A Treat at Hiyama
Harbour City is a mall, but Hiyama doesn’t feel like a mall restaurant. It’s on the third floor of Ocean Terminal. When you enter, you can instantly feel you’re being transported from the mall.
Where you end up is the dining area where you have a clear view across the water to Hong Kong Island. At night the skyline does what it does and it made for a nice backdrop for a slow, timed dinner. The interior matched that energy. Calm, quiet, no rush. The kind of place where you can actually focus on the food and the person across the table without competing with the room. I was surprised our kid didn’t pipe up during the meal. That’s a win.
The Tokyo location has held a Michelin star for ten consecutive years and while that rating doesn’t carry over to the Hong Kong branch, the philosophy does. The sukiyaki sauce is still flown in from Tokyo, the beef is national treasure-grade wagyu and the whole experience is put together with the kind of care you’d expect from a restaurant that takes its legacy seriously.
The sukiyaki is prepared at a station within the dining room, visible from your seat. Staff come out to walk you through the meal course by course. We went with a set which I’d recommend and the whole thing took well over 40 minutes. That’s not a complaint. It’s the point. Budget the time and settle in.
The wagyu was exactly what A5 should be. Rich, well-marbled, the kind of beef where a few slices is genuinely enough because it’s so satisfying. You dip each piece in raw egg before eating, the traditional preparation, and the combination of the sukiyaki sauce with that richness lands perfectly. Don’t underestimate how filling it is.
We paid HK$988 for the set which sits on the higher end but nowhere near the ceiling. Sets can run close to double that depending on the grade you go with. For what we had it was the right call. The price reflects the location as much as anything and the view at night is part of what you’re paying for.
Hiyama Ocean Terminal
Shop OTE302, 3/F, Ocean Terminal, Harbour City
3-27 Canton Road
Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
Verdict: Recommended. It’s one of the nicer sukiyaki experiences in Hong Kong. Go for dinner and enjoy the light show.
★ ★ ★ ☆
The score isn’t for the beef, but for the noodle soup that came along with our sukiyaki. It was good and over shadowed by the all the other dishes.
This was the pre screening of our beef. I forgot which prefecture or farm this was from, but it’s from Japan. That’s already a high bar for me.
★ ★ ★ ★
All three of these were fantastic. The raw beef over rice topped with uni had already won me over. Then the maki topped with raw beef and caviar kept the pace. But that wagyu nigiri on the shiso leaf was the best. It may have been my favorite bite of the entire meal.
★ ★ ★ ☆
These were good. The best of the bunch was the tako, octopus, which was firm and fresh. Good way to start the meal.
★ ★ ★ ★
So simple that it was amazing. Love that they didn’t try to over season this so that the natural flavors came through.
★ ★ ★ ★
Here’s the finished prep of our main course. Notice that the beef isn’t over cooked. It’s perfectly timed to get to your table to enjoy with the raw egg sauce. It’s so damn good.