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I have never written any review in Google. This is my first one. And the main reason is that I have had my worst fine dinning experience in my life time.
The chef that tonight was chef Marco Antonio, who they mentioned "he has cooked at some great kitchens around the world".

Some highlights of my bad experience:
- horrible time management: the entire dinner took 4 hours to finish. I believe they can make it in 1.5 hours if they have enough man power
- one chef is serving 27 guests in the entire night. Yes. I can tell you they are making a risotto for 27 persons in one pot. You can imagine the quality.
- The portion of each course is not well balanced. Look at the cabbage in the photo. While they served us a very big bowl of rice (I can't say it's risotto, sorry)
- The presentation is horrible. Even my 5 years old daughter can make a better look.
- Waiters were not professional. They will just give you the food without saying anything. Some will introduce a little bit if they are in good mood.
- One of the course was a salad (It was too horrible that I forget to take photo). The salad clearly could be made by anyone. Why do we need a chef?
- For the main course, it was Poach Seabass. It was a small piece and it was cold in the middle. You can imagine how busy the chef was.
- Poor restaurant decoration. Simple and not elegant.

TLDR; The cost is $1480 per head and they only have one chef to handle 27 guests. You can see how eager they want to earn money by sacrificing our experience.

The concept is not bad. But quality is really bad. I would say it is the worst restaurant that I have ever had in 2022.
The staff won’t introduce you the food. And it tooks 3 hour and 45 mins for the dinner. Most importantly. The taste is not good at all.

To be fair I feel 3.5 stars is more appropriate but there is no "half" option so I'm going to be slightly harsh and go with 3 stars. The two of us visited Test Kitchen just this Friday. It's an interesting concept and one that I appreciate. It's an opportunity for any chef to use the space to display their culinary skills! As a result food will always change and may be potentially a little inconsistent. The place has an industrial chic vibe and its setup is part of an old building that is having some life breathed back into it. Great concept and aesthetically quite appealing but just one thing really bugged me that night. We were seated at the large communal table on the ground floor, right in the middle of two groups of four. Due to the high ceilings and plentiful concrete around us, there was no sound insulation at all. Voices bounced from all corners. In some restaurants, they can get away with it where patrons are sitting closer but here the communal table is quite wide so it is hard to carry out a conversation without raising your voice or waiting for a pause from your stranger neighbour 🙄. As a party of two, perhaps placing us at the end of the table may have been slightly better. Or if there were more couple bookings, perhaps sitting side by side makes more sense. It is worth checking out but I would be very conscious about the seating next time. Perhaps better if you can just take the entire table with a larger booking. I did notice that the table on the second floor didn't suffer as much with the acoustics. I think there was a third floor too but did not go up to see. As for the food that night, $1000pp all in for 3 starters, two mains (fish, beef), sides and a dessert. Plenty to eat and food was quite good. Service was generally on the better side. Staff was friendly and attentive enough. Had the setup been improved it would have been quite a spot on night. A little disappointing overall. I think some tweaking can go a long way. If there is another interesting chef in the future I might try again but highly unlikely a choice for date night!



I still haven’t had a chance to have a proper meal at Test Kitchen, and I guess the chance is kinda slim now during the pandemic, as the 21-day of quarantine would make it quite impossible for foreign chefs to fly to Hong Kong and host the kitchen. Therefore, when I saw this Street Food pop-up, I made up my mind instantly to pay a visit.

This sign really tells you, the fries (rather than the sandwich) is the kick here!

I topped up my fries for the cheesy one with HKD$15. The fries were really good! Thick cut, freshly fried, just like those served in traditional local tuck shop. The cheesy sauce was quite standard, but the spice powder did top up the whole thing!

The Pulled Pork Sandwich was a bit so so. This is the bottom side of the sandwich. When the sandwich was served, all the pulled pork pieces were at the bottom of the sandwich due to the upright serving mode. Some of the pulled pork was quite chewy indeed…And 90% of the delicious numbing spicy sauce escaped onto the table due to poor wrapping of the sandwich (I could see that every body else was making a mess with the sauce…such a pity…).

Hopefully the next street food pop-up at the Test Kitchen will be better :)

Have had two meals here from different chefs.
Each have been really interesting and innovative in their own way.

This venue relies on getting a lot of different chefs and styles of cuisine to come through and present their food. The only consistent parts will be the venue and some of the staff who are all really nice and helpful.
Due to the limited run nature, the meals can be quite expensive, but this is all about eating as an experience, not a functional activity.
You are coming for the innovation and the experience, and I've been pleased each time I've been.

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