodles, surrounded by a soy milk dashi, a seaweed sauce, some chive oil, and black garlic oil. Sitting on top of the noodles were some whitebait fish and torched pieces of scallops. This dish was served cold, and its star (at least for me) were the scallops - tender and very, very flavorful. The noodles were nicely cooked as well, the sauces well flavored, and the crunchy fish added some texture 16.
Winter melon, iced tofu, sliced mushrooms and pine nuts came with a kombu/vegetable sauce. This was a very vegetable-forward dish with a notable mushroom flavor. The tofu at the bottom had a very spongy texture (due to being previously frozen), and an almost meaty taste. Quite tasty, and getting some heft from the oily, umami-rich sauce 16.
Tilefish had been wrapped in tofu skin (yuba) and then deep-fried. It was served with a fermented tofu sabayon that had been made with butter and egg yolks in addition to tofu. There were some condiments on top as well: Chinese ham, fermented cabbage, and a tamarind paste. The fish was ok, but it did not have too much flavor and it was not particularly juicy. Its yuba wrapping was very crispy, but not necessarily an improvement over a traditional batter. The condiments were a great addition, as they were quite intense in flavor - I only wish that there had been more of them. The true star of the show, though, was the sabayon. Airy and very strongly flavored, it tasted distinctly of aged cheese (!) - delicious! (18 or 19 by itself.) It almost made the fish feel secondary to the dish 16.
Steamed Korean abalone was served over mustard stems, water chestnuts and a green curry seasoned with lemongrass oil. Some dried tofu strings were placed atop the dish. The abalone had a notable bite, the fried tofu was airy with a crunchy texture - I'm not sure that I've seen this tofu preparation before. The water chestnuts came in a fruity (but not sweet) sauce, and the green curry had some very light Thai flavors. To me, this dish erred too much on the “being elegant” side (like many dishes at Tate Dining Room), and could have used some punchier flavors 15.
The only true meat dish of the evening featured pork, served two ways: there were a grilled pork collar and a pork leg confit that had been layered with yuba. Also present: some choy sum vegetables and a red miso/tofu sauce. Starting with the grilled pork: this was a big piece to eat at once - no knife was given and given the presence of cartilage, it was hard to bite off pieces. Other than that technical issue, the meat was ok. The millefeuille presentation was unfortunately very dry - reminiscent of pork floss - and there wasn't quite enough sauce to offset the dryness. The best part of the dish were the beautifully cooked vegetables which had a perfect consistency and were lightly seasoned - yum 14. The vegetarian replacement for the pork dish was a pan-fried roll of seaweed and yuba. It came with some vegetables (asparagus, edamame, zucchini), and a sauce that had been flavored with paprika oil. The best part here were also the vegetables and the lovely, flavorful sauce. The yuba roll itself was less compelling, tasting mainly fried and missing more complex flavors 15.
Our final savory dish was mapo tofu served over jasmine rice, topped with pickled cabbage and fried sakura ebi (shrimp). The tofu in this dish was much firmer than in the mapo tofu dish that we had tried in Sichuan two days earlier. The crunchy shrimp tasted very fresh, and my wife declared them to be the best fried shrimp she ever had. They seemed to be a coastal, Hong Kong-style addition to the classic Sichuan dish. The sauce was lightly spicy and came with deep flavors. Not bad, but overshadowed by the brighter tasting, more elegant version of this dish that we had had in Sichuan 15. The vegetarian version replaced the ground pork with large cubes of tempeh - they were even larger than the tofu. This made for a somewhat odd texture; it's not clear why the tempeh couldn't have been crumbled up to better mimic the ground pork.
The dinner’s single dessert featured a lychee/raspberry/rose ice cream served with soy crumbles, a raspberry compote, lychees, a lychee/soy milk cream, all topped with a tuile. Essentially a tasty ice cream paired with a thick sauce that felt more like semolina than soy milk. Slightly rustic, but very enjoyable 16.
Overall: This was a series of delicious dishes, all based on soy milk and tofu. Interestingly, the tofu appeared in such different forms, that often one would not even have guessed at its presence. The flavors were varied as well, and mostly didn't fall into Tate Dining Room's trap of elevating elegance over flavor intensity. A thoroughly enjoyable dinner with unpretentious service 16.
