Divine Dining....Oolaa is the word.

Once upon a time on a side street tuck away behind Hollywood Road in Hong Kong, there was a very large vacant space in an A grade building. The months and then the years passed by and it indeed remained empty, forlorn and vacant. Then Oolaa came along……

While some may remain bemused with the chosen name, trust me a rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Not withstanding this, Oolaa in Soho, part of the Castelo Concepts team that brought you Cru and Jaspers, located along Bridges Street is pretty much an instant success story. This in a city where venues come with much hype and go under with little fanfare. Oolaa now being open some six months has captured and captivated the local dining scene.

The setting:

One very long venue with mostly high ceilings (a refreshing change in HK) is divided into three distinct yet cohesive areas. The beautiful main dining area, decked out with white table cloths and cloth napkins, with a centre piece of fresh flowers and low open semi circle booths along the side offers the best in “casual yet refined dining”. Moving along the entry area rests to the side of the main dining area with additional casual tables in what is part of the “free” seating area. Then stepping down to the main bar floor with a raised centre table and additional free seating on the side. Ending with a casual free seating café style dining area with plump and comfy sofas and marble table tops. (Note the café area is open from 7.30 am.) The entire area is complemented with cosy teak wood, light coloured marble and patterned floor tiling, while in the evening the ambiance of the closed glass sliding doors, dimmed lighting and warm glow of the candles is simply divine.

The Food:

One interesting and appealing aspect is the fact the all three dining areas offer the same complete menu, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. So no matter where you are seated you have the same great options and variety of food available. Breakfast offers the usual array of eggs any style along with a nice choice of fresh fruit and muesli. One of their signature dishes is a breakfast Pizza with Vegemite and cheese. Note they have their own wood fired oven, producing fresh, thin authentic style pizzas. Lunch offers either the full menu or a changing set lunch from HKD 108+. For a full meal the dinner Menu provides a wide choice, ranging from tapas style snacks to quality salads, antipasto, pastas, and prime meat dishes. For dessert a must try is the chocolate pudding, crispy outside and inside awaits a lava like flow of warm melted chocolate!

The Service:

Okay, during the first few weeks things did go awry, but any errors were well handled and corrected. Initially the long space provided a challenge for both the management and the servers, however, this quickly settled and being the professional lot that Castelo Concepts are I am pleased to say the service is great, pretty much most of the time, even when busy. (Yes the place is frequently packed, but they cope well.)

Bouquets:

Great food, consistency of both service and food, stylish yet casual and good value as well.

Brick Bats:

Being on Bridges street with an open area facing the road means that the pollution from passing trucks and the foul odor from the seemingly frequent waste management vehicles proves a real challenge. My only hope is that they see the error of their ways and keep more of the front glass sliding doors closed during the day in the coming months!

Oolaa Soho, Bridges Street back of CentreStage. For reservations telephone: 2803-2083

A matter of manners.

Manners anyone?

Oscar Wilde once stated, “youth is wasted on the young” while I may well concur with this, particularly as I approach the early 40’s, (is there such a thing?) It brings to attention the fact that not just youth is wasted on the young. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for X’ers and Y’s and whatever, what really is disappointing is the uncouth and rather frightful behavior of some people when in public. In particular as I write this, in the Club Lounge of a leading international airline.

To get to the point, what ever happened to manners and etiquette?

Just across from me is some gentlemen, (and I use the term loosely) sitting with his feet up on the table, it started with a toe, progressed to a foot and now both feet are firmly planted on an edifice designed and being used for serving food.

Just to set the record straight, I stopped making public scenes of retribution years ago, so being the passive aggressive type, I moved to another table. But it gets me thinking, why if someone, is well educated, travelling in business class or at least well travelled, committed to such poor standards of public behavior?

All in all, this brings me to the topic of falling standards in general, I am hip enough to accept jeans, even blue, now being worn at semi-formal events, but one needs to draw the line somewhere. While air travel itself has pretty much been reduced to being stuck in a large metal tube along with slipping standards of service does less really mean more?

Not too long ago, I was fortunate enough to meet up with some dear family friends, I was at the home of the parents of an old school chum, they, now in the 80’s, were reflecting on the golden age of air travel, and how on an Constellation, (it’s a type of aircraft) they travelled, in style with service and room to match from Australia to the UK. Of course it took days and the fares back then came at around the same altitude as the planes flew at! Either way it still sounded much nicer that how we travel today.

So while feathered hats a blue blazers may well be travel accessories of the past, all I really ask is if we have to travel, let’s just ensure we take our manners with us, no matter how we are travelling, there is no reason why our manners cannot be first class!

N.B- My forthcoming posts will be more relevant to the the Hong Kong dining scene!