Food: 4.5 stars
Service: 4.5 stars
Ambience: 4 stars
I was very excited when I found out the an Auckland gourmet startup – Judge Bao, was coming to Wellington for a degustation collaboration with Hillside, which is renowned for its adventurous spirit in experimenting with food and flavour boundaries. Judge Bao is owned by two lovely people – Debbie Orr and Jamie Johnston. Jamie has been working in hospitality for 20 years, having left the ever popular Al Brown restaurant, Depot, after two and half years to set up this venture with Deb. It is apparent to me in my hour-long conversation with them that they have real passion in delivering the best quality food to their customers.They spent six months experimenting and researching for the recipe for best bao before they even opened shop. Having eaten thousands of baos in my life in various Asian countries, I have to say that theirs is one of the best – all natural with no preservatives, bleach or artificial rising agents which is all too common in commercially produced ones.
I was taken by surprise, which is what Hillside is so good at delivering, by the creativity of the team. The sesame buns were delightful – soft but yet spongy, bouncing back ever so slightly when you bite into them, which is exactly what Deb wanted. And who would have thought of combining Chinese salted tofu (fu-ru) with creamed butter as a silky spread! This is something I am going to make at home for sure.
One of my favourite dishes was the Butternut, fish fragrance, fix and fog. It has everything I would look for in a dish – flavours, texture, presentation and creativity. It takes some serious imagination to brush butternut with a spicy Asian sauce, roast it and serve it with a paper thing peanut butter crisp. It sounds odd but everyone adored it. One of the other crowd pleaser was the Silken tofu with burnt sugar syrup and mandarin. I have spent a lot of time learning about sugars in its various forms and temperatures, but for the life of me I could not come up with a reasonable technique to achieve the dark, honey like cream that everyone seems to want to lick off the bottom of their bowl. I talked to the Hillside creator, who duly informed me that it is a 4 step process that takes about 10 hours in total.
All in all, it was a fantastic meal. We were promised six courses but received about 10, a classic case of under promising and over delivering. All for a humble price of $60.
I am going to sign off now and figure out how to make the Jasmine marshmallows with pressed pear.
Bon appetite.