La Petite Maison

Contemporary French Mediterranean in Hong Kong

It’s been busy, and I haven’t made time to try new restaurants recently. I’ve walked past La Petite Maison many times in the past, and decided to take a peek inside today. I was in the neighborhood and couldn’t find anywhere else that I wanted to try, so I figured to try something that I haven’t before.

A chain with locations all around the world, La Petite Maison focuses on combining French and Mediterranean cuisine, featuring a lot of of light dishes, seafood, and many variations of whole grilled fish on the menu.

Historically, I would simply walk past a small front patio with a few tables, and I thought that the restaurant was fairly small. In fact, the tiny frontage opened into a cavernous space, with at least 60 - 80 seats. When I walked in for lunch around 1pm, the restaurant was empty, apart from a group of smartly-dressed staff, idly waiting around for patrons. Not a promising start, but over time, the restaurant filled up.

The bar was quite large, and I only captured half of it in the picture.

The space itself was cleanly decorated, with splashes of colour from the pop art mounted against the walls.

The menu told the story and the concept of the restaurant.

When asked why there was a giant lemon and some tomatoes on the table, the server told us that it was a “make your own appetizer” idea, where we could cut the lemon and tomato into slices, season with salt and pepper shakers on the table and top with some olive oil. We decided to pass on that, but instead, cut a lemon slice for our water glass.

Unfortunately, combination of giant lemon and tiny water glass didn’t work particularly well.

The first appetizer we ordered was a thinly sliced octopus carpaccio, topped with thin slices of radish, some pickled onion, olive oil and microgreens. The slices were perfectly round and uniformly cut. I suspect that the octopus tentacles were saran wrapped into a log, chilled until almost frozen and sliced on a deli slicer. Very well executed and a great start to the meal.

The next dish was a king crab and lobster salad, combined with some salted shredded cucumber and microgreens on top of a bed of crushed ice, with a zesty citrus dressing. Again, good execution, lots of crab and lobster meat. The cucumber was salted and moisture removed preventing the salad from becoming too watery.

The star dish, a courgette flower tempura, with each courgette flower delicately unwrapped and coated in a light batter before deep frying. The flowers were very lightly dredged and the resulting tempura was incredibly light and crispy. Three for three, all the appetizers were great hits.

Unfortunately disaster struck when the mains arrived. We ordered the grilled langoustines, which was one of the specials on the menu, and received three langoustines halved and grilled under the broiler topped with some hawthorn flakes. At first bite, my companion could tell something was wrong - the meat was mushy, and falling apart. At first, I suspected that it was just a bit undercooked, but my companion insisted that the langoustines were long dead before cooking. My mind instantly jumped to frozen, not fresh.

We asked the server if the langoustines were shipped frozen, and she responded that she didn’t know and would ask the kitchen. That was not promising. A few minutes later she returned from the back and confirmed that they were frozen, and offered to take them back.

For one of the specials, and charging nearly $100 USD for three langoustines, we were expecting a lot more. We sent the dish back.

Fortunately the clam linguine was a lot better. The linguine was cooked perfectly al dente, the clams were plump, juicy and briny and there were a lot of them. Topped with a bit of dried parsley and olive oil, a simple but well executed dish.

Overall, lots of hits among the appetizers, the pasta was simple and good, and one very disappointing special. Neat concept, but I expected a lot more at the price point. The size of the bar suggests that this is a place to go for drinks and appetizers, before moving on another destination for a full meal.

Total damage: 1300 HKD/2 people.