Simplylife

What is that smell? Wait, hold on. Stop walking. Can you smell that? It is the smell of freshly baked bread. Somewhere. Nearby. Almost there. We followed the aroma to this place — Simply Life. Oh. I have heard about this place before and I wonder if this is good or not.
Given it was lunch time. Everywhere was packed with hungry customers. Including this place. Fortunate enough, this place is rather spacious and it can easily fit a large group of people. Within minutes, we got our table and the server informed us we had only 90 minutes for our meal. So let’s not waste any time and ordered straight away.
I love the fact that it has wide range of choices in both Asian and Western cuisine, fully catering the needs of all kind of customers and definitely a perfect place to have a gathering with friends when you do not need to worry about whether they like Asian or Western food.
I absolutely loved the pumpkin soup. It is very creamy and with nice texture. You can easily smell the scent of it from afar. The price range here is around HKD$ 100 to HKD$ 200 but I find that really worthwhile. If anything, just the smell of freshly baked bread makes me very relaxed already. The pastry and the bakery here are too of fine quality. I strongly recommend getting some to take away and enjoy them during the break in the hectic afternoon. And the best part is this restaurant can fit in lots of people. Minimal waiting time.

There are two of these restaurants in Hong Kong, in the IFC and in Olympic City 3. I’m going to write about the latter. Why? Because as good as the one in IFC is it’s not nearly as good as the Olympic City one — strange because they are the same restaurant!
Let’s start with the size. It’s big, and can easily fit over fifty people, but then again I’m really bad at guessing capacities so fifty means twenty to a hundred. The important thing to take away from this is that there is always room for a seat during a busy lunch hour. Compare that to Central and the long queue and already we’ve got a winner. The interior is filled with a mix of cute decorations dotted around the place, and to one side is an open kitchen. I always like an open kitchen, it’s a great place to look when the conversation gets boring.
Enough about that, the real reason we go to the restaurant is to eat! The lunch menus are what brought me here the first time and is what will bring me back again. They have two different menus depending on one’s mood. An Asian lunch or a Western lunch. I opted for a burger and some delicious curly, southern fries while my lunch date ordered a Laksa. The dishes arrived with a sample platter of asian appetizers, drinks and soup. We couldn’t finish it all, which is generally not the case in most HK restaurants, but it was so good I ate until I was uncomfortable.
Apart from telling us we only had an hour to eat the staff were extremely friendly and professional, happy to suggest a meal or explain its contents.
It was a worthwhile trip to Olympic City, and originally Simplylife was a break between shopping for essentials in the area. Now Simplylife has been the essential and the shopping a way to digest!