Semi decent

I mentioned in my previous post that rumours have it that most of the features in 飲食男女 are actually paid for by restaurants themselves. Now, this is just hearsay, but the fact that the following restaurant has been featured no less than 3 times in the last 3 months is either a sign that this is true, or that there is absolutely nothing to write about in Hong Kong.

I very excitedly read about Limehouse in Wanchai very soon after my arrival here. Not only was it a British restaurant, but the name is just instantly appealing, to the extent I wondered whether it was a play on the fact that Limehouse is now where loads of Chinese people live in London. I soon hopped along hoping for some British delights.

Turns out the place is pretty small, and dinner is hard to get a reservation. But their location at the wrong end of Ship Street means that lunch traffic is pretty dire, so they have come up with a ridiculously good value $88 two-course lunch including tea or coffee:

I got overexcited again struggling on what to choose, as their a la carte menu was also full of nice comfort foods from home:

The $88 menu was too difficult to resist though, especially as I found out it was oyster chowder as soup of the day. Not bad, although not sure about the doily (actually doilies seemed to appear a lot, again not sure if there are being ironic):

I loved the inclusion of chicken tikka masala on the menu, so I had to get it really, even though I've eaten the total of about 3 chicken tikka masalas in my over 20 years of living in England, despite it being our national dish and all now. This was comforting, yet really very bland. Was this another play on Britishness, a play on how bland our food was? Maybe. Or maybe they just forgot to add any spices in the sauce.

Jonny went for the throw-back shepherd's pie, which was a tomatoey version rather than a sticky savoury brown version (you know what I mean!):

Caris loved her duck liver and egg from the a la carte menu:

And I thought the best dish of the day was Sen's salmon fishcake actually, very meaty with fish and very well seasoned:

Caris and I have returned since for dinner and have had a nice little chat with the owner Toh. Unfortunately, the whole thing is a lot less British than I had hoped. Toh has basically spent a few years in catering college in England (Leith's, iirc), but has picked up some of the British classics which he has imported into his menu. But that is where the Britishness ends! He didn't quite get my sense of humour when I was ribbing him on the inclusion of the word 'scallions' on the menu, and I had a somewhat heated debate on the merits of British wine with him. Actually that reminds me, I promised to bring him back a bottle of Camel Valley - all those of you in England, do try the Camel Valley Rose sparkling wine!! Super yummy from Cornwall!!

It turns out that Toh and the head chef at Limehouse are refugees of the now defunct M on the Fringe, which closed after its owner turned her attentions to expanding in Shanghai. The rest of the team is now apparently working at another quite cute Western concept, with one of the first dai pai dongs serving Western food at the Sheung Wan Queen's Street food market. Dubiously named ABC, it literally is a in a dirty wet food market. However, I was pretty impressed with how full it was, with two or three tables of gweilos tucking in:

The menu has the same retro feel of Limehouse, to the extent that they both feature Steak Diane on it. Has anyone eaten Steak Diane since the 70's except for in these two restaurants?! Anyway, the prices are ok, but when you think about it pretty steep when you think they must be paying zero rent on the place, and you are sitting in a plastic chair eating with school dinners cutlery. The menu also reads like the mandatory list of 'things to include on menus in Hong Kong. Truffles? Tick (twice in fact). Foie gras? Tick. Suckling pig? Tick. The only elements missing are wagyu beef and sea urchin (although they do have steak and salmon roe as substitutes).

The salmon roe and crab tortellini with lobster sauce sounded very good, and was not badly presented on the plate. But when you tucked in, it was a pretty amateur effort. The pasta is just a little too thick, the filling just a little clammy and mushy. The lobster sauce also tasted suspiciously of lobster bisque out of a can that had been boiled down a bit...

The seafood paella was better, crammed with clams, prawns, squid, and the texture of the rice was pretty good. The only real offender here though was the inclusion of bacon as well as chorizo, which was just too much saltiness.

We also tried the churros and the apple crumble, both of them pretty disappointing. Although I should just learn never to eat churros unless I am at that little shop near Sant Antoni Market whose name I will never remember and will probably never find again.

Both of these establishments are fine, but both of them are pretty much cooking food I can cook at home at home-cooking quality. There is also the problem that because they are cooking these 'classics', they are never going to please my palate as I am so particular about what goes into my crumble and the sausages in my bangers and mash. Which reminds me I forgot to smuggle some of Rod and Diane's sausages back here :(

Hilariously bad: Brasserie version

It is tradition in Hong Kong for anything new to be completely rammed to the heavens for the first two or three months of opening, no matter how bad it is. I think this is partly due to the fact that there is very little independent media to review things here; I've been told that most features in 飲食男女, the leading food magazine, are actually sponsored by those actually featured, and openrice.com, where everyone seems to upload their photos, suffers from the usual user-generated website biases. We really ought to ask Matthew Fort and Jay Rayner to come over and be mean for a while over here.

Lily and Bloom opened in the LKF Tower roughly three months ago, with a bar called Lily on the 6/F and the restaurant Bloom on the 5/F. I've been to Lily a few times now, and have already seen a steady decline in the number of patrons in this short time, people's attention spans are just too short in this city. I actually think Lily isn't bad; the decor is more understated and thought-out than most bars, and the drinks are not bad. The only thing I would criticise it for is the need for the bar staff to give you a torch to read the menu, such is the lack of light in the place.

Bloom, on the other hand, is a minor disaster. Our super fussy friend Jonny was visiting, and knowing that he doesn't like anything saucy, spicy, anything mildly Cantonese really, we stuck to a safe Western option. Bloom seemed to fit the bill, given that the wife and I had not yet tried it. The menu reads very well actually, you could have picked it up in any trendy part of London, featuring bone marrow, ox tongue, as well as a nice selection of seafood including fresh oysters on show at the bar. In fact, bone marrow was briefly on the bar menu in Lily as well, but we've noticed it has recently disappeared (unsurprising: how are you supposed to eat that elegantly perched on your barstool?).

The food itself, however, had really suspect ingredients and was just way too fussy for me. Caris and I shared the starters of ox tongue and bone marrow, two of our most favourite ingredients. Unfortunately, the ox tongue was really 'off', not sure how long it had been festering in the kitchen before it was actually cooked. We left most of this uneaten:

The bone marrow is another version of the often copied parsley and bone marrow salad from St John. However, we ACTUALLY DIDN'T FINISH THIS, it was that awful. The pungent sauce that came surrounding it didn't do anything for the marrow, and the bread was over doughy. So yes, two starters, both not finished. A difficult feat for us!

Something strange had come over me and I ordered chicken for my main course (their special of lobster spaghetti which was what I really wanted had run out). The chicken itself was actually really not bad; carefully roasted, good skin, I polished most of it off. What ruined it though was the random accompaniments (which you can't quite see) - for some reason, this was served with baba ganoush?! Why?! Especially this was a baba ganoush that had BITS OF CHOPPED BOILED EGG IN?! No thank you. Just give me a simple plate of roast chicken and potatoes, no fancy pants stuff please!

The one saving grace I guess was that Jonny really liked his main of seabass!! But I put it to the fact that he'd been cycling for two weeks in Mongolia beforehand, and even I tend to shudder at the thought of Mongolian lamb, having also suffered it myself for two weeks previously.

So sigh, my quest for decent, not too expensive, not Michelin starred Western food in Hong Kong continues. Maybe I should just open one myself... Err.... hang on....!

Hilariously bad: Italian version

Hong Kong is renowned as one of the international cities in the world, a blend of East and West, blah blah blah. Unfortunately, most of the 'western' food in the city really does not live up to that, even when you are certainly paying 'western' prices for it.

I have had a recurring thought since I moved over here that I should start a new business and run a waiting staff training school here. I know the Chinese are famously bad for their service, but if you are running a westernised establishment, charging 3 to 5 times more than the average Cantonese meal, I think there is no excuse in not training your staff properly.

Food knowledge tends to be the big hurdle for most waiters I have found. Posto Pubblico is in the heart of gweilo land on Elgin Street, and on a Friday night it was absolutely packed. It didn't help that we were on the worse table in the whole restaurant, stuck behind a pillar, making it difficult to attract anyone's attention.

The dining room itself is relatively small, with maybe 40 covers max, but there was clearly no demarcation of sections for the waiters. Every time we ordered or asked for anything, a new one would appear, which meant that water was never topped up, no one noticed empty plates. For a place that proudly states a no service charge policy, you would think the waiters had incentive to work harder.

But it was the food knowledge that the waiters really fell down on. However rude a waiter can be in a Chinese restaurant, they know their menus inside out, even in small little cafes. They had a special of "Tagliatella alla Luffa" on the menu, and given my Italian really isn't so good, I asked what it was.

"It's like fettuccine." was the reply.

"OK..."

"It is pasta madam, like spaghetti". Now you are treating me like an idiot.

"But what does 'alla Luffa' mean?", I asked, patience slowly disappearing.

"I don't know. But it is like spaghetti."

I gave up. Why have specials on the menu, all of it in Italian, and no one able to explain it? I settled in the end for their horribly named straw and hay tagliolini with peas and pancetta, a little too saucy and salty, but the pasta itself wasn't bad.

Caris tried the other special of Cappaletti Nonna Francesca, which was "like ravioli with chicken stuffing in a tomato cream sauce". A much better description of the item, but Nonna Francesca obviously didn't know how to make a tomato sauce, or controlling portion size for that matter:

But the worse monstrosity was to come. I am not a dessert person, but Caris is, and I was intrigued to see that they had cheese on offer. Even more intriguing was that they had homemade mozzarella as a dessert item, not sure you're supposed to eat mozzarella for dessert?!?! And I really oughtn't have asked what comes with the cheese, as the waiter looked so perplexed it was quite obvious they never sell cheese as dessert. I asked to try a portion of their mozzarella and taleggio, and it came with a basket of stale bread:

Whilst I applaud their attempts to make mozzarella, please leave it to people who know what they are doing back in Italy!! The mozzarella was sad, dry, lacking in any flavour or tang. I felt so sorry for the taleggio that we took it home and promptly forgot about it in the fridge.

Sham Shui Po - wah, amazing!

I actually grew up on Kowloon side, once a proud resident of Mei Foo near the end of the red line of the MTR, but a mere 6 months of living in Central made me a firm Hong Kong Islander. For those of you who don't come from Hong Kong, this may seem absurd; Kowloon is about 5 minutes boat ride away from the Hong Kong Island side, and that is probably the most time consuming way to travel between the two. It is another one of these Honkie neuroses.

We all know though that Kowloon is actually better in many ways, especially if you want to see Hong Kong as it is to most locals, rather than just the shopping malls and skyscrapers. Caris and I headed to Sham Shui Po (深水埗), apparently a bit of a foodie heaven, furnished with some of Juliana's rather thorough research.

We were actually looking for a noodle shop when we stumbled across 添好運, probably one of the most famous dim sum places in Hong Kong now after the Michelin bods decided to award it one star. Sceptics have all said it was Michelin's attempt to rid itself of its French- and fine dining-centric tastes, that these Frenchies know nothing about Asian food really. To be fair, the owner is the ex-executive chef at 龍景軒, the only Chinese restaurant in the world with 3 stars. He wanted to start an egalitarian dim sum places, serving the best food at decent prices, an aspiration I can only applaud.

Rumours have it that queues can be up to 4 hours at the original Mong Kok branch, but the second branch in Sham Shui Po is much bigger, and at 3pm we literally walked straight in. So did not plan on having dim sum, but oh well! The decor isn't much to look at, the tea is attractively served in plastic jugs on your table:

The menu is refreshingly small, especially as it seems to be the trend for restaurants to have new frang-dangled modern varieties. There are about 25 items, with a mainly traditional slant. They didn't have my favourite 牛柏葉 (tripe, mmmm!), so we decided to stick to everyone's family favourites. The compulsory 蝦餃 prawn dumplings had very fresh prawns, but the skin was 麻麻地:

The 牛腸粉 beef cheung fun was a huge let down, to the point of being really very bland. Avoid.

I forgot to take a picture of the 蘿蔔糕 turnip cake, but it didn't look that much out of the ordinary. But it tasted much more refined than your usual dim sum restaurant version, with clear shreds of turnip, very little flour, very good. And at $10 a portion, a complete bargain.

I guess their signature dish is their 酥皮叉燒包, basically a 叉燒包 with a 菠蘿包 topping (I have given up trying to translate at this point - basically a very sophisticated pork bun!). We saw them being ferried to almost every table, to the extent that a 4-top right near us had about 4 portions to themselves (3 buns per portion!). Not only do they look pretty, blushing slightly from their time in the oven, they tasted AMAZING. Just the right balance of sweet and savoury, the bun wasn't heavy, so so moreish. And this is $12 a portion, yes, about a quid for 3 buns!

Knowing Honkies, I'm sure the place is packed more for the prices (cheap even by Hong Kong's normal standards) rather than having a consistently wow menu. Thankfully though, the Sham Shui Po branch also allows you to book, even for a private room where there is an additional book-in-advance menu, featuring more funky stuff, like fried foie gras dumpling and abalone with chicken puff. The minimum spend for the private room is $1000 though, even with 10 people, it'd be hard to spend that much at these prices! Definitely worth a trip mid-afternoon just for the pork bun.

The place that stole our hearts though in Sham Shui Po was the humble little 公和荳品廠, literally a factory specialising in tofu and tofu related products. Non-Chinese just don't get tofu, but it has a very special place in all Chinese hearts, and at 4pm this place was packed. It is exactly what we mean by local local, this place probably hasn't changed for about 50 years. There was a hilarious sello-taped sign advertising 'new products', the sello-tape so yellow it is probably older than me.

Check out the mega old school tap for the soy milk!! You can also just about make out the uber-dirty looking factory floor to the right of the photo:

Now, my mum makes the best 豆腐花 in the world. She only ever makes it at home (from scratch!!!) back in Ipswich, which means I haven't eaten it in well over 2 years now, but even so, I almost never bother with this yummy dessert when I go out. It was clearly the speciality at this place though, check out their container!!!

In case I upset my mum, I will say that their 豆腐花 is definitely on par with that I have at home. The hot version which we both had was impossibly 滑, the sugar syrup just sweet enough.

We also sampled their stuffed tofu, the frying and the 鯉魚 fish stuffing took away from the taste of the tofu itself in my opinion. We still lapped it all up though :p

I have been looking into trademarks and IP a little this week, and I was thoroughly impressed that they had a certificate on the wall listing their trademark, which is from 1909!!!!! We did leave this place a little worried for its future, the staff looks like they work so hard for their cash, we're pretty sure the next generation will not want to carry this kind of thing on :(

Thoroughly fortified with dim sum and tofu, we nevertheless continued to eat more. We saw a big crowd outside this shop, so we decided it had to be good, and it turned out to be on Juliana's original list. 八仙餅家 specialises in traditional biscuits, things like 皮蛋酥 century-egg puff and 杏仁餅 almond biscuits. There was a non-stop stream of people stopping and picking up a little something:

Caris got a 核桃酥 walnut biscuit, something I have probably not eaten for literally 25 years. But once it entered my mouth I immediately got that familiar feeling of rich butter and sugar, yet impossibly 鬆 at the same time. Probably the second best thing I ate today after that pork bun.

We kept eating sugary snacks of yesteryear, including something from a shop that specialises in 糕. Now, the word 糕 really is hard to translate. A lot of people use 'cake', but it really doesn't get there. 糕 is normally steamed rather than baked, and can come in many varieties, some of which are more 'cake' like, but others, especially those made of rice flour rather than wheat flour, are more wobbly and tight in texture. 坤記糕品 only sells the wobbly variety:

There was 紅豆糕 red bean 'cake', 芝麻糕 sesame seed 'cake', 白糖糕 literally white sugar 'cake', but I went for a 砵仔糕 little basin cake (no photo, sorry!), made of yellow sugar and rice flour, mainly as I know my dad has been looking for a place with good 砵仔糕. Unfortunately, it wasn't really that wow, and pretty expensive at $4.50 (aren't I cheap, that isn't even 40p!).

I will round off this rather long post with something even more unhealthy. I somehow managed to avoid getting fish balls or 雞蛋仔 egg waffles on the street, but Caris couldn't quite resist getting some 炸大腸. I won't translate, but look at the picture. What does it look like? Gross? Well, think about the body part after that :D

Back to Hong Kong: eating for under £3

Yes, I have made my triumphant return to Hong Kong! I never really planned on coming back here to live, to be absolutely honest, but when my boss offered me an unbelievable job, I didn't have much of a choice. I've been back for a few days now, and remain very excited about being back so far, mainly because I still haven't quite moved into my lovely flat in Pok Fu Lam yet.

I have been spending a bucket of money so far, so thank goodness that I'm rediscovering how cheap it can be to eat out. Today I finished all my stuff in town relatively early, and the thought did cross my mind to go home and cook. But then I figured that it would not only be less hassle, but a lot cheaper, to actually eat out. That is rather depressing actually. All of the meals below cost me less than £3 or HK$36. I bought a tub of Greek yoghurt the other day, which went over this threshold :(

Cafe de Coral is the McDonald's of Hong Kong, cooking a huge variety of Cantonese classics. The food is pretty meh, specialising in being cheap and quick rather than culinary, but one dish has captured my heart, their 一哥焗豬排飯, or 'big brother's baked pork chop rice'. This is very typical of the Cantonese dishes which try to be slightly Westernised, and is sometimes accompanied by creamy chicken with sweetcorn. For a mere $31, how on earth do they make that pork chop so soft? Dave loves his so much that he has left time at Hong Kong airport to make sure he can have a last portion before he flies back to London. Note the token broccoli to try and counter the million calories:

The other classic I have already found myself eating is 南記, which has the honour of being on my list of favourite Hong Kong restaurants. Sophisticated cooking it ain't, but I adore their hot and sour soup noodle, served with their signature fish sticks 春卷 and fish skin dumplings 魚皮餃, yours for a mere $27 (they put their prices up!):

Believe it or not, I have made myself try some new things rather than going back to all my old haunts. After yoga class today, I really fancied some congee, but stumbled across this place when I was walking around Causeway Bay. There was a long queue outside, so I'm not sure how good this place is supposed to be, but who can argue with a two course meal plus drink for $28? First course was Taiwanese soup noodles with pig intestines and oysters (yes, squeamish beings should look away now), served with some too-sweet soy milk:

This was accompanied by fried dumplings with chives, wrapped in a funny way to maximise the ease of cooking. Not the best dumplings I've ever eaten, but the wrappers were very thin, a little factory-made tasting. The best thing about the place was that they kept spelling dumplings as 'dumpings'. Don't come here after you're feeling a bit emotionally vulnerable!

On the other end of the scale, I heard that a new coffee shop in Central that had a roaster in the actual shop itself, so off I went to Holly Brown on Stanley Street to try and find a decent cup of coffee (yes, I succumbed to Starbuck's the second day I was here when I was dying of jetlag, and it took me 20 minutes to find one!!).

There is indeed a roaster inside the cafe, which also specialises in gelato, which seems to be the thing that is pulling in the crowds rather than the coffee. Some Italian dude called Domenico was doing lots of fiddling about with the roaster, but I'm not really sure why. Only espresso based drinks are offered, although they do also do the more unusual flat whites, marocchinos, but even though a variety of different beans are on offer to buy, only the 'house blend' is offered. So no interesting drip filters, no cafetieres, I'm guessing the 'simple coffee' movement that is so hip in Soho London hasn't quite hit Soho Hong Kong.

Whilst I was happy to see a flat white on the menu, I did choke at the idea of paying $34 for a small one. Even more alarming was the fact that the two gentlemen in front of me ordered a cappuccino and a latte, and the dude made all three drinks at the same time. There was absolutely no notable difference between the three! So as a result, my flat white had a little too much milk, and I have no idea why they serve it with a little blue straw?!:

Back in Hong Kong: just before I leave

Just before I leave Hong Kong, I just had to have another juk hit. During my juk googling, I found another place in Central which reportedly has good juk, even better than Sang Kee, so I rushed off to Hong Kong Station to get rid of my luggage first thing in the morning to make sure I had time for a visit.

The place is 羅富記 (Law Fu Kee), and there are two branches, one on Queen's Road Central, and also one on Lyndhurst Terrace. The former branch I have walked past many times before, and there is always a huge stink of won ton noodles flowing out, and also for novelty value I went to the Lyndhurst Terrace branch. As the menu boasts, it is an expert in juk and noodles:

And very extensive the menu was too. But I was lazy and stuck to what I knew - another bowl of fish ball and beef juk!!! I think this was a little cheaper than Sang Kee, HK$26 a bowl, and there was the added bonus that I was sitting right next to the juk chef. This is normally quite a disturbing experience in Hong Kong cafes, as you get to realise how extremely dirty the kitchen areas are, and true enough, the chef was wearing wellies, and I'm not sure his fingernails have seen a nailbrush recently. Ah well, at least you can see that he was making the fishballs from fresh!

And here was the masterpiece:

The verdict? You could definitely taste the MSG in the juk, I was reaching for my water bottle literally as I walked out of the door. I liked the fishballs, but the taste of orange peel was a little bit overpowering. Still, the beef was very very good.

I also had an enjoyable time actually at the airport for once! First, I spotted a famous Hong Kong actor there in the lounge with me, 元華 (Yuen Wah), who was in Kung Fu Hustle, but more impressively was Bruce Lee's stunt double in Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon (I obviously just looked all this up on wiki :p). But more importantly, the Dragonair lounge actually has a noodle stand and you can get wonton and fishball noodles for free!!! You have no idea how excited that made me. Hong Kong airport is just ridiculous nice (there is also free wireless in the entire place - Heathrow T5, leave and learn!!), looking forward to my being back there!

Back in Hong Kong: Day 2 spicefest

For the reunion with the Uncle B/no-longer-Uncle B crowd, we had to go have Sichuan food, which still gives me some of the fondest food memories from my transfer to Hong Kong. The 麻辣 ma-la numbness is just too addictive, and there is always the spectacle of seeing Nic sweat so much he needs to bring a towel.

We decided to defect from our usual Sijie Private Kitchen though, and go to a rival place set up by one of Sijie's relatives who used to work at Sijie's, but had a fight with her (this is what Nic claims anyway :p). The decor is definitely interesting - so many soft furnishings around you do feel like you're invading someone's front room, plus there are a few useless sister-like waitresses hanging around.

The place is 渝川菜館, also at Lockhart Road in Wan Chai. Overall, everything was nowhere near as spicy as Sijie's, but this actually made most things edible!! Part of why we love Sijie's I guess is the challenge of seeing how long you can last before you lost all feeling in your mouth, and this was somewhat lacking here.

Nevertheless, some excellent food to be had. My favourite dish of the night was 夫妻肺片, literally translated as husband and wife pork lungs. I think this might be the first time I've ever eaten it, but so so good. The texture is slightly chewy, but moreishly so, and I liked the level of spicing to give a little warmth:

We also had my favourite 麻婆豆腐, mapo tofu, which made us all reach for that bowl of plain rice:

The chilli chicken lacked any noticeable evidence of actual chicken pieces:

We were also not so impressed with the squid with lychees, which just tasted weird:

But we loved the cold spicy noodles - this dish is normally the one that kills us at Sijie's, but this version was lightly spiced, and the noodles had just the right amount of chew. I could have eaten the whole plate of this had this not arrived right at the end.

It was supposedly the coldest night of winter so far in Hong Kong, so was good to eat some spicy food, but not sure we are in that much of a rush to go back to this place.

Back in Hong Kong: Day 2 Kau Kee fest

After all that juk, it was amazing I still had room for lunch, but I really did have to make room because we were going to 九記牛腩 Kau Kee on Gough Street!!! This is probably one of the most famous noodle shops in Hong Kong, and apparently frequented by Tony Leung (although I haven't had the very good luck of bumping into him yet). Expect to queue to get in - Brian and I arrived at 12:15 for opening at 12:30, and look at the queue by 12:25 (with Brian looking smug at the start of the line!):

I literally do regularly have dreams about this place, mainly of me being in a taxi and not being quite able to go there. And every time I go, I have 2 bowls. This time though, I decided to experiment and try the curried beef brisket e-noodles:

Hmmm - this was my second bowl, and I regretted deviating from what I knew (profit from the core and all that :p)!!! I agree with Edwin that the curry at 九記 leaves a bit of a funny, almost stinging taste in your mouth - the curry one last night was definitely better. And the brisket in this bowl was ridiculously fatty :(

But it just cements the fact that their clear soup brisket e-noodle is just ammmmmmaaaaazzzzing. Just such a fab combination, and just small enough a portion to make you want that extra bowl. Although I am getting swayed by Wes' idea of just having the soup and noodles instead - maybe when I am back in March. Anyway, here is my stuff of dreams!!!:

Gah, this has made me hungry now!!