Friday Lunch at Fish & Meat

Fish & Meat opened in Hong Kong a while ago and I never got around to trying it out.  Frankly, it struck me as the kind of place appropriate for an expense account -- i.e., kind of pricey for not very much stuff.  (But lately I've also been feeling like that is all of Hong Kong generally.)  I had also heard kind of mediocre reviews, so didn't really feel all that inclined to rush to try out their food.  So all in all it seemed like the perfect candidate for a summer associate lunch. 

Friday emerged bright, beautiful and incredibly sunny after the typhoon (always a shame when this happens on a workday!) and it seemed like the perfect time to go for a nice lunch, though I would also argue that there is never a bad time to go for a nice lunch when it's on someone else's dime.
Fish & Meat is located on Wyndham Street in Soho, but it's on the second floor and actually has a lot of light and space considering its location.

I loved their restaurant design.

The food was actually pretty good, I thought - very fresh and interesting.  The portion sizes were also quite big.

We got four starter plates to share for the table:

 Crab salad - the crab salad was a little bit fishy and I didn't love the deconstructed arrangement, but it was interesting.

 Tuna salad with watermelon squares, tossed lightly in a basil and green onion sauce.  Quite tasty and it was remarkable how hard it was to tell which was watermelon and which was tuna.

 Fried whitebait with a mustard aioli sauce.  The white bait was very tender and fresh, but it was a little bit disconcerting to be able to see their little black eyes in there, hiding under the batter.

 Definitely my favorite of the four, the tomato and burrata salad with baby microgreens and yuzu leaves, paired with grilled peaches! (What a brilliant idea!)

 In a laughable attempt to control my cholesterol (or some misguided thought to try to eat healthier), I tried to order the French monkfish paired with cauliflower puree, capers and wilted spinach.  Alas, they were out of this dish.  I took it as a sign from the heavens and went ahead with my order of the 350g of tender hangar steak, paired with french fries and oven roasted (chili flake rubbed) squash.  The meat was very tender, the fries very good (albeit salty) and the squash had a nice sweet flavor.

It was a very satisfying meal (compared to Gaucho, for example) and, after finishing the meal with a skim latte, I felt very content.