Misplaced identity @Espuma

Address: 17/F, M88, 2-8 Wellington Strret, Central

Website: http://www.espuma.com.hk

When: Nov 2015

Espuma has been a go-to for office lunches in Central and has recently opened its third branch in Wan Chai’s QRE Plaza. It claims to be a Spanish style coffee house with ’60 years of history and experience in Barcelona style coffee’. Step into Espuma in Central, you see a minimalistic, modern Spanish style dining space, which was filled with professionally dressed Hong Kongers.

You can either choose from the all-day menu or a lunch set-menu, that includes a starter, main and dessert. The all-day menu has a vast selection of teas and coffees, many desserts and both Asian, Italian and Spanish items. Odd, considering it is meant to be a Barcelona style café restaurant. We decided to try out Espuma’s lunch menu, which was very affordable at HKD 100 – HKD 200, depending on the main you chose.

 

Dishes we chose:

Passion fruit and Jasmine tea, Mixed fruit tea:

• Both teas were refreshing and had lots of fruits, not too sweet and were very original. You could also taste the fruit that was put into the tea.

Minestrone/ Vegetable soup:

• The soup was good and was served with a piece of buttered toast on the side, but tasted similar to canned veggie soup.

Espuma pizza:

• The pizza-base was biscuit-like and the toppings were lack lustre; a few pieces of chorizo, artichoke and a bit of salad on top, with cheese as a base. It was no different to frozen pizza.

Seared salmon steak with white wine cream sauce:

• Fish was good and had some steamed veggie on the side, but the sauce was watery. The dish didn’t really stand out and was more like a home cooked meal.

Set dessert:

• ‘Sawdust pudding’ (milk pudding with biscuit crumbs on top), which is at best Portuguese and rather tasteless. It was simply a block of cream and some biscuit crumbs.

Verdict: 

The restaurant seemed a bit confused and all over the place, with Asian, French, Italian and Portuguese offerings on the menu. It had an extensive collection of waffles, coffees and teas, which Espuma is known for. However, it seemed more like a cafe than a restaurant and definitely not Spanish. The food was heavily influenced by Chinese and Asian tastes.

Overall very affordable for a working lunch, but not worth going for the food. Service was good and drinks were good. Might be a good place for afternoon tea.