Inside Renaissance HK is a pretty good steakhouse called Mirage. Usually I would not go to a hotel restaurant, but it was a single-sourced steakhouse and so you can taste high quality beef from a single feedlot.

Mirage serves beef from Stockyard of Queensland, Australia. The feedlot has been family owned since 1956 and has been producing high quality black angus beef from their Gold Label brand and Wagyu breed under the Kiwami brand.

Stockyard’s black angus cattle is fed at least for a minimum of 200 days. The black Wagyu included those that are 350 days fed.

The brioche was warm and moist, but it was served without any butter. There was olive oil and balsamic vinegar on the table but then there was no dipping plate. We asked for butter, it arrived 20 min later and brioche was already cold. So the evening started rather badly.

Greek salad with avocado – it was a rather unremarkable salad, dressed with a simple vinaigrette, the avocado was a bit unripe for my taste.

Stockyard Kiwami Wagyu M9+ Tartare – Kiwami means outstanding excellence and is the highest quality beef from Stockyard. Due to the excellent marbling of this Australian Wagyu (M9+), all you need is a simple aburi to bring out the flavour of the beef.

The server used a blowtorch to aburi the thinly sliced skirting. The fats sizzled when in contact with the high flame and the exciting smell of burnt grease filled the air. After aburi, a layer of truffle oil was wiped over the beef.

While it was rather tasty on the aburi side, the other side was still rare and you can still taste the wild side of this meat. Definitely needed the splash of lime and aioli, too bloody for me. Also the truffle was so faint you cannot feel it was there at all.

The steaks were cut to order, and you can order by increments of 100g, starting at 200g per steak. And as part of the promotion of the Stockyard beef, you get two sides with every order of steak.

Stockyard Black Wagyu 350 DaysGrain Fed Flat Iron Steak (M8-9), 200g, medium rare – I asked for medium rare because flat iron is a flavourful but tough cut of beef from the shoulder and overcooking it on the grill will just kill it.

Well, it was bloody in the middle, which is the classic medium rare, but because this was a piece of flat iron and a wagyu for that matter, the external was already crisp to burnt, but most part of the start was still bloody. And what really killed it for me was the centre of the flat iron was still rare. To send it back and kill it would be wasting the meat. I am OK with this rareness, just the steak was not warm enough.

Stockyard Gold Label black angus ribeye, 200g, medium – we regretted, the wagyu should be medium and the ribeye should be medium rare.

This looked medium well to me. And for a ribeye to be this medium well was like killing the perfect piece of meat.

As for the sides – creamed spinach, grilled asparagus, grilled portobello, mashed potato – they were competent but nothing to shout about.

Afterwards

As the evening dragged on, we asked for the bill. Perhaps they saw that I was a Platinum Elite + Ambassador for the Marriott group, which enjoy discount on F&B, or perhaps the manager could see that we were not happy of the service for the evening, he decided to come over to apologise for the slack. Well, damage done.

I would expect a higher level of service from a steakhouse in a 5-star hotel. While the price was not as exorbitant as “‘s” steakhouses like Ruth’s Chris or Morton’s, it still worked out to be around HKD 600 per head without drinks. The chef’s reading of doneness need adjustment (or I needed adjustment for the HK level of doneness), but it was the service staff that was the letdown. Everything was sloppy, we had to top up our own water, and we were sitting at the blind spot of the whole restaurant. There shouldn’t even be a table at this spot.

Not recommended.

Mirage Bar and Restaurant
1/F, Renaissance Harbour View Hotel Hong Kong,
1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Tel : +852 2802 8888

https://www.facebook.com/MirageAtRenaissance/

Date visited : Feb 2019