At the New, Old Mandarin Oriental: Welcome Back, Chinnery!

It was as if nothing had changed and time had stopped for the new, old Mandarin to undergo its refurbishment. I walked into the Chinnery Bar with a feeling of familiarity and comfort. It looked pretty much the same with the usual crowd of expat Central office bankers smoking and drinking (although the benches and chairs had been reupholstered, carpet changed). The menu still had what I missed: Chicken Tikka and Bread Pudding. I was having dinner with DH, who is helping me write Little Cream Book: Drives. DH ordered the Fish Pie, which came with a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on your perspective) dose of mashed potatoes on top. The food tasted just as comforting as it had before, although service was not as attentive or together as it was before -- dishes weren't cleared from the table, nobody asked if we wanted coffee or tea with our desserts, it took forever me to get someone's attention to ask for the bill, then it took forever to arrive and once paid, they chased us down the stairs into the lobby because they thought they had given us the wrong table's bill (which, it turns out, they hadn't). Hopefully, with a couple months' time, the service will be back to how it was before.

It seems the staff have been trained well to welcome back old guests, to make it appear as if there's a seemless transition from old to new. When I arrived with my grandfather a few days after their opening, the doorman nodded to my grandfather, "Welcome back. Long time no see." The doorman did not look familiar, at least neither my grandfather nor I recognized him. But I'm sure he's been trained to welcome guests of a certain age with that line. And then there's MP, who got his usual pre-birthday call from the Mandarin Grill asking him, "Will you be having your birthday dinner with us again this year?" I can't wait for them to run everything in again. As I was waxing nostalgic with DH last night, I grew up with the old Mandarin. It was the meeting point for my grandfather and me on Saturday afternoons since I was six years old. He would be get off work on Saturday, walk over from his office in the then Swire Building (now Chater House). Sometimes I would meet him in the lobby. Other times, I would already be in the car and his driver would take us to Country Club for lunch and an afternoon of frolicking in the pool. And when I grew up and came back to Hong Kong to work, I would meet my friends in the lounge for afternoon tea. The scones with rose jam (Incidentally, you can't find the rose jam anywhere else in HK. I once made the mistake of asking the bar at Landmark Mandarin Oriental for rose jam and got was told in a sour kind of tone, "That's only at the old Mandarin. We have something different here.") and clotted cream are my favoured afternoon tea treats. When I recounted this to DH, he called me a sybarite, which I took as a compliment since I am in the profession of seeking out and creating experiences of pleasure and luxury for my clients.

An interesting aside that takes us to Bangkok, I came across a new cute, little hotel. With boutique and design hotels looking a bit past their due date these days, it was refreshing to be introduced by EO to The Eugenia. As its website says, "It's not a hotel; it's a home!" Well, will wait for EO's verdict (he's staying there this weekend) on that, but the website certainly looks promising.