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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

Friday 30 September 2011

Fine-dining Cantonese @ Cuisine Cuisine, Hong Kong

I am still not used to the idea of eating Chinese food fine dining-style. I grew up eating all sorts of Chinese food at various levels of formality, ranging from the low-brow cheap street-side stuff to the special occasion banquet-style fares, but it was only a couple of years ago when I first ate at a Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant in Tokyo. If anywhere, Hong Kong would be the place to find many of these fine-dining Chinese restaurants, yet I can recall of only one such experience in the past year since we moved to HK. I suppose it's because there are too many other wonderful dining opportunities to be had in this city. I had a Japanese friend and her family visiting HK last weekend, and I wanted to bring her to a Chinese restaurant. She'd mentioned she liked modern restaurants, and Cuisine Cuisine at The Mira fitted the bill quite nicely. The restaurant was recently awarded two Michelin stars, which is a nice boost for a restaurant.


This is a swish and swanky restaurant with a cool and modern decor - definitely a place to come with someone you're trying to impress. The menu is (to quote from their website) "an elevation to traditional Cantonese cuisine". There are pages and pages of dishes, which makes selection quite difficult. I never knew Chinese tea could be so expensive, and have never before seen tea dominate the first three pages of a menu! Service was faultless and suitably professional, and the floor manager was happy to accommodate our boy's allergies (soy, nuts and sesame allergies make it quite challenging to dine at Chinese restaurants).

Check out the high chair the boy got to sit on! It's got to be the coolest high chair design I've encountered yet:

The adults ordered one dish each, and shared in the middle banquet-style. I felt a little pressure from the manager to order appetisers, so I got one that he recommended. That was plenty of food, with some fried rice leftover. I think that if hubby wasn't on his cutting phase, we would have needed to order at least one more dish. All the dishes ordered were labelled as Chef's Recommendation.

The only appetiser ordered: Grilled Eel tossed with Osmanthus Sauce, one of the restaurant's signature dishes. Very tasty with a slightly crispy coating and a subtly sweet sauce:

The grilled eel, bitten into. On the plate, the eel didn't resemble much like unagi that everyone at the table was familiar with, but only one bite was needed to verify that it was indeed eel:

Hubby ordered the Honey-glazed Barbecued pork. Nicely done with plenty of flavour. The meat wasn't too fatty which was a pleasant surprise:

My friend ordered the Braised Seasonal Vegetables with Bamboo Piths and Shrimp Roe Sauce. The 'seasonal vegetable' was spinach, which paired quite well with the silky texture of the bamboo pith. We all expected a dish made with bamboo shoot, not a fungus, but this dish was well received, particularly my friend's 2-year-old girl. I liked it, but hubby thought it was only okay (he may prefer to describe the texture as slimy, not silky, and he isn't a big fan of that texture):

I chose the Deep-fried Mashed Taro Ring filled with assorted vegetables. Yam ring is one of our favourite dishes, but it has been years since we had one. This was a good version, and it was my favourite dish that night. The vegetables were briefly stir-fried and lightly seasoned, so they were crisp and crunchy, and the yam ring was crispy but not oily:

Fried Red Rice with Scallops and Seafood - the red rice grain added a slightly crunchy texture and nutty flavour, and seafood pieces were generously scattered throughout the rice. Quite nice, but I thought the seasoning was a bit too subtle:

I need to get my head around the idea of fine dining Chinese, and a meal at Cuisine Cuisine was a good way to help me. It wasn't as expensive as I'd expected it to be, and the bill came to around HK$300 per person, including some drinks. Tokyo and the playgroup my friend and I were a part of do seem like a lifetime ago, and It was great to see my friend and her little girl again (and meet her husband and her son too).

Cuisine Cuisine at The Mira
3/F, The Mira Hong Kong
118 Nathan Road
Tsimshatsui, Kowloon
Tel. +85 2 2315 5222

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Lunch @ Brunch Club, Hong Kong

I love the idea of enjoying a leisurely brunch on a lazy weekend morning. The problem is that I'm usually awake by 6:30am (if not earlier, thanks to the little boy), and I am incapable of skipping breakfast, so technically it's no longer brunch for me by the time we go out - on the odd occasion - for brunch. Well, if we couldn't have a proper brunch, then we could still have a lovely lunch at Brunch Club, and that was what we did on Saturday after the boy's toddler gym class. It's such a cozy and comfortable setting that it was hard not to sit back, relax and enjoy the food

Both daddy and son pondering what to eat. Apparently you can also get alcohol here (according to the blackboard behind):

Brunch Club is a super-casual all-day eatery in Hong Kong's chic Soho. This is a simple restaurant with a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, made quite comfortable with sofas, magazines and an outdoor terrace. It opens from 8am to 11pm everyday, running on a no-reservations first-come-first-served basis; I've read that there can be quite a wait for a table during peak meal times. We arrived at 12pm on the dot, and the few tables in the small diner were already occupied, but we only had to wait a few minutes for a table. The menu features typical western breakfast items ranging from muesli, fruit bowl and yogurt to a full breakfast with eggs, bacon and the works. They have a different menu for lunch and dinner, but we were there for the brunch menu which featured plenty of eggs. I love how there are so many different ways on how to have the eggs done (sunny-side up, over easy, fully-fried, scrambled, omelette, poached or hard-boiled).

Two Eggs (over easy) & Two Toppings (spinach and Swiss gruyere) on Toast (HK$65), for the boy who loves "bread and egg", especially with the bread dipped in soft yolk:

Mix Grill (HK$92) - two eggs, walnut raisin loaf, bacon, chicken breast, gammon ham, pork sausage, fried onions, grilled tomato and baked beans. The stuff on that plate disappeared very quickly! Hubby enjoyed it very much, although it's a little heavy and greasy for me:

Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon (HK$85) and spinach (+HK$10), hollandaise on the side:

The eggs were poached just right, with yummy runny yolk:

Hubby couldn't resist ending the meal on a sweet note, and ordered French Toast with Choco Banana topping (HK$65). Yummo!

Brunch Club also does a great cappuccino with plenty of foam:

Yummy food, and a great place to just hang out and relax.

Brunch Club
Ground Floor,
70 Peel Street,
Central, Hong Kong
Tel: +85 2 2526 8861
Open 8am - 11pm everyday

Friday 23 September 2011

Fine Swiss @ Chesa, Hong Kong

We expanded our experience with European cuisines eating a Swiss lunch at Chesa last weekend, inside Hong Kong's most historical (and expensive) hotel: The Peninsula. We were brought to this hotel (to visit, not stay!) 7 years ago by my aunt-in-law during our honeymoon trip to HK, and I remember being awed at the beautiful antiquity of the ceiling designs and pillar carvings. We were told of the famous English-style afternoon tea served here, something I would love to experience if not for the perpetually long queue for a table. The YMCA is just next door, where my little boy used to have his toddler class, and it's funny how I never clicked that THE Peninsula was just across the road. Anyway, here we were, 7 years later and this time with our toddler, but the architectural beauty of The Peninsula was somewhat wasted on our boy. He did appreciate the lunch at Chesa though, so at least the trip wasn't entirely a waste for him.

Gorgeous dark wood panelling allowed us to dream of being in a Swiss chalet somewhere in the Alps. This was the restaurant at the start of the lunch opening, shortly before diners arrived for their reservations:

Chesa has been operating for more than 40 years, so it is almost as historic as The Peninsula itself. It is a fine dining establishment, and the restaurant has a dress code of smart casual with a couple of additional restrictions that applies only to the gentlemen. Kids under 3 are not permitted, but our boy (who will be 3 in a few weeks' time) can easily pass as a 4-year-old with his height - though his behaviour may have given his age away. Service is professional and impeccable, as to be expected from a restaurant like this. he a-la-carte menu featured some classic Swiss dishes like the traditional Swiss fondue, rösti and raclette. Chesa also has an affordable 3-course set menu for lunch (HK$298) which gave four choices for each of the appetiser, main and dessert courses, and mocha/tea and petit fours are also included. This was great value considering many of the dishes from the a-la-carte menu cost more than the set menu. Hubby and I both went for the set lunch, and ordered an additional dish for the boy.

The bread basket full of delicious fresh bread. The boy ate 3 crusty rolls and kept asking for more!

Raclette du Valais (hot melted cheese with new potatoes, pickled onions and gherkins). We weren't quite sure of the proper way to eat raclette, but the grilled crispy cheese was lovely and fine on its own:

The pickled onions and gherkins, olives, radish and cherry tomato that came with the raclette. These were the freshest pickles I'd ever eaten (yes, I realise that's a bit of an oxymoron, but I can't think of a better way to describe the pickles):

Hubby's appetiser: Rillettes de canard au foie gras, purée de panais et reinette (duck rillettes with goose liver, parsnips and apple purée) - light, fresh and flavourful. The sweetness of the purée went well with the rillettes:

My appetiser: Savarin au fenouil, goujons de sole et vinaigrette aux crustacés (fennel savarin with breaded sole and shellfish vinaigrette) - very tasty, but honestly the breaded sole reminded me of fish fingers, but much better prepared and significantly less processed. The fennel flavour is quite pronounced in the savarin, and it went really well with the breaded sole. The savarin was slightly airy, like a creamy mousse:

Hubby's main course: Saumon en croûte d'herbes cuit au four, écrasé de chou-flew et sauce au Noilly Prat (oven-baked salmon in herb crust on coarse cauliflower and Noilly Prat sauce) - nicely prepared, but salmon has become a bit too ordinary for me. Hubby liked it:

My main: Filets de sardine poêlés, salade Parmentier et créme à la moutarde (pan-fried sardine fillets on warm potato salad and mild mustard cream) - crispy sardines, perfectly seasoned and tasty. Hubby doesn't like sardines, so he wasn't as keen on it as me, a sardine-lover. The boy was with me on this one, and kept asking for "mummy's fish":

Rob's dessert: Tarte fine au chocolat et à la banane, sorbet au yuzu (chocolate and banana tart with yuzu sherbet) - the highlight (for me) was the yuzu sherbet which was sharp with the lovely citrus flavour. The chocolate tart was rich and decadent and I loved the biscuity tart base:

My dessert: Parfait glacé à l'orange et son crumble à la cannelle, sorbet au pamplemousse (iced orange parfait with cinnamon crumble, grapefruit sherbet) - surprisingly light and refreshing, and the sherbet was a good palate cleanser. Cliché as it may be, I think I do indeed like parfait after all (the French version, not the over-the-top American-style layered ones):

Three sets of petit fours - strawberry with marshmallow-like mousse topping, passionfruit-filled dark chocolate truffle and chocolate-dipped glacé orange. Delightful bite-sized treats!

Chesa also made a good cup of cappuccino, and hubby's mocha was also delicious. This was a lovely experience, and a great introduction to Swiss cuisine.

Chesa
1st Floor,
The Peninsula Hong Kong,
Salisbury Road,
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon
Tel. +85 2 2315 3169

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Average Indian @ Taj Mahal Club, Hong Kong

Words cannot fully describe my dislike for the notorious Chungking Mansions, but I'm going to try anyway. Just walking through the crowded passageway on the ground level is enough to intimidate any tourist. Dark and dank, a little dirty and a messy layout, as a female, the worst part has got to be the leery looks which is worse when you're on your own. Let's just say I didn't hang around too long that first time, and have since resorted to buying spices in expensive little jars from the supermarket. If not for the fact that some of the most authentic and cheapest Indian food in Hong Kong can be found within this building, I would have been quite happy to stay away from here. The things we do for the love of food. It's not our first foray into the so-called "mansions" (which is anything but mansionly) to eat Indian, but I had conveniently forgotten what a pain it is to use the elevators in this building (shared with 4000 other people living here). This time we made our way to the 3rd floor of Block B to Taj Mahal Club, a popular curry house for tourists and expats.


The layout of the restaurant is similar to The Delhi Club, with a relatively clean dining area. Service was friendly and acceptable, and the owner was quite happy to dish out some advice regarding food allergies in young children. We ordered the same dishes that we always do when dining at an Indian restaurant for the first time, and while the food was good, I thought that the food at The Delhi Club was better. This is not the first time our almost-3 boy has eaten spicy food, and he enjoyed the biryani - although if he had his way, he would have drank only mango lassi for lunch. There was of course concern that the food would be too spicy for the boy, but the use of nuts in their non-spicy dishes rendered them unsuitable for his allergy restrictions.

Mango Lassi that could have used more mango purée:

Chicken Biryani (spicy rice) - what we always order for the toddler at Indian restaurants, and also my benchmark dish to compare with other Indian restaurants. Flavourful, but the whole cardamoms, curry leaves and whole cloves should have been removed prior to serving (or at least cooked with the rice for easy removal later, like in a muslin cloth or something similar). I hate biting into whole cloves. The shredded cheese also didn't improve the dish and would have been better left omitted:

Bright red Chicken Tikka. Surprisingly not as spicy as the biryani, and the boy ate this just fine. Delicious with the minty raita and tamarind sauce:

Mutton Saagwala (spinach sauce) - hubby's benchmark Indian dish. The spinach sauce was spicy and tasty, but the meat wasn't as tender as ones I've had before. This was yummy with the biryani:

Aloo Ghobi (spiced potatoes and cauliflower) - a surprisingly delicious dish! This was my favourite dish from lunch:

Lunch at Taj Mahal Club was pretty average. If we ever come back inside this building for Indian food (certainly not for any other reasons!), we'd go back to The Delhi Club.

Taj Mahal Club
3rd Floor, Block B, Chungking Mansion
38-44 Nathan Road
Tsim Sha Tsui
Tel. +85 2 2722 5454 / +85 2 2366 4477

Friday 16 September 2011

Contemporary Japanese @ Zuma, Hong Kong

What do you eat when you're recovering from a tummy bug? Eat raw fish and sushi, of course! Well, actually that is probably not highly recommended, but that was what I did - less than three days after being literally struck down by a nasty gastro bug. You see, my son had just started kindergarten last week, and he inevitably caught a bug of a classmate. He didn't suffer too badly from it - there was no fever, no complaints of tummy aches, and no symptoms other than an unusual middle-of-night vomit. Unfortunately I eventually caught that bug too, but it hit me much harder and I was bedridden for 40 hours! I am used to being the healthy one that looked after the boys when they got sick that it was very strange being so helpless. Getting sick was awful but it helped me realised three things that I was very thankful for. I was thankful that hubby's workplace is not too far from home and he was home less than 30 minutes after I sent my message "I need you home" to him. I was also very grateful that I am not a single parent nor living on my own, that I have my wonderful hubby to nurse me back to health and look after our son. The third thing I was thankful for was quick recovery despite being struck so hard, and that I don't get hit by a gastro bug more often than every few years (the last time hubby had to take a day off work to look after me was more than 3 years ago when the boy was still in my belly).

I was happy that we didn't cancel our lunch plans at Zuma although hubby was understandably concerned. I was well and truly on the road to full recovery, and I didn't want to spoil plans that had been made a week previously. Plus I had a lot of eating to catch up on! I had heard good things about Zuma, first from a Japanese friend who told me about the restaurant after I'd lamented to her about a crap sushi experience (she also knows the owner of Zuma, and she'd warned that the food is quite pricey). Then I heard hubby raved about a superb black cod he had at dinner out with his colleagues one time, but he'd only remembered the restaurant's name starts with a "Z". He confirmed the name "Zuma" when I suggested it. Hubby was eager to bring me to Zuma so that I could eat this wonderful black cod too.

At the beginning of the lunch open, before the lunch crowd began milling in:

Zuma has a chic and sleek space over two floors, with a spiral staircase that joins the restaurant to the bar/lounge upstairs. There's even outdoor space to enjoy alfresco dining when the weather is nice enough. The menu offers a modern and sophisticated take on the casual izakaya-style food. Service was professional and friendly, and our waitress was very helpful in giving suggestions on what we could order for our boy who has multiple food allergies (let's just say Japanese cuisine is not very suitable for his allergies). I was impressed by how thick the menu was, but I also didn't want to plough through the pages to pick what I wanted to eat. Zuma conveniently offers two set lunch options, the Ebisu Lunch (HK$290) and the Hotei Lunch (HK$480) where we could choose an appetiser, sushi and a main dish from a few choices. We got one of each set lunch courses - hubby the Hotei set and the Ebisu set for myself. Dishes were placed in the middle for sharing.

California roll, for the almost-3 boy. I usually don't like California rolls (because it's not really sushi), but this was heavenly! This had real crabmeat, not those yuck imitation crab sticks:

If anyone could make sushi eating messy, it would be this toddler! That disposable bib held only half the mess, and I felt bad for whoever had to clean the table (and the area around it) after we left:

Hotei Lunch Set

Hubby selected the following dishes for his meal.

Gyu no taru taru (spicy beef tartare with wasabi sauce and organic egg yolk) - yum! I love the different textures in this dish, and the flavours all combine very well. The satsumaimo (sweet potato) crisps were a nice touch:

Chirashi donburi (chef's selection of sashimi over sushi rice) - the cutest chirashi don I have ever laid my eyes on. The sashimi had been briefly seared which added a hint of charred flavour to the dish:

Taraba gani to soba sarada (cold buckwheat noodles with king crab) - very flavourful, and I enjoyed the fried strands of sweet potato on top. Hubby said it was nice, but not "wow":

Ebisu Lunch Set

The following dishes were my choices for my set.

Ao ringo to kaiso sarada miso fumi (seaweed salad with apple and white miso dressing) - bright and colourful salad that tasted extra-refreshing due to the fresh yuzu flavour in the dressing:

Tokusen nigirizushi to maki (4 nigiri selection with maki roll) - well-made and fresh. I love sushi!

Gindara Saikyo-yaki (miso-marinated black cod wrapped in hoba [Japanese magnolia] leaf), an additional HK$180 on top of the cost of the Ebisu lunch. Oh.my.goodness. Hubby was right! This was amazing:

Moist and tender fish in a gorgeous miso sauce. I don't know if words can fully describe how good this hunk of black cod was!

Dessert

Amedei hot chocolate cake, cocoa crisp, white chocolate, raspberry, caramel and vanilla 'wagon wheel'. Raspberry and chocolate makes a great combination, but I'm still not sure about the white chocolate 'wagon wheel':

When I saw the choc cake had a molten centre, I exclaimed to hubby that I had to take a photo of it. The poor guy had to stop eating the dessert to comply. Doesn't that look tantalising:

Sake-poached Japanese peach, roasted brown rice cracker, yogurt cream and mandarin sorbet. The mandarin sorbet was encased in a sugary sphere that fizzed and popped in your mouth much like sherbet. The boy really wanted to try this, and we had to be careful not to give him any of the boozy peach that was beneath the bed of ice. A light dessert that was quite fun to eat:

I like the food at Zuma. Everything was of good quality, very well presented and - most important of all - delicious. I surprised both hubby and myself by eating very well. The seafood was fresh, which is of utmost importance at a restaurant serving sushi and sashimi, and I am happy to say that I didn't suffer from my decision to eat raw fish so soon after getting sick with gastro. Zuma has their famous brunch buffet on Sundays, and I really would like to come back here for that.

Zuma
5-6/F, The Landmark
15 Queen's Road
Central, Hong Kong
Tel. +85 2 3657 6388

Tuesday 13 September 2011

No-bake Mango Cheesecake

Recently we were invited to a Japanese friend's home for a lovely lunch, and we enjoyed delicious food prepared by her husband who is well capable of making scrumptious food (photos after the recipe below). Our sons are around the same age, and they had so much fun playing with each other. I'd practically begged my friend to let me bring dessert, as it has seem so long since I last made a special treat. Since it's been rather uncomfortably warm in Hong Kong, I wanted to make a chilled treat, and it didn't take me long to decide to make a No-Bake Mango Cheesecake based on the tried-and-tested recipe I posted up a few years ago. I used a can of organic mango slices in natural mango juice, and used the remaining mango juice to make a glaze-topping that had worked beautifully the last time we made a no-bake cheesecake. I'm glad to say that the mango-flavoured cheesecake was a success, and hubby declared that it may even be better than the original strawberry version! I'm only happy that the cheesecake didn't collapse when I released the spring on the springform tin!

Just a tip: you may want to use an electric or manual beater to whip the cream, unless you would like to get some serious arm exercise done (I whipped the cream with a whisk and had dearly wished I had waited until hubby was home before I began making the cheesecake so that he could lend a hand too - excuse the pun).

No-bake Mango Cheesecake


Base

Ingredients
200g digestive biscuits*, crumbed
80g butter, melted
2 teaspoons hot water

Method
Mix all ingredients well. Press into base of springform tin. Chill
in refrigerator.

*The original recipe from my mother-in-law called for Granita Biscuits. By experience I've found Carr's Whole Wheat Crackers are also good. Graham crackers would also make a fine pie crust. Basically a crumbly-textured biscuit would do if you can't find any of these products.

Cheesecake filling

Ingredients
1 tablespoon gelatine
1/4 cup hot water
340g Philedelphia Cream Cheese, softened at room temperature
1/2 cup (90g) sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 cup lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
400g can of mango, drained and mashed (reserve the juice)
1/4 cup juice/syrup from the can of mangoes
200mL whipping Cream

Method
1. Dissolve the gelatine in hot water.
2. Beat the softened cream cheese until smooth.
3. Gradually add the sugar, dissolved gelatine, vanilla essence, lemon juice and the 1/4 cup of reserved juice. Blend well.
4. Beat cream until just stiff.
5. Fold in cream and drained fruit into cheese mixture.
6. Pour onto prepared crumb crust. Chill until firm.

Glaze topping
There should be about 1/2 cup leftover juice from the can. Dissolve 1/2 tablespoon gelatine in 1/4 cup of hot water, and add the leftover juice to the gelatine solution. Be sure that the cheesecake filling has been chilled for at least 4 hours BEFORE pouring the glaze on top. Otherwise you will find (as I'd learnt in a disastrous lesson a few years ago) that the glaze topping will just sink and destroy the aesthetics of the cheesecake.

A rather skinny slice for the toddler:


Home-cooked lunch

Before we indulged in the cheesecake, we ate an Italian-style lunch prepared by my friend's talented hubby. I'm sure he'd be a chef if he didn't have to work a full-time job! Quite a lovely lunch spread for 4 adults and 2 kids.

An open sandwich with roast beef à la bruschetta - simply delicious:

Yummy pasta, done perfectly al dente:

Tasty salad with prawns, asparagus and arugula - the only thing my friend said she helped make: