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| - I should start off by saying I really wanted to like Hakka Ren. Anyone that knows me knows that I would order Hakka for my last meal on death row...just not from Hakka Ren.
We ordered five dishes between two people: sweet corn chicken soup, the ubiquitous chilli chicken, fried rice, Manchurian chicken and Hakka chow mein noodles with beef. First off, I hold any hakka place to its sweet corn soup. It's the barometer for everything else on the menu. In Hakka Ren's case, the soup had undissolved bits of corn starch jelly (just no!), and the chicken was comprised of gelatinous globs of dark meat (yum?). The chill chicken and Manchurian chicken were virtually indistinguishable from each other except for the fact that the latter had a gravy and the former was ordered in its dry variation. The problem here is that both dishes tasted overwhelmingly of soy sauce, and nothing else. And the Manchurian chicken was over-salted to the point of being inedible. The chow mein noodles were not bad, but the beef in it was bland, grey and gamey. The fried rice was good, but not the best I've had.
Obviously I didn't have everything on the menu, but its hard to get behind Hakka Ren for screwing up the Hakka staples. Perhaps we were very unlucky that night, and perhaps they will get better. For now, I would recommend that you stick to your Hakka favourites, and give Ren a try after they have been open for a year or so.
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