Hilariously bad: Brasserie version

It is tradition in Hong Kong for anything new to be completely rammed to the heavens for the first two or three months of opening, no matter how bad it is. I think this is partly due to the fact that there is very little independent media to review things here; I've been told that most features in 飲食男女, the leading food magazine, are actually sponsored by those actually featured, and openrice.com, where everyone seems to upload their photos, suffers from the usual user-generated website biases. We really ought to ask Matthew Fort and Jay Rayner to come over and be mean for a while over here.

Lily and Bloom opened in the LKF Tower roughly three months ago, with a bar called Lily on the 6/F and the restaurant Bloom on the 5/F. I've been to Lily a few times now, and have already seen a steady decline in the number of patrons in this short time, people's attention spans are just too short in this city. I actually think Lily isn't bad; the decor is more understated and thought-out than most bars, and the drinks are not bad. The only thing I would criticise it for is the need for the bar staff to give you a torch to read the menu, such is the lack of light in the place.

Bloom, on the other hand, is a minor disaster. Our super fussy friend Jonny was visiting, and knowing that he doesn't like anything saucy, spicy, anything mildly Cantonese really, we stuck to a safe Western option. Bloom seemed to fit the bill, given that the wife and I had not yet tried it. The menu reads very well actually, you could have picked it up in any trendy part of London, featuring bone marrow, ox tongue, as well as a nice selection of seafood including fresh oysters on show at the bar. In fact, bone marrow was briefly on the bar menu in Lily as well, but we've noticed it has recently disappeared (unsurprising: how are you supposed to eat that elegantly perched on your barstool?).

The food itself, however, had really suspect ingredients and was just way too fussy for me. Caris and I shared the starters of ox tongue and bone marrow, two of our most favourite ingredients. Unfortunately, the ox tongue was really 'off', not sure how long it had been festering in the kitchen before it was actually cooked. We left most of this uneaten:

The bone marrow is another version of the often copied parsley and bone marrow salad from St John. However, we ACTUALLY DIDN'T FINISH THIS, it was that awful. The pungent sauce that came surrounding it didn't do anything for the marrow, and the bread was over doughy. So yes, two starters, both not finished. A difficult feat for us!

Something strange had come over me and I ordered chicken for my main course (their special of lobster spaghetti which was what I really wanted had run out). The chicken itself was actually really not bad; carefully roasted, good skin, I polished most of it off. What ruined it though was the random accompaniments (which you can't quite see) - for some reason, this was served with baba ganoush?! Why?! Especially this was a baba ganoush that had BITS OF CHOPPED BOILED EGG IN?! No thank you. Just give me a simple plate of roast chicken and potatoes, no fancy pants stuff please!

The one saving grace I guess was that Jonny really liked his main of seabass!! But I put it to the fact that he'd been cycling for two weeks in Mongolia beforehand, and even I tend to shudder at the thought of Mongolian lamb, having also suffered it myself for two weeks previously.

So sigh, my quest for decent, not too expensive, not Michelin starred Western food in Hong Kong continues. Maybe I should just open one myself... Err.... hang on....!