Wing - Hong Kong
A modern tea-house ambiance
Rating: 16/20
Where: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
When: Dinner for 4 on 18 February 2025
Cost per Person: Tasting menu 1980-2980 HKD, Wine pairing 850-2780 HKD
Accolades: #20 on World's 50 Best Restaurants list (2024)
Why: Elegantly prepared Chinese fine-dining cuisine, many add-ons for larger groups
When navigating the fine-dining scene of Hong Kong, one will sooner or later end up in the Wellington building in the city's Central district. It is home to no fewer than three restaurants on the 2025 Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list: “The Chairman” at #2, “Wing” at #3 and “VEA” at #53. The last two are run by the same chef, Vicky Cheng, but that’s where the similarities stop - whereas VEA is French cuisine with Chinese ingredients, “Wing” is his interpretation of Chinese fine-dining cuisine. Wing is also considerably harder to reserve, presumably due to its much higher position on the 50 Best list. We were lucky enough to have dinner at both of chef Cheng's restaurants on two consecutive nights, and Wing was our second stop.
The restaurant is located on the 29th floor, but vegetation planted right outside the windows creates the illusion that one is on the ground level, maybe in a park. The restaurant's interior is reminiscent of a Chinese tea house, using tones of jade and beige. There were only six tables in the main dining room: four four-tops and two tables for two. Together with two private dining rooms, the restaurant can accomodate up to 38 diners per night.
There were two tasting menus to choose from; the more expensive one featured more premium ingredients and had one additional course. In our case, we went for the “cheaper” option. After we made our reservation, the restaurant offered us a number of additional (or substitute) dishes to customize our experience - we chose to replace a baby pigeon dish by the restaurant's signature crispy chicken. Many of these replacement dishes are shared by the whole table, so this is a restaurant where having more people at the table allows one to try more dishes (or at least avoid a lot of leftovers). Before our visit, I had seen online that the restaurant offered a tea pairing and four wine pairings (either 4 or 6 glasses of either normal or elevated wines). However, oddly, none of these were offered proactively. When we inquired after our soup course, we wound up with a five glass pairing for the rest of the meal. Apart from a first wine from Jura, the chosen wines were pretty decent. Overall, this was a better pairing than the one that we had at VEA. But it's totally possible to do without any wine at Wing - there were constantly refilled tea cups on the table, and the tea even changed towards the end of the meal in order to better match the food.
Speaking of tea, a caffeine-free infusion was served before our dinner began: a seasonal blend of yams, lily bulbs and barley tea. It was lightly sweet.
Also served at this time was a bowl of cashew nuts dusted with Chinese spices. Crunchy, but not particularly spicy and with a hint of sweetness. Something to nibble on during our dinner 14.
A selection of four appetizers was served family-style to properly start the dinner. Sliced razor clams were served with green chilies and seaweed. The clams were tender, the seaweed had a light crunch and the dish came with an aromatic sauce. A wonderful example of elevated Chinese cuisine, prepared with great ingredients. Ostensibly simple, but very tasty 18.
Japanese oysters and a century duck egg were served with a mala sauce. The sauce was spicy, but not too spicy. The taste of the juicy oyster came through nicely in this dish - the sauce was there to complement it, not supplant it. The creamy egg was fine, but in the end it was just, well, an egg 17.
An eggplant had been artfully braided, nicely cooked and (seemingly) lightly marinated - at least the result was slightly acidic 17.
South African abalone had been cooked with two different kinds of Chinese spirits. Its texture was nicely chewy, but it didn't have a particularly strong flavor 16.
After these four appetizers, we were served the remainder of the mala sauce mixed with cold noodles. A nice way to avoid wasting that great sauce, although the noodles diluted the spiciness quite a bit. Their texture was lightly al dente 16.
Next, a soup course. Shirako sat on a layer of steamed egg whites, to which our server added an almond soup made with chicken broth. How many white ingredients can you use in a single dish? Apparently, a lot. The soup was quite hot, lightly flavored with only a hint of almonds. The shirako and egg whites added some creaminess to the dish 15.
Alaskan king crab was served with a crab sauce, crispy rice rolls and spring onions. This and the following dishes were first presented whole, e.g. the whole crab on a big plate, before being split into individual portions by a chef. Maybe partially for that reason, the crab wasn't very hot by the time we got around to eating it. The crab meat itself was fine, the crispy sticky rice added a nice texture, and the sauce was a bit spicy and somewhat sweetish. Not bad, but the dish felt somewhat generic, nothing really stood out about it 16.
A local, seasonal fish called “ma yau” was served with a sauce made from fermented soy beans and mandarin peels. The oily fish was cooked to a flaky consistency, and didn't taste very fishy - it mainly provided texture to accompany the nicely aromatic, fermented, umami-ful sauce. Looked simple, but very tasty. My only complaint would be that it wasn't quite as good as the ma yau dish that we had at VEA the night before 17.
The following dish was a gift by the kitchen, and therefore not listed on the printed menu. A giant spring roll was filled with half sea cucumber and half air, and served with a scallion/chicken/pork sauce. The crispy, airy dough was pretty nice, but the sea cucumber had the gelatinous texture typical for its use in Chinese cuisine (and quite different from what we had seen at VEA). Nice enough 16.
Next came an entire local yellow chicken. This was a large dish - even shared among four people, we ended up with leftovers. The chicken had been dry aged for one week, and then rubbed with a special sauce before being cooked to gain a very crispy skin. This was a very nice chicken: tender, juicy and flavorful, especially where the meat had taken on most of the rub. The skin was crunchy but also a bit fatty. Not the best chicken I've ever had, but pretty good 17.
Along with the chicken, we received baby mustard greens topped with one-month-dry-aged salted pork. The greens were lightly crunchy, and the pork added a few nicely flavorful bites 15.
The final savory course of the night was a rice dish. Pieces of fish maw, pickled yellow fungus, scallions and an abalone sauce were served over rice. I liked the nicely sauced rice and the crunchy fungus, but the fish maw was its usual gelatinous self - a far cry from VEA's amazing version 15.
For the sweet part of the meal, we were served several smaller bites rather than a giant dessert. The first one was based on snow gum, a fungus with a texture similar to a bird's nest. It was served with a fresh coconut sorbet. The sorbet itself was quite nice, but its gelatinous topping was more of an acquired taste 15. A pine nut mochi had a good texture and nicely nutty finish 14.
Fried donuts were filled with a salted duck egg custard. It turned out that it was hard to detect the “salted duck egg” here, this was mostly just a thick donut filled with a sweet custard. Tasty, somewhat heavy, and not particularly distinctive 15.
Finally, maybe the healthiest dish of our entire Asia trip - a selection of fruit. A Thai pomelo was only lightly sweet 14, a Japanese strawberry was aromatic, but only of medium sweetness. Maybe Japan simply doesn't export its best produce 15. A kumquat from Guangxi could be eaten whole, and didn't contain any fruit flesh. Its skin was quite crunchy, and the whole was very sweet 18. An Australian cherry plum was much less sweet 15. Last, but definitely not least, was a mango from Hainan. It was super sweet and very fragrant. Excellent 19.
Overall: A well-executed fine-dining version of Chinese cuisine. I've read that the dishes incorporate influences from different regions in China, but my knowledge of Chinese cuisine was unfortunately not sophisticated enough to appreciate that properly. In that regard, more commentary from the serving staff might have been educational. As it stood, this was an enjoyable series of dishes, but none of them were particularly mind-blowing. That was a bit disappointing since our dinner at sister restaurant VEA had a number of revelatory uses of ingredients. Here, the very same ingredients were used only in the “standard” way. But I can see why someone would prefer either restaurant - Wing is definitely the much lighter meal of the two, and - with its more personal setting - a better location for a date 16.
