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Hong Kong’s first and only lamb-focused izakaya is switching things up this season. Kyanbasu by Mt. Yotei has unveiled its first major menu revamp since opening in Central, offering up creative new dishes, a curated tasting menu, new lunch sets, and an expanded selection of non-lamb options to welcome a wider range of diners.
Founded by Clement Wong and Clement Li and headed by master grill chef Rex Lam, the restaurant – named after the Japanese word for ‘canvas’ – treats lamb as a blank slate for creativity. For this refresh, the kitchen is drawing inspiration from Chinese cooking techniques and flavours that most would not associate with lamb.
Appetisers on the new à la carte dinner menu include flame-seared lamb picanha tataki ($158) with Awaji Island onions and homemade ponzu, as well as a triple-cooked lamb tallow fries ($78) dusted with air-dried lamb sirloin flakes and piri piri cream cheese. For the mains, the dry-aged crispy roast lamb flank ($198) takes cues from Cantonese siu yuk traditions, undergoing in-house dry-ageing before being roasted to give a light crackling skin.
Other additions include a braised lamb belly ($328) served with a citrusy punch of Japanese sansho pepper, and a rather interesting crispy slow-cooked lamb esophagus ($118) that’s lightly torched and simmered in a traditional white master stock. There’s also the returning signature lamb soup with seafood dumpling (market price), where a quarter of a whole lamb is cooked for over 20 hours and currently comes paired with golden oysters from Lau Fau Shan.
For non-lamb eaters, the kitchen now offers a dry-aged Yuen Long three-yellow chicken ($288), which is aged for two and a half days before hitting the grill for a paper-thin, crispy finish. And, if you simply can’t decide, their new tasting menu ($580) offers a full tour of the restaurant’s creative approach to lamb, spanning appetisers, tataki, otsumami, an eight-skewer kushiyaki selection, soup, and dessert.
The restaurant’s lunch menu has been revamped as well, allowing visitors to drop in between 12pm to 3pm to enjoy lunch sets such as the hand-pounded lamb patty donburi with Mei Heong salted threadfin ($128, the shioyaki dry-aged local three-yellow Chicken thigh donburi ($138), and a premium five-cut lamb kushiyaki set ($238).
If you’ve ever been sceptical about the potential of lamb beyond a Sunday roast, this cool izakaya hangout might just be the spot to change your mind.
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