Restaurant Review: The Principal

Location: Star Street, Admiralty
Type of food: modern European
Rating: *** (3 out of 5)

Founded in 2006, the Press Room Group owns and operates a half-dozen restaurants and cafes specializing in everyday comfort food. They include an eponymous restaurant on Hollywood Road, The Pawn (now a landmark in Wanchai), SML at Times Square in Causeway Bay, the News Room in Quarry Bay, and a cafe/bakery chain Classified throughout the city. The Principal is the latest addition to the group’s portfolio.

The Principal: understated or cafeteria-like?

The Principal opened last December in the hip Star Street enclave. Intended to create an understated environment for simple, stress-free dining, the restaurant incorporated muted tones and organic elements like hardwood floors and faux exposed bricks, giving the space a distinct “private kitchen” feel. What wasn’t intended, however, was that because the line between “private kitchen” and “company cafeteria” is so often blurred, the decor at Principal is in danger of being classified as the latter.

To give the restaurant a chance to show off its stuff, my guest and I ordered the five-course degustation menu. We asked our waiter Joseph what’s on the tasting menu and he replied politely, “I don’t really know. Whatever the chef decides to serve.” Oh yes, the mystery tasting menu. Commonly adopted by high-end restaurants in Paris and New York, the gimmick creates the illusion that the kitchen staff are so spontaneous and inventive that they can whip up whatever comes to their whimsical minds. "Whatever" is what I say.

“Do you have any preference?” Joseph offered. Any preferences? Was I to believe that the chef would deviate from the pre-designed menu just for us? Or did the waiter mean to ask if we were vegetarians or kosher-eaters? And so I answered facetiously, “Alright, I'd like only red meat: beef, lamb, venison, what have you. And my friend here prefer fish.” “Errr… okay…” Joseph pretended to scribble something on his notepad and walked away. Surely enough, my guest and I ended up with the exact same dishes despite our "preferences." I wish the restaurant would spare us the theatrics and just print the dishes on the menu like everyone else.

Chef Armas' statement

Gimmicky or not, the degustation menu was the brainchild of head chef Jonay Armas. On the first page of the menu, the chef made a solemn declaration promising a culinary journey to his hometown, the Canary Islands, with the "food of [his] childhood." But since no one knows (or cares about) what the chef ate on the Spanish archipelago when he was a kid, Armas can pretty much cook anything.

Our “journey” began with an amuse bouche: foie gras with chocolate sauce and black olive cookies, followed by crayfish with caviar, poached white asparagus, foie gras (again!) with baby leek. The first main course was pan-fried hake (“What on earth is a hake, Joseph?” “It’s a fish, sir, spelled H-A-K-E.”) followed by the second main: sirloin cubes with bone marrow. The meal ended with a scoop of white miso ice-cream for dessert. And so the five-course menu came and went, and we were left somewhat unsatisfied. For the restaurant to omit a pasta or rice dish from a five-course menu, however intentional, is a major miscalculation. Didn't Armas get any carbs as a kid?

If you have never been to a Press Room Group restaurant, the Principal is worth a try. The food is tasty but not sophisticated, thoughtful but not memorable. In the end, we did get what the restaurant promised us: simple food with simple ingredients. But like a bad Hong Kong actress, the Principal tries too hard to be natural and ends up being neither here nor there. It ends up being just another expensive neighborhood restaurant.

Sirloin cubes with bone marrow