The Peak and Cafe Deco (Hong Kong)

The Peak is Hong Kong's most famous landmark, and it's on the itinerary of most visitors to Hong Kong. On the weekend we took my visiting mother-in-law and her friend to The Peak via the Peak Tram, which is also another must-do thing in HK. It's just a tram, but you can get a lovely view of the city when you sit on the right hand side of the tram going up (left hand side on the way back down).

The Peak Tram carries an average of more than 11,000 passengers per day!!

The track reaches a maximum steepness of 48%, which made me appreciate the fact that we didn't need to climb the slope on foot in the humid heat (something that many people do for fitness!):

The city view from The Peak, facing north towards Kowloon. We could see our apartment building from here (click image for larger size):

Zooming in slightly on Union Square, where the ICC Tower (tallest building in HK, fourth tallest in the world) stands nearby our apartment building:

The view from The Peak facing south towards the more green Southern District of Hong Kong:

Rob's aunt (MIL's sister who has been living in HK for years) had the wisdom to book for our group a window table for lunch at Cafe Deco. This is the largest restaurant at The Peak, and boasts a grand view of the cityscape through the large floor-to-ceiling windows. Cafe Deco is quite a beautiful restaurant, but I found that service was a little inconsistent (the head waiter was great but the younger "green" one looked confused half the time, perhaps because of the language barrier). The menu offerings range from Italian pizza and pasta to Japanese sushi to Indian tandoori dishes - it caters to a wide range of tastes with separate cooking stations for each cuisine and executed by suitably-trained chef. The result is delicious food that is fairly authentically prepared. It is a little on the pricey side, which is understandable for the prime location and view.

Hey, there's our apartment building again! The view from our window table:

Generous space and two floors' of it, which partly explains the relative priciness of dining here:

My Sushi Sampler, which came a good 10 minutes before everyone else's food. I waited, but it didn't take long before the hungry toddler kept asking for the sushi in front of him (I gave him the tobiko (flying fish roe) while I waited for everyone else's food to arrive, and he loved it). Other than that, I had no complaints about the sushi - the seafood were fresh and the sushi pieces were made well:

The Smoked Rainbow Trout Pizza we got for the 2.5-year-old. Lovely wood-fired thin-crusted pizza topped with smoked rainbow trout, zucchini slivers, black olives, red onions and mozzarella. Probably could be improved without so much onions, or at least caramelise them first:

Rob got the Kyoto Salmon and Scallop Burger with Miso Mayo from the lunch menu, which was pretty good. Burger menus should feature fish more often, and I'm not talking about those filet-o-fish deep-fried crap that probably contains only 1% fish. I think simply grilled fish fillets snuggled within a bun with nary a sauce and condiments sound quite divine!

Rob still had room for dessert, so he got the Black Forest Sundae, which arrived at the table quite impressively presented. Vanilla ice cream, chocolate cup cake drizzled with kirsch, dark morello cherries, whipped cream and chocolate shavings. It was sugar and fat overload, and could have done with more chocolate in it:

We had a great lunch, and while the food was good and the view was amazing (and I can overlook the slightly ill-timing of my food arrival relative to everybody else's), I must say that it was most probably the company that made it great. We always love hanging out with Rob's aunt and her hubby, and of course we loved the precious time spent with our son's grandma who lives so far away in the opposite hemisphere.

Cafe Deco
Level 1-2, Peak Galleria
118 Peak Road
The Peak, Hong Kong
Tel. +85 2 2849 5111