Ammo

What a hidden gem!
Not the most accessible, but still very convenient location. It is located right across the British Consulate in Admiralty. If I worked in Admiralty, this would totally be my place to go treat myself to lunch, and have a little stroll in Hong Kong park after! ;)
I came here with my family for lunch. The place is actually tiny, but very well decorated, very glamorous without being cliché or tacky. The interiors kind of remind me of a old school golden era speakeasy but with a modern twist. Love it. The fact that it’s a glass house surrounded by green made this place really relaxing.
They had a really affordable lunch set, which was about $ 250 and includes an appetizer, main, dessert, and tea/​coffee. I didn’t order the set because a lot of the other stuff intrigued me. I ordered the beef tartare to start and the pasta (forgot the name) with the homemade veal meatballs.
The tartare was superb. I could probably eaten two of them, even though the portion was quite decent. The main looked small when it arrives but it’s actually just right. Oh did I mention the really good bread at the beginning that they served with olive oil and balsamic? My favorite way to eat good bread. Nom!
We had sparkling water to share among 5 of us. Two of us had the set, and three ordered a la carte (appetizer and mains) and it came to about $ 1600 which as totally a steal.
I would definitely come here again. Great atmosphere, great value for money, and great way to just have a chill and fancy lunch :) WIN!

Ammo is a good place for an upscale (yet not too fancy) meal. It would work well for a date or for a group. The only bummer here is the service.
ATMOSPHERE:
Even though it’s up the hill from the JW Marriott and the Shangri-​La, Ammo doesn’t offer any views of the city, but it makes up for that with a secluded feel and a cool interior design featuring lots of shiny metal. The place was pretty dead the night we ate there, almost giving it the feel of a private dining room.
DRINKS:
One of Ammo’s big tricks is making sous vide cocktails — using the heat to delicately draw out the flavors of the ingredients. I had a sous vide old fashioned that came with a smoking cinnamon stick. The flavors were robust, smoky, and reminiscent of the Southern US.
FOOD:
My starter was forgettable but the papperdelle I had was delicious. You could tell the noodles were homemade, and they were perfectly cooked al dente. The veal/​pork meatballs and parmesan made it a very simple, comforting, and very well executed dish.
SERVICE:
The service here was lacking. Rather than the direct yet hurried approach you might find at a Hong Kong café, the staff pretty much just ignored us. Not in the sense of taking our orders and leaving us alone, but in the sense that they sat us and just left us sitting without coming by to see if we wanted drinks or anything like that. If we hadn’t flagged people down to order drinks, again to order food, again to get the check, we could’ve been there all night without every having ordered anything. I appreciate being allowed to linger but this really crossed that line.

AMMO is the delightful restaurant/​bar located in the Asia Society Center, itself a revitalized heritage building formerly being Victoria Barracks and Explosives Magazine. (which I have a separate review for).
One day I was looking for a quiet place to have a drink with my friends and one of them suggested that we try a place called AMMO, derived from ammunition, which is quite an apt name considering its location!
Walking up the dark driveway of Justice Drive and entering through the subdued gate to the restaurant, (a separate one from that for the Asia Society Center, which on the other hand have a small patio for a welcoming entrance experience) we amused on the idea that it felt as if we were sneaking into a wealthy household’s backyard through the servant’s entrance. The adventurous spirt of a child reigned in as we giggled through the narrow passageway that opens up to a verandah which banks on a sandy slope on one side (the plants hadn’t recovered yet at that time from its days as a construction site). It is covered overhead by the huge cantilever of the building above. Our eyes are immediately star-​struck by the glitzy glass box ahead that is tugged quietly, but exuberantly under the canopy, as if a gem hidden beneath the rock (pardon my pun, the building is mostly stone-​clad, fine green and grey vein-​ly stones).
It was just in business for a short while and not many knew its existence at that time, so we had the place almost all to ourselves. The interior mural wall is made up of an array of copper, rose coloured plumbing-​tube lookalikes that fanned out in the shape of a peacock’s tail. Glass ‘drawers’ trimmed by rosy copper coloured stainless steel (I tried to pull it, but it didn’t yield: p) form the guest side of the bar table, where Edison bulbs are put inside and its red-​hot tungsten can be stared directly upon, and its warmth mildly felt as you rest your elbows on the glass top. There are also two feature lights hanging from the ceiling on either ends of the bar table made of the same material, spiraling up like staircase to heaven.
We sat at the high chairs at the bar and feasted our eyes of the interior design of the place for quite a while before we can turn our heads back onto the menu. Savoring in the mix and match of the materials that are rich in variety yet entirely in complement of each other in palette, in texture, in its complimentary arrangment of hard and soft. You’d think yourself had wandered into The Great Gatsby’s swing-​age movie set, only with a contemporary, industrial twist.
Oh almost forgotten about the food! At the end of the day, we had some wine, a cheese board and some bite-​sized wagu spoons as snacks for the night. It has quite a range of choices for wine. Food-​wise, not the most incredible, but the service is quite good and we’ve already been so well-​fed in the eyes.
(A little side note: Interior design of the place is done by a local designer Joyce Wang. AMMO seems to be her firm’s 1^st prominent commercial job in HK. She had also fitted-​out Mott 32 in Central, which I would have a separate review for)