La Marmite French Bistro - Hong Kong: La Marmite is a classy Parisian inspired bistro that opened early 2011. It has a modern French bistro vibe and just recently got a new manager in November 2011. It’s a two story restaurant located at the busy street of Staunton in downtown SoHo. La Marmite is decorated with soft green colors, whitewashed wood floors, and Paris themed posters to complete the French bistro setting.

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This French restaurant in Hong Kong also has a couple of tables at the al fresco area to keep the Parisian setting real. But with the lively SoHo in the background, it was not a total success to bring Paris to Hong Kong.

Like in most good restaurants, La Marmite requires reservation if you want to get a good seat for your French dinner. Just a note of caution, when the restaurant is full, the noise level goes up quite high.

We started with oysters as and Champagne to get us started while we perused the menu and took in the atmosphere. While the oysters at La Marmite were super fresh and tasty, they were presented in just an average manner.

For my main dish, I had their John Dory fish which, in contrast, tasted fantastic. The Dory fish was flavored with “Terre de Sienne” while served with delicious potato gratin and sautéed spinach.

My partner had La Marmite’s Coquilettes pasta served with slow cooked oxtail stew. Although the pasta was a tad salty, it had a good meaty flavor and was an ample sized portion. We surely were not going home hungry!

The wine list of the French restaurant Hong Kong was not that overwhelming. In fact, there were only few choices, but the manager told me that La Marmite was going to add 48 more wines to their list in the coming weeks so that should be something to look forward to. Their wines were all French and pretty expensive for the quality offered, plus it was disappointing that they didn’t have the different styled wine glasses to match the various wine varieties.

Most of the servers in La Marmite were young and obviously inexperience and there were too many servers. Sometimes all of them were on the floor almost running into each other while there were times most of them were just standing around watching the customers’ every move. I must say their service was pretty decent but not quite the service one expects from a real high standard French bistro.

Although this French restaurant Hong Kong tried their hardest to give us a modern French inspired dining experience, it was not just enough. I gave them credit for doing their best to bring Paris to Hong Kong, but they could do so much better. I gave them an Almost Bombastic rating and, hopefully, a Bombastic rating awaits as they grow and mature.

What I liked: John Dory fish, Coquilettes pasta

What I didn’t like: Average service, limited wine selection

Rating: Almost Bombastic

Address and Telephone Number:
La Marmite
46 Staunton Steet
SoHo Central
Hong Kong
2803 7808

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