Loyal Dining

Loyal Dining @ Wellington St. 

Since its opening, Loyal Dining has received copious press attention and visitation from diners who wish see what the fuss is all about. Hell, even my mother wanted to come here to try. My first visit was lunch with a friend, and later I returned for dinner with family to try more dishes before I could decide whether I liked the place or not.

Lunch menu

snap of a page of the a la carte menu

Dim Sum with the set ($78)
We chose shrimp dumplings (har gow), pork and shrimp roe siu mai (not pictured, because they got our order wrong and they exchanged the two vegetarian dumplings eventually), and spinach dumplings. Our favourite was the spinach dumplings because of its slippery tasty filling, but sadly all the skins were way over-steamed.

With the lunch set we chose a conpoy and egg white fried rice (the other option being fried noodles with soy sauce) and we were glad we did because the fried rice was damn tasty. Grains were fluffy and separated, not too oily and perfectly seasoned.

From the a la carte menu, we ordered a "baked lobster and seafood with fried rice" ($138) without looking at the Chinese translation (yin-yang rice) which did not match its english counterpart in my opinion. We both expected something like the picture on the menu, but ours was sadly nothing like it. With wet fried rice as the base, the top was covered with two types of sauces, a red and a white, and with assorted small pieces of seafood scattered over. We managed to find a single lobster piece, about the size of my pinky.  Needless to say we were pretty disappointed with this rice dish that they so-called their 'signature'.

About a week later I was back for dinner with the family. We were six and hungry and ordered up a storm. We shared various dinner sets and a la carte items, so the following descriptions might seem confusing but I'll try my best!

Daily Chinese soup ($28)
Whilst it felt quite healthy my issue with it was its size and lack of heat - it was luke warm at most. 

Russian Borsch Soup (comes with the "Sizzling Set" ($158-188)

66 Beef Wellington ($188) 

This 'sizzling' comes from the sauce being poured onto the hot plate and the noise that comes with. No, its not dangerous because its not so hot that it splatters, but just enough for theatrical purposes. 

Cross section of our wellington
We were happy with the tender fillet inside, but the pastry sadly fell short. To go with our wellington was a small bowl of rice and some sauteed vegetables and a sauce of your choice - we chose the black pepper gravy.

rice with the Sizzling Set

Another set we chose was the Pigeon Set for Two ($328) With this you get an option to start with soup or Caesar salad, a half dozen of baked escargots, two kinds of pigeon - crispy deep-fried and simmered in soy sauce, and a small plate of stir-fried greens.

Caesar salad
Apart from the fake bacon crisps the romaine leaves were crisp, clean and very fresh.

Baked Escargots on Mash
These were tiny tiny snails, but very tender, quite nice.

Crispy Pigeon Winglet
We were so excited to try we must've forgotten to take a picture of the whole dish. The two kinds were mixed up into one dish with extra sweet dark soy on the side, but when you taste it, the deep-fried crispy one was the clear winner for me. The meat was also very tender, even the breast part, and had a slight gamey taste which I really like about pigeons. Definitely would recommend the crispy one if you're going a la carte!

A third set we ordered was the Baked Crab Meat in Shell and Seafood Set ($178) which came with a puff-pastry covered soup, baked crab shell and a rice option, of either baked garoupa with fried rice and cheese or sauteed prawns with egg and steamed rice. 

Baked Fish Chowder with Puff Pastry
This soup was mixed up in the orders and by the time it arrived we were almost done with the meal. The soup was watery and tasteless, the pastry was only brown on the outer most later but soft/soggy underneath. The oven must've been cranked to super-high or something to hasten the cooking times but puff pastry needs time to cook properly. Anyway, this soup was a downright disappointment (as with the other soups, I've noticed).

Baked Crab Meat in Shell
You know, at this price, you'd expect at least half of it crab meat with filler of bread crumbs or sauteed onions, but this was sadly almost 90% filling, including potatoes (arghhhh) and bread crumbs and some thick sauce. Not pleasant at all, especially since all I did taste was potatoes. 

Baked Garoupa with Fried Rice and Cheese
This dish was the last to arrive (yes, after our desserts) because it was forgotten. How we wished this had come earlier because it was actually must tastier than the other counterparts of this set. The rice was nicely dry and seasoned, the cheese sauce and garoupa not overcooked and gave it some moisture... I could only manage a spoon or two but I was happy I did try it. 

Loyal Fried Flat Noodles with Sliced Beef in Homemade Sweet Soya Sauce ($75)
This was good, slightly too sweet if I'm to be picky, but nothing so great to justify its $75 dollar price tag. Any other cha chaan teng could've executed this dish just as well. 

Fried Rice with Black Truffle and Diced Beef Tenderloin ($82)
I ordered this out of curiosity, but was pleasantly surprised. The truffle was actually very fragrant and went well with beef and rice. My only complaint is that there is hardly any beef! And when I did find one I swear it was about 1/2 the size of a HK 10c.... 

Loyal Thick Toast with Preserved Bean Curd and Caster Sugar ($15)
This turned out to be a bad idea. The preserved bean curd ("fu-yuu") was way too salty. I think if they had spread it more thinly rather than generously as if it were butter it would've been more edible but this was just salt on salt on more salt. The bread was indeed thick and fluffy in the center, and that was the only part I liked about it. 

To go with the sets we given jelly with tinned cocktail fruits and served with evaporated milk. Very old school, and the parents were definitely having fun with it.

As a last note, I thought the service had a lot of room for improvement. MIxing up and forgetting orders - it wasn't just us, the tables next to us received similar issues, and slow service generally despite the amount of waiters there was stuffed in one corner... At a restaurant like this I expected more I guess. Hope with time the waiters improve. 

Food: ♥♥ at lunch;  ♥♥ - ♥♥♥♥ at dinner

Service: ♥1/2 

Price: $$$

Loyal Dining 

66 Wellington Street, 

Central, Hong Kong

Tel: +852 3125 3000