Revisit: Singaporean/Malaysian @ Katong (Elements), Hong Kong

We have found a decent place to get our Malaysian food fix in Hong Kong, and it's in our backyard! (By 'backyard', I only mean the mall downstairs.) This is quite a great find after four years in Japan where Malaysian restaurants are rare and expensive, and disappointing food experiences in HK where Malaysian restaurants are more numerous and affordable but poor in quality. We never realised how much we took for granted the abundance of good Malaysian food in Perth, until we left. We'd been to Katong once before, shortly after it opened, but that was during lunch when there was only a limited menu available. We revisited Katong recently for dinner to try out their other dishes, and we are happy to report that the food was delicious. It was fairly busy in the restaurant that evening, so the staff weren't as careful about separating the peanuts from the Nasi Goreng (fried rice) as they were last time, and it was just as well that the boy wasn't interested in eating very much that night anyway. In classic Expat Gourmand-style, I ordered way too much food for two people, but we did pretty well to finish all but a few spoonfuls of char kuey teow (which we asked to be put in a takeaway container to take home - we hate wasting food, especially when it's good food).

Nasi Goreng, served in a similar style to last time, except the satay sticks were placed on the plate sans peanut sauce, and we found some peanuts on the other side of the mound of rice (we'd specifically requested no nuts, soy or sesame on the plate). When I pointed this out to one of the waitstaff, the manager was about to whisk the plate back to the kitchen, but we didn't want them to throw out perfectly good food so we said we would just separate out the parts not touching the peanuts for our son. He didn't end up eating much of the food anyway, so I was glad we kept the plate:

Beef Rendang - tender meat in a delicious sauce. This rendang was about 100 times better than the one we tried at another place in HK:

Kangkung Belacan, my all-time favourite leafy greens. This version was not too spicy and not too pungent, perfect for HK people's tastebuds and sufficient for mine:

One of the dishes hubby was hanging out to try - Char kuey teow. This version was tasty with plenty of prawns to go around and many slices of lap cheong (Chinese sausage), to hubby's delight. There were even a couple of pieces of salty see ham (blood cockles), to my delight. The only thing missing was that complex charry wok hei flavour, which hubby thought was just fine without:

A relatively good rendition of one of my childhood favourite - Chai tau kueh. The cubes of radish cake were cut into the right size for the amount of sauce, and the texture was just right - not too firm and not too squishy:

Amazingly, hubby was so full that he didn't want dessert (that hardly happens!). Katong may be a bit more expensive than other Singaporean/Malaysian restaurants around, but that is perfectly justified, given the level of service, hygiene and food quality compared to the cheaper places.

Katong
Shop 2100A
2nd Fl, Elements
1 Austin Road West
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon
Tel. +85 2 2196 8086