Magistracy Dining Room restaurant review: A ‘timeless London’ fine-dine plays it safe at historic Tai Kwun, Hong Kong – but the service is warm and attentive

Black Sheep Restaurants are as original as a Chinese tech company. Their list of concepts takes heavy inspiration from elsewhere and feels more like an assortment of market segments to be exploited – Sri Lankan cuisine! Greek! Lebanese! – rather than a collection of restaurants born from genuine passion. It’s smart business, though, and with 30 ventures and counting, the group has grown from plucky underdog to one of the biggest players in the city.

Magistracy Dining Room is the latest restaurant to roll off the Black Sheep production line. The idea this time is of a “timeless London restaurant”, the kind we like to imagine Churchill relaxed in, plonked in a Queen Anne armchair, beneath voluminous crystal chandeliers clouded with cigar smoke, somewhere in Mayfair.

The restaurant’s setting in Tai Kwun’s historic Central Magistracy building certainly sets the tone. Constructed in 1914, the building and its surrounds elegantly evoke British grandeur, as colonial structures of the time were meant to do. The dining room is the apogee of all of this – deep leather booths, a grand watercolour of old Hong Kong, and dark, polished wood illuminated by lamps and candlelight.

The menu is relatively small. There are options of certain kinds of oyster, caviar and shellfish, plus half a dozen other starters. Mains are similarly selective. Diners can choose from Dover sole, lobster and turbot all prepared two different ways, plus aged prime rib, and a chicken and mushroom pie. Whether one considers this selection sensibly focused or disappointingly restrictive will be in the eye of the beholder. One thing’s for sure, it’s not imaginative, though it is representative of the era Magistracy seeks to perpetuate.

The concept does seem to have caught the imagination of the public, however – we have to wait four weeks for a booking, and even then it’s for a 9pm seating. With the low lighting and historic surrounds, it makes for a particularly romantic atmosphere.

As in all Black Sheep restaurants, service is warm and attentive. We feel we could chuck the wine list and ask for a Slippery Nipple and staff would still commend our good taste.

Fortunately, that’s not what we start with. Rather, it is six La Perle Blanche No 3 oysters (HK$428) from the Bay of Biscay. At first glance the oysters are a little disappointing, the shells being more substantial than the meat, but the flavours are incredibly crisp and fresh. There’s none of the brininess of cheaper bivalves. As a welcome bonus, two miniature vesper martinis are provided to cleanse our palates afterwards.

The Scottish razor clams (HK$328) are also excellent. Similarly fresh but with an appealing chewiness and a hint of citrus. The steak tartare (HK$248) is a mixed bag. The quality of the meat is evident but it lacks flavour – somewhat drowned out by the Japanese egg and Parmesan cheese mixed in.