With dinner at US$200 a head, paid upfront, choose your guests carefully at this Japanese restaurant
- You’d better not be a no-show at Ryota Kappou Modern in Central – and why would you be when the meal is this good?
- The first dish was fantastic and the level barely dropped thereafter. We wished we could have done full justice to the hot pot course
Pick your guest (or guests) carefully if dining at Hong Kong Japanese restaurant Ryota Kappou Modern. It’s one of those places where you have to book online (through Tock), choose the menu you want (we had the least expensive dinner option, the “Ryota signature tasting”, for HK$1,580, or US$200, plus 10 per cent) and pay the full price in advance. You must cancel at least two days in advance if you can’t make it, or they won’t refund your money.
I can understand why restaurants do this – people cancelling at the last minute (or worse, not bothering to cancel at all) is one of the biggest problems for chefs. But even if you’re not the type to be that rude, you do need to make sure your guests are of the same mindset.
The restaurant, in Central, is a low-key place. The most popular seats are around the open kitchen, but they were booked out, so my guest and I had a small, low table in the main dining room.
Shiroebi (baby white shrimp) with ebi (shrimp), caviar, fennel, and olive somen (noodles) was a fantastic opening dish. It was lovely, cool and refreshing, with one cooked shrimp perched on top, and lots of small white shrimp hidden among the noodles.
