VIEW 62 by Paco Roncero – fine dining with a view in Wan Chai

For a view like no other, take the elevator up 62 floors for a table at VIEW 62 by Paco Roncero, the Hong Kong establishment of the famed Spanish chef and Ferran Adria protégé set in Wan Chai’s Hopewell Centre. This restaurant has a 360-degree view of our favourite city in the whole world (Hong Kong of course… then again, we are biased!) – and what’s more, all you have to do is sit and eat at your table while the restaurant itself rotates to give you the full panoramic view!

At 110 minutes per full rotation, expect to be wined and dined here while you enjoy a full view of the tall skyscrapers, glistening harbour and lush greenery of Hong Kong. In case you’re worried about getting dizzy, the rotation is genuinely very slow and unobtrusive… and if you are extra sensitive, just try to look at your dining partners to avoid catching sight of the outside world moving around you!

Rach and I were dispatched to try VIEW 62’s set lunch, which ranges from $250-$350 per person for a 3-course meal. To get a more rounded experience of VIEW 62’s offerings, we also sampled a few extra dishes from the a la carte menu too.

First up was one of our a la carte options, the Ibérico ham croquette – toasty focaccia with layers of fresh tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, mushrooms and a handful of Ibérico ham as the “cherry” on top. The ham had just the right amount of salty flavour and, of course the paper-thin slices were quickly gobbled up. Even though the focaccia croquette was delish, it did end up being quite messy, so do cut these in half before you get your chops into them!

The two starters from the lunch sets came out next – the first being the octopus salad with veggies and garlic dressing. We were instructed to mix the warm veggies at the bottom with our salad leaves and octopus, resulting in a slightly odd semi-warm mix on my plate. The salad also lacked enough flavour, with the exception of the well-marinated sliced octopus.

The Caldo de Cocido was VIEW 62’s take on Spanish stew; in this version, the stew was made of chickpeas with pork knuckle, beef and chorizo, resulting in a simple broth with muted flavours. A few extra slices of chorizo would have given us that bang of flavour we were looking for.

Onto another a la carte starter – and the marinated salmon with tartare sauce “in deconstruction” was definitely the star of our meal. The artfully arranged bits of veg on the dish were (in our opinion) mostly unnecessary, but the slow-cooked salmon was beauuuutifully cooked, and we especially loved the molecular bubbles of olive oil and dollops of aioli, which went perfectly with the fish.

After the wonderful salmon dish, it was sort of unfair to taste the remaining two lunch set options with such a high bar to live up to! The Ibérico pork tenderloin was nothing too special, the potatoes were a little hard and the highlight of the dish was, in fact, the sweet roasted piquillo peppers. To be fair, the portion was plentiful for a lunch serving, so this is just the thing for those who get super hungry at lunchtime!

Our final savoury dish was tuna with pistachio sauce, tomato and ginger air. I’m never a particular fan of foamy food but the ginger air did manage to capture the heat of this ingredient; sadly, I didn’t really enjoy the tuna itself and would have preferred another fish instead. On the upside, the colourful pistachio cream was a complete surprise, providing a rich and flavourful taste to the dish.

After an interesting mix of starters and entrees, we settled down for our set desserts. The first was custard with biscuit foam, which was made up of two layers of liquid custard and lots of foam. Now you know that us Sassy girls very rarely dislike our desserts – but this was literally like baby food! The second dessert of curled chocolate with hazelnut butter was a little too dense and one-dimensional, but was definitely an improvement from the “custard”.

However, our final dessert from the a la carte menu saved the day – a fresh take on carrot cake! Two thinly-sliced carrot rolls of cheese foam, a sharp orange carrot juice sherbet (which I loved!) and a cinnamon sponge all atop a bed of cinnamon crumbs – who knew carrot cake could look like this, eh?! Light, unique and totally delish.

Whilst I can’t say I would ever come for a weekday lunch at VIEW 62 again (many of the dishes felt fairly ordinary for the price and not that many of us have 110 minutes to take in that view over a lunch break anyway!), all the a la carte dishes were great and extremely innovative. A la carte dishes clock in at about $120-150 for starters and tapas, with mains mostly at about $450; there is also a tasting menu available, which changes every week, priced at $950 per head for 9 courses. They’ve also just introduced a new private catering menu, so you can get a taste of VIEW 62’s distinctive cuisine at outside parties and corporate events too.

A very definite cut above Hopewell Centre’s previous rotating restaurant in both the quality of the food and the environment, I’d recommend VIEW 62 as a great place for special occasion dining or to take visitors, and soak in the lovely harbour and mountainside view of Hong Kong!

View 62 by Paco Roncero 62/F, Hopewell Centre, 183 Queen’s Road East, Wan Chai
2574 6262 www.view62.com