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The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G.K. Chesterton

Saturday 30 October 2010

A new home

After more than a month of living at the Four Seasons Place HK, we have finally moved into a place we can call home! We spent most of this week moving and unpacking, and internet hasn't been set up at home just yet (I'm updating from the apartment complex's common games room next to the toy room where Zak could be playing but instead he's choosing to stay with me. Moving is indeed a challenge with a toddler, where next to nothing can be done when he's awake). Stay tuned and I will hopefully get back to normal posting next week.

Saturday 23 October 2010

Brunching in Hong Kong

Finding places to eat at any time of the day (or night) in Hong Kong is no problem as the restaurants here cater to the general habit of eating 5 meals a day.

Yum cha @ Graces Garden

Yum cha is a popular option for meals from the early hours of the morning until late afternoon, however there are more and more places in HK offering all-day dim sum dining. We're no strangers to eating dimsum, so I'll just let the following photos of our yum cha experience at Graces Garden in Times Square speak for themselves. Ordering off the menu is the norm here, and expect this place to get crowded during lunch.

Yau yu sou (fried squid), Fung zao (aka phoenix talons and chicken feet), Har gao (shrimp dumpling) and the bowl of complimentary salty peanuts:


Scallops 'cheong' (rice roll):


Lor mai gai (lotus leaf rice:


Egg tarts!


Lotus seed bun with a surprise: a single salted egg yolk:


The shrimp dumpling was delicious, the chicken feet sauce had a good spicy kick, and I loved the lotus bun. Overall the food was good, but it was not the best dimsum we've had. The fried squid was overly greasy, the rice roll was mushy and overcooked, and the lotus leaf rice could do with more meat filling. I'm not too concerned though because I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunity to find a favourite teahouse to yum cha.


Western-style brunch @ Jaspas

We recently brunched at Jaspas in Mid-levels with Rob's aunt and her hubby (as well as Rob's young cousin who was visiting for a couple of weeks). They brought us to Jaspas before on our last trip to HK in May, so we knew that the food would be pretty good. This time we were the ones who invited them to brunch, and we chose Jaspas because the western-style breakfast and lunch menu was a safe choice for our dining group. Everyone enjoyed their choice of meals, and so did we. Generous serving sizes, good service and great for a casual family meal.

Rob's Eggs Marianne - basically an eggs benedict with smoked salmon instead of ham


My Seafood Crepe - sautéed seafood with tomatoes:


Jaspas does great coffee and desserts too (although we passed on desserts this time because everyone was stuffed)!

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Latino eats: Mexican @ Café Iguana and Spanish @ El Pomposo, HK

After weeks of apartment-hunting in Hong Kong, we have finally found one! I like staying at the Four Seasons, but I am really looking forward to having a place of our own, with proper kitchen and place to put our things! I think property-searching has got to be one of my least favourite things, in the same rank as household chores. We spent a couple of Saturday afternoons viewing properties for hours near Kowloon Station, and these were nice apartments with good facilities and the convenience of the Elements shopping mall, but very pricey for a small area. (It's pretty much the same elsewhere around central HK.) If you think that Tokyo apartments were small and expensive (which they are), it's worse in Hong Kong!

Anyway, after being on our feet for hours looking at apartments (which start to look the same after awhile), we were only too glad to sit down for an evening meal on both Saturdays in the rooftop dining area of the Elements mall. (Lighting was pretty dim in both places, and I had to resort to using flash on my point-and-shoot, which I hate doing for several reasons that I won't go into here.) There were several restaurants/bars on the rooftop (dubbed Civic Square), and we ate at a cheerful Mexican place called Café Iguana on the first Saturday there. Friendly service, lively atmosphere, and food was delicious and affordably priced.

Rob got Beef Enchiladas (in chili sauce topped with Ranchero cheese, onion and radish), and the plate came with side dishes of black beans and rice. The beef was pulled (not the strips we were used to getting), and it was yummy and quite filling with all the tasty carbs.



I ordered the Alambre al Pastor (grilled skewers with pork and vegetables). It was a choice between pork, chicken and seafood, and pork was a good choice because I'd imagine the chicken and seafood would have been overcooked.



Dessert: Semolina Pudding. Delicious!



On the second Saturday, we had dinner at a Spanish tapas bar, El Pomposo. The restaurant had a special live band performance scheduled later that night, so there was a busy atmosphere happening. We decided to share several plates, and inevitably over-ordered. Most of the dishes were good, but everything was on the greasy side, The Ensalada de Melon y Jamon Serrano (a salad of melon, artichokes, Serrano ham with olive oil and moscatel vinegar) was colourful, but it wasn't as fresh as I'd have liked it (Rob thought it was fine). I'd heard about how wonderful it is to pair ham with melon, and while it was nice, I didn't think the combination was that mind-blowing.



We ordered Butter Bread to sop up the gravies and sauces, but it was pretty greasy with butter itself. The Caracoles al Ajo (sautéed snail with ham, garlic and sherry) is one of the restaurant's signature dishes, but I didn't care too much for the small chewy bits swimming in a pool of greasy sauce.

The snail dish is on the left of the plate of bread):


Rob cannot resist ordering scallops whenever he sees it on the menu, and the Pinchos de Vieras con Jamon Serrano (grilled skewers of scallops wrapped in Serrano ham) offered at El Pomposo was pretty good, although the ham slices could be thicker.



Another signature dish was Pollo Naranja (blood orange chicken with garlic and paprika). This one was a winner, and we really enjoyed the tangy citrus flavour which brightened up the whole dish.



For dessert, Rob chose Turron Parfait (chilled Spanish nougat), which was not as overly sweet as I'd expected. In fact, it was very nice, like an ice cream with bits of dried fruit and roasted almonds mixed within.




There are many more restaurants within the mall, and I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunities to dine once we've settled in the area.

Saturday 16 October 2010

My little guy is 2!

Our gorgeous son celebrates his 2nd birthday today, and I wish we could throw him a little party (like last year but perhaps more extravagant). However having moved countries a few weeks ago poses several difficulties, which includes not having our own place, and not knowing enough people in this city to throw a proper birthday bash. It's a good thing that Zak is still too young to care about doing a big move just before his birthday.

This cake is compliments from the Four Seasons Place where we are temporarily located. We have yet to enjoy the cake because we're saving it for the weekend when we can eat it as a family.


I do have a couple of food-related posts to write up, but I've been rather busy this week. Stay tuned!

Saturday 9 October 2010

Final Tokyo meal: Monjayaki and Okonomiyaki @ Bambi

It feels a little strange to write about our last lunch in Tokyo because it makes it seems like we're still living there. This meal was only less than 3 weeks ago, yet it somehow feels like a lifetime ago. That day we'd done the last of the packing and left the apartment to the movers to pack everything else up for shipping. We met up with Kim for lunch in Tsukishima and headed over to an old favourite, Bambi, for a last meal of monjayaki and okonomiyaki. We ate here several times before, and I wrote about a previous experience at Bambi, so I won't go into much of a spiel here. Rob cooked everything on the teppan, and I was only too glad to sit back and relax especially after a rather intense week of preparing for the move out of our apartment.

Kim got a Cheese and Mochi Monjayaki with Pork, and I ordered the Mentaiko Monjayaki. Cheese and mochi is a winning combination, and the pork upped the protein, flavour and fat content of the monjayaki to make it even more delicious. The mentaiko was also pretty good, full of the fishy umami that I (and most Japanese) enjoy so much.

Raw ingredients for both types of monjayaki:


I've previously given a pictorial on how to cook monjayaki, and here's a more concise version of how the mentaiko monjayaki was cooked.

Spoon the solid ingredients out of the bowl and onto the hot teppan, cook and chop the ingredients with the spatula while stir-frying, then make a well, pour the remaining liquid contents of the bowl into the well and then combine and cook for a further few minutes:


Yeah, the aesthetics of the monjayaki's finished product is not its best feature, but it tastes great!:


Rob has always preferred okonomiyaki, and he ordered his favourite combo: Scallop and Prawn Okonomiyak. I actually wrote about our first okonomiyaki more than 4 years ago! Our best okonomiyaki experience was at this tiny shop in Osaka, which was so good that we went there again on another trip to Osaka.

Okonomiyaki!


We had Chocolate Crepe to finish the meal with (previously featured in this post).

The raw ingredients for Choco Creoe; the finished product was polished off before I could take a shot of it!


Writing about this makes me feel a little sad about leaving Tokyo behind, yet I'm not too sad because there's a lot to look forward to in our new life in Hong Kong!

Saturday 2 October 2010

Cheap local eats

It's only our second week in Hong Kong, and I'm tired. There are still plenty to do before we're settled in, but at least we can enjoy the following harbour view from our Four Seasons studio for the next couple of weeks (or until we find an apartment to call our new home):

Hong Kong Harbour around sunset:


I thought I'd share some shots of what we ate during our first week here. Most of our time out and about as a family involved running errands or viewing apartments, with only enough time for something quick. Hopefully in a few weeks time I'll have some proper HK dining food to show. These meals were cheap, quick and - with the exception of one or two dishes - delicious. For most of them, we walked in off the streets, and I didn't think to take note of the name or location because there are many such dining opportunities everywhere in Hong Kong.

We were in Wanchai on Saturday to look at mobile phones at the Wanchai Computer Centre, and it was lunch time by the time we'd purchased a phone for me. We wandered around the side streets, keeping away from the busy main streets, in search for some good Chinese food in the kind of shops that tourists and foreigners generally avoid, where locals enjoy a good home-style meal for cheap. We weren't searching very long when the owner of a noodle shop saw us looking at his menu (which had no English), and immediately came out to greet us. Did they serve century egg congee? "Of course!" Great, he spoke English. What noodles did they have? "Many kinds - got pork, got beef - what kind you want?" Then when we were ordering, I asked what drinks they had. "Many kinds - got coffee, got tea, coke, orange juice, horlicks..." I guess next time I'll just order and then find out if they have the item. Rob ordered the Fish Ball Noodles, I got a delicious Preserved Egg and Pork Congee, and we enjoyed both dishes very much. We got the lunch set for 2, which included a vegetable dish and drinks - a pretty good deal for only HK$60.

Noodles with meaty fish balls; and the century egg congee with pork which even Rob said was tasty (he's generally not a big fan of the preserved egg):


After lunch, we went next door to a dessert cafe, and it turns out that it is run by Singaporeans. We had the Bubur Pulut Hitam (black glutinous rice dessert) and the "Hong Kong version" of the Bubur Chacha (usually with yam, sweet potato, taro and sago, but this version was more a mixed beans sweet soup). These weren't too bad, but we've definitely had better.

Black glutinous rice porridge with coconut milk; and the mixed beans dessert, also with coconut milk:


Last time we found a fast food restaurant that does good charsiu and roast duck, and we had a hankering for these greasy goodies because it has been a good few months since then. On Sunday after spending some time with the monkeys at the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens, we stopped by Maxim's MX for a takeaway lunch. The Roast Duck with rice and half-catty serve of Char siu costed around HK$60, and we enjoyed these in all their fatty deliciousness. This kind of fast food beats Maccas (McDonald's for the non-Aussies) hands down.



Late last week we boarded the ferry for a quick trip in and out of Macau for visa purposes (we bought the return tickets back to HK shortly after we landed, but it still took out 4 hours of our day), and had a quick bite at the only place that served hot food in the Macau Ferry Terminal. With a menu of noodle and rice paired with a limited selection of protein dishes, I must admit that we weren't terribly impressed with the menu. However it was dinner-time, and we had 45 minutes to spend before our return ferry was scheduled to leave, so we just settled to have dinner at this diner. The Charsiu and Roast Duck Rice was - not surprisingly - a disappointment, but the Chicken Curry Rice was quite delicious. The meal was around HK$60 for the two plates, which seems to be the average cost for a casual meal for two in HK. It doesn't seem like there's much to do in Macau when you bring kids along, so it's unlikely that we'll come back out here again anytime soon. (Technically this doesn't really count as Hong Kong food because we ate them in Macau, but this place caters mainly to the Hongkies who travel to and from Macau.)

Succulent chicken thigh fillets in a curry-based sauce; and the unremarkable - but perfectly edible - charsiu and roast duck:


So far, we haven't suffered from any stomachaches or food poisoning, and we'll continue eating the local cheap fare because that's the best way to experience the local cuisine.