Loving Hut - Hong Kong

Living in Singapore, I have been familiar with the Loving Hut brand for many years.  But my recent trip to Hong Kong gave me an opportunity to test out a Loving Hut restaurant outside of Singapore.  Interestingly enough, the menu was vastly different to the Singapore outlets. The menu contained a variety of eyebrow-raising main meals, snacks and desserts.  If you are eating at Loving Hut between the times 2.00pm-5.30pm then you can enjoy a 30% on most items.  The entire Loving Hut menu is 100% vegan.


Loving Hut
Location: 2/F Luen Tai Building, 93-99, Wan Chai Road
Contact: (852) 2574-3248
Opening Hours: Daily 11am - 9.30pm
 
One of the key selling points of the Loving Hut menu is dishes with mock egg and cheese.  Being someone who adored dairy, in my dietary debaucherous vegetarian days - I promptly selected this Vegan Cheese & Vegan Egg Sandwich so that I could sample.  Unfortunately, this dish was quite a let down.  The mock cheese flavour was really quite awful.  It was a paste that was extremely sweet, almost like the flavour of mango.  Definitely no resemblance to real cheese.  The 'yolk' of the mock egg did have a somewhat dry and crumbly texture, but the tofu derived 'egg white' didn't.  In addition to this, the entire sandwich was extremely messy to eat, with the mock egg sliding around like an ice hockey puck every time the sandwich was touched.

Price: HK$38.00.     3/10

With Hong Kong being the dim sum capital of the world, it seemed fitting to order this BBQ Char Siew Bun.  There are a total of three medium sized pieces given.  Admittedly, I am not someone who particularly enjoys Chinese 'bao' (bread) in the first place, so this snack didn't really do much to impress me.  The real let down was the char siew filling, which I found was quite mushy and void of any depth in flavour.

Price: HK$20.00.     6/10


The best dish I tasted at Loving Hut (HK) was the Formosea Stew Style Noodle with Soya.  The highlight of this dish was the soup flavour.  It was jam-packed with a delicious beefy taste, whilst not being too salty (as soups are so often guilty of being).  The dish had a variety of ingredients inside - Such as carrot, turnip, mock meat, pea shoots and bok choy.  The carrot and turnip were particularly well equipped at absorbing the flavours of the soup, and becoming extremely juicy and delicious.  Definitely the soup-based dishes at Loving Hut were very impressive.  This is a dish I would certainly order again without hesitation.

Price: HK$45.00.     8/10


One of the many set meals available is the Vegan Eel Cutlet with Rice.  The rice stands out, due to its bright red colour, which is derived from red yeast - An ingredient supposedly very good for human health.  The salad next to the rice was topped with vegan thousand island dressing, which closely resembled the real thing.  The bowl of soup was packed with delicious flavour and complimented the other components perfectly.  Of course, the main feature of the dish is the mock eel - Which I must say was quite impressive.  I've never tasted real eel myself, so it is difficult to make a direct comparison.  But as mock meats go, this was an enjoyable rendition.  The sauce in particular was incredibly moreish.

Price: HK$55.00.     7/10


Anyone visiting Hong Kong will probably dash to the famous Tai Cheong Bakery to sample their world renowned egg tarts.  Therefore, life can be somewhat depressing for vegans visiting Hong Kong, who are deprived of this sweet snack.  Fear not, as Loving Hut is one of the few places that offer a Vegan Egg Tart.  This egg tart definitely doesn't have the delicious flaky pastry, nor the silky, smooth, and creamy yellow filling.  But considering this tart is void of any milk, butter or eggs, then this is understandable.  This dessert did help to quell my cravings for real egg tarts somewhat, and it made me happy to know Loving Hut added this to the menu, so vegans can enjoy egg tarts too.

Price: HK$16.00 (2 pieces).     7/10


With my sweet tooth still feeling unfulfilled, I picked out another dessert from the menu - This one being the Tiramisu.  The slice looked visually impressed upon arrival, and I simply couldn't wait to penetrate this cake with my spoon.  Unfortunately, the biggest issue with this dessert was, I simply couldn't penetrate it with my spoon!  Bizarrely enough, this dessert was frozen rock solid, and took about 30 minutes to thaw out enough that a spoon could be used.  This is incredibly frustrating for a customer, and eventually we just gave up, with the cake remaining only half eaten.  Bring a pick axe and drill if you want to eat this dessert in a hurry.

Price: HK$22.00.     4/10


Conclusion - Although I found that a few of the dishes were quite disastrous in quality, I still found myself going back to Loving Hut on a couple of occasions.  The key selling point to Loving Hut (HK) is the diverse and unique menu, which unquestionably tickled my curiosity.  However, the quality of most of the dishes left me feeling a little underwhelmed.

Overall Rating
Food - 5/10
Ambiance- 7/10
Service - 8/10
Value - 8/10