Price: $160 HKD (total)
Dined at: 7.30PM
Rating: 6/10
When it comes to eating in Kowloon Tong, the pickings are fairly slim until you walk into Prince Edward or Sham Shui Po. Most (with the exception of a few local places) to eat are located within Festival Walk. There's japanese, shanghainese, cantonese, two pizza places, a food court, about seven cafes, an irish pub and heaps more. But apart from the food court, all the places in Festival Walk are pretty expensive. Except for EXP.
EXP is the large open eatery opposite the indoor ice skating rink. You can spot it from a far distance by the long snaking line that is always coming from it. I've watched people wait for aaaages to get into this strange japanese-chinese-italian fusion restaurant. Three of us from university went after not wanting to walk far from residence. We waited around 15 minutes in the line which wasn't bad at all.
The menu is basically pizza, noodles and smaller snacks as well as a nice
list of smoothies and fruit juices. I had a mango, blood orange and banana smoothie which was delicious!
The first thing we ordered were the rather frankly described 'garlic beef cubes'. Essentially small bit size cuts of sirloin cooked in a thick tomato and garlic jus. The girls liked it but it was a bit too garlicky and heavy going for me.
The prawn and corn fritters came served with a sweet chilli sauce. These were okay tasting enough, though the fritters themselves were a little tasteless and were carried by the sauce (which I think could have come with something a bit nicer than sweet chilli).
We ordered a pizza with marinated beef, onion and mayonaise (trés modern). When you order your pizza you're offered a thin ($56) or thick crust ($72). We went for thin and that's what we got. The base was like a cracker. The pizza itself was okay, the whole beef and mayonaise combo on a wafer thin pizza base was a little weird. But in the end the whole meal cost $160 or so between us all, including two smoothies. Not exactly expensive.