Bicho

Bicho 備長 is located at the 26/F of the Diamond Plaza, which is a tower of different kinds of food. Here in this Japanese restaurant, you can try a lot of nice Japanese-style skewers, or yakitori in Japanese (but the term is for birds only, maybe kushiyaki? I don't know the exact term...).

The place was not very big at all, and it was dark and moody. There are only a few tables and they were pretty small. We were lucky because they had this half-price promotion on selected items if you ordered between 6-8pm. If we didn't have this promotion, I must say this place wasn't cheap at all. The price of each dish is reasonable but the point is you have to eat a lot in order to get full.

We started with something simple and typical, the tebasaki (chicken wing) with mentaiko and pork filling.

Then we had nankotsu (chicken cartilage)...

And then we jumped to the famous dish of this restaurant, the renowned lychee rolls with pork on the outside! And I must say, it is indeed very good!

One would expect the lychee would be dry because of the grilling, but it was actually very juicy and sweet, while the pork on the outside was crispy! The two kind of textures mixed together in a very interesting way, while you can also taste two kinds of flavour. Interesting! We also tried another famous dish here, the beef skewers. I think it was just so-so but not bad at all.

We of course had some kushiyaki dishes, or side dishes. They include spring mushroom skewers, ikada (scallop skewers), atsuage tofu (tofu skewers) and grilled eggplant slices.

Then the second round of main course came. They were the tiger prawns and gyutan (ox tongue skewers)!

The ox tongue was just delicious! The edges were crispy while the meat was juicy too! Not very dry and it was also thoroughly cooked. Usually they just used salt to grill and I must say they got the amount of salt just right here. It was not too salty, just enough to bring out the real flavour of the meat. It was wonderful! On the contrary, the prawn was not that good. It was a bit dry and I think it was a bit overcooked. Thank God it was a half-price item, as this prawnp was not cheap among all these dishes!

Finally we had this octopus tenticle skewers and Japanese rice cake skewers as a little finale. The latter one was a bit disappointing, and I advise you not to order this despite the good look.

In general, this is a very good restaurant. Nearly all the meat stuff were good, while those side dishes were not slovenly made. Everything was very nice except the table size but that was minor (of course it was!). When I left, I realized another great yakitori place called Sumi Hime, which was featured in some food magazines in Hong Kong. I guess I would try that and make a comparison between that one and Bicho!