Moon Yue in Causeway Bay: Top-notch Chinese cuisine in sleek surrounds

Jet black interiors with a huge, grey marble feature wall. An immense bar shelf that is skilfully hidden behind a sliding installation. These descriptions would describe a trendy bar or sleek club. However, the sleek surrounds are actually home to Moon Yue, one of Causeway Bay’s newest addresses for Chinese cuisine.

The set menus are quite reasonable – the lunch menu starts at HK$128, while a six-course dinner menu is priced at HK$388. We are hosted to an eight-course signature menu (HK$588) and start the meal with an appetiser platter of spiced translucent beef shin and vegan barbecue pork with honey sauce. While the former was good, it was the vegan barbecue pork that was the stand-out. Served searing hot, the gluten had an almost crisp exterior and the honey sauce was superb. Of all the vegan barbecued pork we’ve had, this is some of the best. The braised sea conch with porcini and fish maw soup that followed were equally nourishing.

One of our favourites of the evening was stir-fried Wagyu beef cubes with wasabi and gravy sauce. The bite of the radish was distinctive but quickly dissipates while the Japanese condiment cuts the richness of the beef perfectly. The other highlight is the stewed pearl rice with matsutake mushroom and abalone sauce, and it was divine. The dish was topped with small abalone that was extremely soft to the bite, while the rice absorbed all the flavours of the sauce’s ingredients, with an aroma of char.

Diners at Moon Yue will have to look past the incongruent ambience of the restaurant, but what’s on the plates is top-notch stuff.

Moon Yue

28/F, Cubus, 1 Hoi Ping Road, Causeway Bay