On the fifth floor of Cubus building in Causeway Bay, Mango Tree looks like a high-end Thai resort transported into a typical Hong Kong-sized restaurant. Simply but elegantly furnished, Mango Tree provides a warm ambience with its mirrored ceiling, lovely light fixtures, wooden furniture with bronze accents and earthen plate ware. The large windows lining one side of the restaurant peek out into the surrounding office buildings and apartments, providing a somewhat jarring contrast. Also, perhaps due to the low ceilings, Mango Tree can get a bit loud and one may have to escape to the private rooms at the back of the restaurant to regain some of the tranquillity that the décor otherwise suggests.

Mango Tree offers a fairly standard Thai menu, with classics such as tom yum goong, pad thai and different regional curries all present and accounted for. Quality ingredients are used, including local free-range chicken, Australian lamb cutlets and fresh seafood. Less impressively, Mango Tree also panders to local tastes with the unfortunate inclusion of shark’s fin, served either as a soup with crab meat or even in a young coconut. We start with less haughty starters, preferring instead a tender and succulent char-grilled pork neck and a fresh and authentic papaya salad. When we did get to the soups, we were slightly taken aback by the spiciness of the tom kha gai, usually the mildest of Thai soups. Apart from the giant chillies and layer of chilli oil on the soup, however, it is extremely enjoyable, with the lemongrass and coconut perfectly balanced and large chunks of juicy chicken floating about. We are also impressed with the curries: a signature yellow curry crab features a hefty specimen with plenty of firm, fresh meat, with a delicious sauce that demands bowl upon bowl of white rice. The red roast duck curry is also excellent: the flavour of the bird holds its own against the robustly flavoured sauce. Without rice, both curries may just verge on the salty side for most diners, but the desserts certainly counter that. We found both the classic mango sticky rice and a water chestnut jelly in coconut milk to be extremely sweet. The glutinous rice is fragrant, but it is overwhelmed by the sourness of the mango and the sickly sweetness of the coconut milk. The water chestnut jelly comes in a coconut shell, floating in coconut milk along with some jackfruit and not enough ice. If there had been more crushed ice, this would have been a very nice dessert. As it were, it is again simply too sweet, and quite a waste of the rather attractive ruby red and delicious water chestnut jellies.

Mango Tree offers a decent selection of wines by the glass, including a fruity sauvignon blanc from Sonoma in California which is a good foil to the spicier items on the menu. Wines by the bottle are mostly from the new world, with a good range of choices both in terms of variety and price.

The service at Mango Tree is not consistent. While some servers are friendly and efficient, offering plenty of good dish suggestions and wine pairings, others are noticeably surlier. Also, our main courses did not arrive for 50 minutes after we sat down, an error that was not noticed by the staff until a waitress who was clearing away the appetisers asked if we needed anything else, and we were forced to reply, “Yes, the rest of our meal”.

A decadent meal for two with starters, seafood, curries, dessert and wine comes to about HK$1,500. While it is certainly an attractive restaurant located in a snazzy building in the heart of Causeway Bay, this is still probably one of the most expensive Thai restaurants you are likely to find in all of Hong Kong.