SML?

My first encounter with the name SML was when I saw the pink robot outside the restaurant, but knew nothing about what the name meant. Small, Medium, Large, in short SML represents the three portion sizes that are available in every dish they offer. Seemingly a very hip and conceptual restaurant. It stresses on the idea of Democracy which every type of eaters are equal, has the rights to be themselves and to make their own choices.

SML's interior was nice. The walls were decorated with mirrors or tiled with coarse grey bricks to create a high-low effect. It had a clean and bright open kitchen decorated in white. There seemed to have 3 separate sessions for seating, which I want to describe the sessions by their degree of weirdness.

1 ---- The widest session was the one that located right behind the reception, where people who walk around peeked at what you are having and people who were waiting for a seating that stared and urged you to leave. This session had comfy sofas and tea tables which were too low to dine in, so is better for happy hours or chit chatting but not for dinner.

2 ---- The second session were rather weird too in a way that the tables were too large, wide and long in rectangular shape that although they could hold a lot of dishes but is very difficult to chitchat for small groups. However it should be nice if you have a big group and throw your birthday dinner party or similar kinds there!

3 ---- The sessions literally became less weird when you went inwards and luckily I was seating at the third session.. Something funny was that they arranged the plates in the middle of the table, and would move the plates to your front to reveal a black cross in the middle of the desk. I questioned about the present of the symbol, the waiter said it was just a design lol.

The restaurant was overall spacious but very noisy, so you have to raise and force your voice so your partner at the opposite side of the table could hear you. Generally no privacy at all.

1) Spicy Quesadillas with Chicken (S) $41
After having my anniversary Mexican dinning in iCaramba, we could not help but ordered another Quesadillas. When SML's Quesadillas came, I was a bit disappointed as its thickness was at least three times less than iCaramba's.

The filling was much less and were flatly layered across the quesadillas. The mouth feel was thus not as satisfactory as what I had in iCaramba. Although flat, the taste was still good, you could literally taste the rich cheese, sour cream, the guacamole and tomato salsa in the quesadillas. I just hope they could stuff more fillings onto the quesadillas. The quesadillas itself was different from iCaramba's one, SML's were more crispy, which tasted pretty nice too.

2) Chilli Smoked Chicken Tagliatele (M) $89
I had not had tagliatelle for long, and I could not recall any restaurant that offers great tagliatelle. In fact, not much restaurant that I know offer tagliatelle and SML's tagliatelle was definitely one that was commendable. The sauce was actually interesting. The creamy yellow sauce had a rich egg taste and was rather thick. It had a interesting combination of sour and sweet taste but was quite nice. The tagliatelle was firm and chewy, The creamy sauce had totally permeated every single strand of the tagliatelle and had made it very moreish. The chicken was commendable. It was grilled to give a bit of a burned taste, in a good way, and the chicken flesh was very tender surprisingly. I used to think all grilled chicken would usually has a dry texture. Although the dish were topped by red peppers, it was not chilli at all. In fact, the red pepper was sweet and tasty.

3) Prawn Jambalaya (M) $112
Special dish on a separate menu. This dish was mouth drooling when it first came as it had a strong and nice smell. Jambalaya tasted like Spanish's Paella. The rice grain were very fat and rounded, which had totally absorbed the spicy sauce in the pot. They were a bit cripsy on the outside but were mostly mushy, but still keep the chewyness. The prawns were in generous amount, The flesh were tender and had a stronge taste from the sauce. The dish were quite chilli but were delicious! Thumbs up for it.

4) Mango Pavalova (S) $28
We saved our stomach for dessert. The Mango Pavalova looked appetising. It had a frosty-candy-like crusty egg white base topped with fluffed cream, mango cubes and sauce. The egg white candy was extremely sweet, so you had to take in the cream to go with the candy. To add in more flavour, it was better to have the mango sauce along others to give the egg white candy more taste other than  its simply sweetness.

5) Oreo Smoothie $48
The oreo smoothie tasted like dreyer's cookies and cream ice-cream but all melted up and sweeter. The texture was too liquid, I prefer thicker smoothies. I don't quite like the drink and  would not recommend it.

6) Pink Berry Moon $48
The Pink Berry Moon came on a Martini glass with pink bubble gum colour. The drink tasted extremely sweet but tasty, the taste was like 'Nerds'. I love it a lot.

Althought the menu stated that there is no order of how the food is served, it was still rather strange to have the pasta came before the appetizer. Speaking othe menu, I found it hard to read. They describedthe dishes by listing the ingredients instead of using a sentence. For example, for Chilli Smoked Chicken Tagilatelie, the decription would be something like. Tagliatelie/ Smoked Chicken/ Red Pepper/ etc. It actually was not a big deal, but I somehow have to spend morev time reading them lol.

The service SML provided was excellent. The waiter that served our table was very helpful and thoughtful. There were lots of cilantro on our Prawn Jambalaya dish, we hate cilantro so we removed all of them and placed it on the table at the side(as there were nowhere to place them somehow). After a while, the waiter came over and wiped them away with some tissues! I could not believe he would have noticed that and wiped it away. The service had made SML a more creditable restaurant, and I am sure I would come back in the near future with lots of friends.

SML
Shop 1105, 11/F, Food Forum, Times Square
1 Matheson Street, Causeway Bay
☏ 2577-3444
11:30-23:30(Sun-Thurs); 00:30(Fri-Sat)
Date of Dinning: 29 July 2010