Thursday, April 14, 2011

The Press Room: Springalicous Tasting Number Two

I was invited to another press tasting for the Springalicious event today, this time at The Press Room. I've wanted to check this place out for a while. In a way it is in the same vein as Liberty Exchange but a little bit more high end (they have a raw bar)and definitely more expensive.

Most of the tastings I've been invited to consisted of a few courses with pretty small portions. This, for some reason, was not like that at all. The portions were huge (well, if not huge certainly normal) and whereas typical springalicious diners would be able to chose, say, between the fish and the steak, we were served both,and the optional oysters (which would be extra for a normal diner) and a cheese course with desert. Anyway, I'm exhausted.



It started like this. Classic French Onion Soup Gratinée with shallots, red wine, brandy, emmental & Parmesan. This one definitely did not have the same cheese problem as the Liberty Exchange version but unfortunately it did have the same seasoning issue. It was woefully under-seasoned. Well, I did finish the whole thing within a few minutes anyway...



Ah the oyster course: Freshly shucked international trio of oysters, wild salmon & Atlantic cod ceviche with lime, chili, cilantro, garlic and horseradish. I love oysters. As far as I can tell the chilli, cialntro, garlic and horseradish from the menu were all in the cocktail sauce which tasted deceptively like the store-bought stuff (not complaining, love that stuff)and the citrus on my plate was lemon not lime, but who cares. As for the oysters themselves? The first was nothing. Really almost no taste, not briny, not sweet. The second was super-briny. Too briny. Floating in brine. And the third? Well the third (pictured) was delicious: meaty, sweet, slightly briny. Scrumptious. The ceviche was fine. I love ceviche and I really enjoyed it but it didn't pop off. Sometimes ceviche can seem almost shockingly refreshing and this didn't. Still good though. I would definitely order it again.



Next up, the Boston lobster risotto with star anise, Parmesan and french butter. Nope. This was the worst dish of the meal. Way too over-spiced. It just tasted strong. Too much salt, too much pepper and none of that smooth, rich bisqueiness that I love in lobster risotto. I only had a spoonful of this. The lobster meat was good though...

Now came the two main course options at once...



Yeah! Now we're talking! Chilean Sea Bass with black truffle butter, tagliatelle and peas. This dish was great. It made me happy. The fish was perfectly cooked. The pasta was al dente and spot on. You could smell the truffles before they got the dish to the table but still they didn't over-power anything. Very nice, simple and well executed.

And then...



Prime steak frites featuring a grilled, dry-aged, US prime sirloin with BĂ©arnaise sauce. Another home run! The best steak I've had in Hong Kong. Delicious meat. Perfectly cooked.




See! Great flavor, great char, great blood, yummy fat. Oh and the fries were awesome. I'm starting to get very very excited about the quality of french fries in Hong Kong. Who Knew? Oh, and let's not forget what is perhaps the greatest part of this dish the Bearnaise sauce. Just perfect Bearnaise. I want Bearnaise shampoo. I finished my little pitcher of then started dipping my fries in my neighbor's, then his neighbor's. Let's just say it was a scene.



Next up, the cheese course. Eh... I do love Stilton but skip that onion mess. The menu said the cheeses were supposed to come with quince paste which would have been much nicer. The bread was good.



Desert time! Calvados Parfait served with apple & cinnamon fritters. Another great effort. The fritters were basically fried slices of apple, nicely puffed up and dusted in cinnamon and sugar. They looked like little donuts and tasted like baked apples, very yummy. The parfait was a light moose on top of a cake base. The moose was somewhere between whipped cream and marscapone cheese and subtly flavored with Calvados (I love Calvados, send me a bottle). It went perfectly with the apples. A surprisingly light and lovely end to the meal.

You know, admittedly this meal was spotty in places (I'm looking at you risotto) but at opther times it was really delicous and in the end it left me feeling satisfied and in a good mood. Not perfect for sure but I am considering canceling my Bo Innovation reservation and taking my girlfriend here for Springalicious instead.

Disclaimer: I got this meal for free. Like a baller.

Liberty in a Non-voting Partial Democracy

So I've been missing a particular kind of food. Just basic restaurant food. I suppose it's American but they have places like it all over the world. Someplace not too expensive, not fast food where I can get a big salad, or a burger and a beer. I love New York for this reason. The quality of the food there is so high that these basic beer and fries joints often make me emotional. Anyway in Hong Kong it is not the same. Simple western food restaurants seem to be WAY over-priced, or suck, or (often) both.

So, I was juiced to try out Liberty Exchange Kitchen and Bar. This place has been around a while (I really have no idea because I haven't been) but they just recently got a new chef Vicky Cheng who used to work at Daniel in NYC which is definitely a good sign for my needs. I interviewed Vicky as my first assignment for my magazine and he made a really good impression. He really sold me when he talked about his burger. We both shared the same disappointment with burgers in Hong Kong, and coming from Daniel I knew he at least knew what a burger should taste like.

Anyway, an opportunity arose this week and I went with a co-worker and her friends to check it out.

Oh! and before I forget, thanks to Jocelyn my gracious co-worker for the lovely pictures, even though they were taken on a blackberry they are WAY better than mine would have been.

Jocelyn ordered the french onion soup and was nice enough to share it with everyone. It was fine I suppose, just way under seasoned. Under seasoned to the point where she had to ask for salt and pepper and really DIY it. Also not very cheesy, but I suppose that's a personal preference thing.



Next up was the calamari. We weren't going to order this but then we saw that they were miso-marinated and served with a shiso mayonnaise. That sounded more interesting and we decided to go for it. They were fine. Typical basic fried calamari, which in itself was kind of nice in a way because it really reminded me of what I would order in a bar at home. That said, I couldn't taste the miso at all. Not at all. Although Jocelyn said she could detect a hint of it. Also I love shiso; I think its such a cool flavor, but the shiso mayo didn't really do it for me. Not enough of the shiso came through and I ended up dipping my little guys in the truffle mayo but more on that later...



Now we're talking. This burger was really nice. Not fancy, not crazy just nice. Really nice. One of my biggest problems (aside from all of the others) with Hong Kong burgers is the fat content. Even eating some of the better burgers out here is like eating a text-book. This burger had a perfect blend of meat and fat. It was juicy. Really really juicy and the butcher board it was served on proved its functionality by gathering all of my leavings in the blood groove. Nice touch. It was also cooked perfectly medium rare and lovely. Vicky mentioned in our interview that he was going to serve his burger with basil mayonnaise and that kind of freaked me out. Basil is just such an over-powering flavor. But, I have to say it worked really well and perfectly matched with the fattiness of the beef and the tomato confit (confit, people love that word these days).

Also, the fries are bangin. Straight up. Hot, crisp in the right places, soft in the right places and lightly dusted in salt and Parmesan. With the burger, the fries are served with ketchup but if you order them as a side they are served with truffle mayo. Of course we asked for some truffle mayo and here is where Liberty gets a lot of points from me, they brought out three tubs of truffle mayo, more than enough for everyone at the table even if they hadn't ordered any fries. And then they didn't charge us a penny for it! This is after I got the fries with truffle mayonnaise at Classified and was given a shallow thimble of the stuff. Good looks Liberty Exchange!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

MORALITY



So here's the thing. I started doing this for fun mostly and to make my friends jealous. As I've been spending more time here, reading more blogs, meeting bloggers and actually working in the food industry, I've had to think a little bit more seriously about this whole endeavour. It's a shame because I hate doing anything seriously and especially don't want to let thought and good intentions get in the way of my snackies but here it goes...

A bunch of other bloggers follow this "Blog Code Of Ethics" thing. Basically it's: don't review free food, eat anonymously, and don't accept money for reviews. Let me say that this is undoubtedly ethically correct. This is the way to go, no doubt.

Now let me tell you what I'm going to do...

I get invited to all kinds of free meals and tastings and other fun food stuff for this job. Seriously, like four times a week, and I want to share it. Also I have opinions about it. I completely get how this causes a bias. To be fair I've been invited to some pretty shit free meals and afterwards I don't blog about it because I felt guilty about it...


Anyway, I will try and make it abundantly clear when a meal is free or what the circumstances around the meals I enjoy are. But if they're still great, or interesting or fun or worth writing about at all I'm still gonna write about them. So there we go. Oh and folks who might be giving me free meals, don't get all butt hurt if I don't like it. Gotta keep it real.

And just sayin' I'm a little too broke to have ethics right now... I don't know how many people would really want to keep reading about the noodle place next to my house. Although that spot is BANGIN.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Spring is in My Hair



Life is getting really good right about now. Hong Kong is trying to do its own version of Restaurant Week this year called Springalicious and I'm getting invited to try all of these wild restaurants' special tasting menus. Holla.

The first tasting I was invited to was at 1/5 nuevo, a Spanish place that I've been hearing about. To be honest, I have read enough and heard enough from my friends to be a little wary of Spanish places here. Hong Kong is in the throws of a tapas frenzy and there are little mediocre tapas places popping up everywhere. So, my expectations were not high when I made my way to the restaurant. Thankfully I was really wrong about this place. The food was top-notch, the wine was just right and the price was really impressive. A four course meal with a wine pairing during Springalicous is just HK$228 which is kind of amazing but even the normal price of HK$286 seems low to me...

Also, you might notice that my pictures look awfully professional. That's because they are and I want to thank Henry Kao for photographing our meal. And no that doesn't mean I'm getting paid to write this.

Anyway, snackies!



We started with this little trio of cold tapas: a shot of gazpacho, a slice of Iberico ham and a plump marinated anchovy on toast. This was yummy. Iberico ham is always welcome but to be honest the stars of this dish were the other two. I love me some anchovies and this pudgy oily little nugget did not disappoint. The gazpacho was actually extremely good. I wanted a pint instead of a shot. It was so refreshing especially in collusion with the anchovy.

Next up was the hot tapas, which for some for some reason there are no pictures of. Braised ox tail and grilled sardines. This was an exact opposite of the cold tapas. Where they woke me up, these put me in a rich comfy stupor. I feel like a traitor liking ox tail because my father hates it so much (once in a restaurant when the waiter said that day's special was ox tail soup my dad uncontrollably gagged so loudly that they thought he was choking), but I really do love it. It's one of the great, slow, lip smacky meats that always makes me feel like I'm snowed in somewhere. This oxtail was really meaty and cooked very well; it fell apart on the fork and left me feeling full for almost fourteen hours. The sardines were, of course, great. For some reason everyone at the table ate theirs so I ended up eating a whole school of them. Not that I'm complaining.

The main dish, of which I also have no picture was certainly no respite from the richness of the hot tapas. Duck confit with garlic potato and port wine sauce. I've had a long sting of bad western duck experiences in Hong Kong, although I've had an equal number of great Cantonese duck experiences and straight up life changing moments with some geese, but this broke the losing streak. This confit was intense but delicious with crackly skin covered in big flakes of sea salt and fatty tender meat. The port sauce was light and cut the grease of the bird nicely and not at all like the cloyingly sweet versions of this sauce I've had elsewhere. Also, the portion was surprisingly huge. This duck must have been SERIOUS.

To be honest I don't remember the potatoes. Whatever that means.



BA-BLOW!! Desert dropped like it knows what's up! Creme caramel, apple tart and caramel ice cream. The creme caramel was well done. Lovely, no surprises no disappointments. The caramel ice cream was ice cream that had the flavor of caramel. See what I'm sayin? And the tart was deceptively thin for the fat flavour it was hiding. Flaky, delicate, light and gone too soon. Put them all together and you got my eyes rolling around in public.

Also, there was wine! Two reds, a Cava (Spanish sparkling) and a desert wine. That's about as wine savvy as you'll see this blog get. But they were just enough to get me in the right head space to get back to work. Thanks nuevo!

I hope there are more tastings coming up...

Monday, March 28, 2011

i-Eat pt. 2

This will be a quick one. We ate at Monster Sushi in i-Square the other day in order to continue this whole i-Eat business. Whack. I hate being critical and I can usually find something to like but not really this time. We ordered some rolls and some tempura (fine, I suppose the tempura was fine). The rolls were all drenched in mayonnaise, the fish tasted old and the rice on one of my salmon pieces tasted like ammonia (Lucky concurs). The real problem was that there was about twenty minutes between the first two rolls we ordered and the last two, AND because we were sitting at the sushi bar we could see they weren't even getting started. Anyway, because it was so whack and taking so long we decided to cancel the second half of our order and go get some frozen yogurt.

I called the waitress over and very politely lied and said we had a ballet to get to so could we maybe cancel the second half of our order? She said that if they had started making it it would be impossible to cancel. This is absolutely fair but I felt pretty safe because I could see the sushi chefs not making it. So, what did the woman do? She stood right next to me and told the sushi chef in Cantonese "Hurry! Start making his sushi!" then, when the chef did start grabbing some rice she said "Oh, I'm so sorry the chefs have already started preparing your order."

Whack.

Tiger Mom

Just received this email from my mom,

"Hi Charley,

I just caught up on your blog. It is always a treat to read - very witty, but I do worry about your health! I have to make one momish comment. I know blogs are casual and little imperfections add to the charm, but would it be possible to stop using "real" when you mean really or very? I know it is one of my pet peeves but to me it always makes people sound uneducated when I hear it...
Love,
Mom"

Word is bond but as a sort of point counter-point I do wanna drop this.

Obviously it's hard to see how you come off from inside your own head but somewhere between Graham Greene and Ghostface is where I'm headed.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

ABSOLUTE MADNESS

I just can't get enough of Chinese deserts! We actually went here just after the da pai dong from the last post but I felt the experience needed its own spotlight. Going out to a Chinese desert place is closer to a drug experience than a dining experience. This is the kind of food that Jerry Garcia would eat on Mars. Where else can you say "I'd like the coconut ice cream over corn soup with tofu, extra peanuts. And instead of the black bitter gelatinous cubes, could I get the pink exploding balls?"
I'm telling you...

Look at this menu! It's a straight up hallucination. And this blurry little cell phone picture isn't even doing it justice. I've been to restaurants PAPERED in this stuff.

Before I get into the real wild stuff I want to take a minute to discuss my roommate Lucky's shameful cake addiction. Seriously I think this guy's tape worm has cancer or something. He's so skinny and wasting away before our very eyes but, as far as I can tell, he spends his days in a semi-somnolent stupor pounding more cake than Marie Antoinette. He's the one in the restaurant ordering a large slice of cheese cake with a side of tiramisu or drunkenly asking a taxi driver at 4am in broken Cantonese where he can score some profiteroles. Anyway this is a picture of the tiramisu he ordered to accompany his iced milk-coffee ice cream float...

This is the float.


This is what Rainbow Ryder ordered. Its an iced coffee (?) with red beans, tapioca balls and a scoop of coconut ice cream all topped with creamy coconut milk.

This hot black sludge is what Piano ordered. It looks just like what fills the sky in Disney movies when things are just starting to go bad.It's black sesame porridge and its actually one of my favorite Chinese deserts. That said, one time our drain backed up when I was living in Africa and this looks EXACTLY like what came out.


This flamboyant plate of Mardi Gras is what I ordered: pink blueberry shaved ice with powdered almonds, chocolate sauce and tapioca balls. I decided to forgo the usual sweet corn kernel topping in favor of the pink exploding balls because... well it seemed like an obvious call. Anyone who has ever had a 'gusher' is familiar with the exploding candy with a liquid center thing but these little guys take it to a whole other level. They are so springy and resilient that at first you think they're just tart gummy candies but just when you think they're a hoax and really bite down on them they explode with vigor showering your teeth and tongue with pink, tart, wildly artificial tasting juice. Madness.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Da Pai Dong, or Why I Moved to Hong Kong


Last night I had the distinct pleasure of being taken out to eat by some of my favorite people. They chose the place and I made my way out to the New Territories just as it was getting dark. The spot they chose was a da pai dong in the Tai Po Market Cooked Food Center. Oh they know me so well. Da pai dongs may be my favorite single thing about Hong Kong cuisine. Da pai dongs technically are outdoor food stands but since the whole SARS business a lot of them have been moved in doors to these huge cooked food centers. Basically da pai dongs serve incredibly yummy simple dishes in a wildly casual atmosphere. Think big crowds,piles of bones and shrimp bits all over the place, plastic chairs, and disposable plastic wrap table cloths that the waitresses replace for every knew group of diners. Also there are buckets of icey beer, the food comes out hot and fast and the old women yell a lot. Perfect.

I was with Rainbow, Piano and Lucky and we pretty much just let Rainbow (with some help from Piano I'm sure) order. My only request was one organ dish and one seafood dish, and Lucky wanted a chicken. Anyway, he did a REALLY good job and this is what happened.

First up was a big heaping plate of lovely succulent looking pissing shrimp. They were cooked perfectly and topped with sweet deep fried garlic. I love these little bastards. I remember getting them when I was like eleven when I was in Hong Kong with my parents at the Temple Street market and the flavor brings me back every time. Also they might be the perfect beer food of all time. Well, them and the deep fried intestines but we'll get to them later. Usually, as you may know, I eat the shell and everything but for these shrimps the shell is just too hard and painful so I have to dig in and peel 'em. Peeling these fellows is a real bitch and I still haven't quite gotten the hang of it. I met a guy the other night who has a wild technique of inserting his chopstick under the exo-skeleton in such a way that the naked shrimp just zips right out but I, for the life of me, cannot figure out how he does it. Lucky actually stabbed himself while peeling one the other night and got a nasty wound on his finger. My current approach is to first bite just bite the face off(by far my favorite bite cause of the nice crunch, the way all the garlic toppings get caught in the face and all the yummy brainy bits,) then one by one de-armor them by hand. I wish there was a way just to order their heads...

Next up where these little guys, spicy clams. These were very fresh and quite good. They were served in that typical brown Chinese sauce you find at a lot of American-Chinese restaurants but this version had a lot of heat. The sauce was really peppery and very nice. I love spicy and its not easy to find spicy food in Hong Kong so I was really happy to see this dish arrive.

God I love China. Two dishes in and out of nowhere comes this huge plate of pudgy chicken. Chicken is one of those things that the simpler it is the better. I want my chicken to taste chickeny. Why fuck around? And this it one of the simplest and most Delicious ways of serving a chicken out there, just steamed until the meat is nice and juicy and the fat has taken on that beautiful creamy opaque lemon-meringuey look. This was served simply with a sauce made from pouring scalding oil over a bowl of minced garlic. The chicken was pretty close to perfection and there was enough sauce left over that I could soak my rice in it.

Next to arrive was my good old friend, Fish fragranced Eggplant. I've talked about this delicious dish of stewed eggplant, ground pork and preserved fishies a lot on this blog. Suffice it to say that this was a really great version of this dish. Nice fresh chunks of eggplant, not overly cooked or too gooey/ sticky. Very nice.

Damn my shaky hands! This was maybe my favorite dish of the night and I couldn't get a good picture of it to save my life. Deep fried pig intestine served over pickled vegetables with a sweet sauce. Ok, maybe this is my favorite beer food. Crunchy, chewy, porky, fatty, the greasiness perfectly offset by the sweet sauce and the pickled veggies. I can't think of any food that tastes quite as uniquely unhealthy as this dish (and this coming from a man that is basically living on goose fat and milk tea). With every delicous bite your body just seems to scream NO. Also you really can't eat too many of these guys in a row to quickly or else they start tasting a little fecal. There I said it. Anyway, love them.

Next up were the old standard of razor clams with sweet garlic and vermicelli. This dish always tastes Thai to me but I'm assured it is as authentically Cantonese as they come. I never really eat razor clams at home but I love em here. They are just so meaty and satisfying compared to their non-razor cousin. The vermicelli looks like a garnish but it is actually incredibly important for soaking up all of that sweet vinegar garlic sauce. I think this dish is replacing "with preserved black beans" as my favorite preparation of razor clams and scallops too for that matter...

The damage done.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

i-Eat pt.1

So, they just opened a huge mall near my apartment (this might not be true, it could be the mall was there all along and I just moved here) called i-Square. Lucky and I always discuss getting dinner there but it's just too daunting. There must be close to one hundred restaurants in the mall ranging from the super fancy to Duke's Deli: home of the third best hot dog in Hong Kong. Anyway, yesterday I had an idea: how about we start at the top and eat at every single restaurant in the mall and it will be a running feature on my blog. I like the idea of not having to think too much or travel too far and I also like the idea of how huge and diverse the experience will prove to be. It kind of gets at what I love about Hong Kong. Everything is so much more vertical than horizontal here, there are lots of examples of buildings that if you wished you would never have to leave, apartments, discos, restaurants, spas, salons, grocery stores, tailors and electronic shops just an elevator ride away from each other.

Last night we decided to start at the top and took the elevator to the 31st floor. Unfortunately that floor's restaurant's cheapest appetizer was about $100 US, so we sheepishly took the elevator down to the 30th. Maybe I'll check out the 31st for my birthday or something.

The 30th is home to Nanhai No. 1 and the attached Eye Bar. I was invited to the opening of Eye Bar the other week and enjoyed myself but somehow managed to miss the presence of the entire restaurant and the view. I must have been seriously distracted because the whole two floor open space is surrounded with floor to ceiling windows allowing an unobstructed view of the city across the harbour. Quite impressive.

The restaurant itself sells the usual selection of Guangdong dishes, of which I am obviously quite fond. Before I get into the food I just wanted to say, I looked up this place on Open Rice (the Hong Kong yelp) just now and saw a bunch of people complaining about the service; well when we came the restaurant was pretty full and they seated us promptly right by the window and for the rest of the meal we were surrounded by smiling server-youth communicating with each other on walkie talkies. The service was really great, super friendly and navy seal efficient. Also, before dinner I ordered a dirty gin martini and was pretty disappointed...somehow even the olives didn't taste like olives. Will someone please tell me a place to get a good martini in this city?

We started our meal with some cold dishes. I was going for something a little refreshing and uplifting to wake us up a little after work and I think we did pretty good.

First we ordered the Marinated Baby Pig Legs in Yellow Wine. Basically these were piglet trotters soaked in scrumptious booze made in the same style as drunken pigeon and the like. I usually love this preparation but have had bad luck as of late with these kind of dishes in Hong Kong as they've either had no wine flavor or WAY too much. These broke that bad streak and were really great, although I'm not sure if Lucky though so. Just enough lovely wine and the trotters cooked to perfection with lots of crunchy cartilage,lip smacking collegian, crunchable baby bones and slick boozy skin.And they were served with an amazing light chili vinegrette! I think I pretty much ate the whole plate.

Next up was Fungus in Preserved Vinegar. I didn't get a great picture of this but it was maybe my favorite dish of the night. Nice black little flappy mushrooms with shredded veggies and tart bangin vinegar. The tiny mushroom caps would fill with vinegar and almost take on the mouth feel of little pickled berries. Very very good. Would somebody please explain what "preserved vinegar" is to me? I see it on menus all over the place here. Isn't all vinegar preserved? I'm just sayin...

Next up was the stewed Spare Ribs in Sweet Dark Sauce with Fried Mantou. This was really nice but so heavy I didn't know if I could handle it. The sauce was sweet but it was nicely complex compared to the cha chaan teng versions of this dish. It was served with pineapple thinly sliced on top. And of course there was the fried man tou! Mantou is Chinese steamed bread. Its kind of the Chinese equivalent of deep frying white-bread and just as delicious. I think your getting the picture by now, super fatty falling-apart-tender beef chunks covered in a sweet sticky sauce, with glazed pineapple and fried dough. Yeah, intense. This dish was pretty damn Gwai Lo but then again I am one so I suppose there's no shame in it. I guess the jury is still out on this dish. It was certainly yummy but too...much.

Now time for another rich and sticky sweet stewed dish! The Three Cup Chicken came right on the tail of the spare ribs. This is one of by back in the day cha chaan teng favorites. The Chinese for this dish is three cup chicken but it was on this menu as Taiwanese stewed chicken. Basically the dish is big chunks of chicken stewed with a sweet and sticky sauce served with mushrooms and garlic cloves and assorted vegetables in a sizzling clay bowl. This version was really good. The chicken chunks were huge and really tender and I liked that they were served with whole garlic cloves and pearl onions. The onions were especially nice as they acted as little sauce sponges. The garlic cloves were yummy but too underdone, a little too crunchy and green tasting. Again, this dish was good but just too heavy it was over-kill and I was starting to feel food-stupid.

Ah ha! Tofu with olive leaves and diced pork. This was really really nice. I barely noticed the diced pork all though it was infused with that nice glistening meatiness that tells you pork is somewhere on the scene. I'd never eaten anything with olive leaves and they where bangin', giving the dish a savory almost herby (but not at all) flavor and added a nice subtle crunchiness to the whole thing. They kind of reminded me texturally of the way they use fried basil in some Thai dishes. The texture of the tofu was really nice too, pan fried skin with a shockingly soft almost liquid center. This was a great dish for eating over rice. Really good.

Next I foolishly and indulgently ordered desert. Well, we split two deserts and desert wine and coffee...

We ordered Asti, the super sweet Italian sparkling wine. My only experience with this stuff before was when I used to buy it at the corner store because it was cheaper than Andre and I was always disappointed because it is just so god damned sweet but this time we ordered the profiteroles with ginger/ vanilla ice cream, banana and warm chocolate sauce and I thought the two might go perfectly. I also ordered my favorite Chinese desert, warm almond cream. I was right that the desert wine went really nicely with everything but to be honest the desert was really the disappointment of the meal. The profiteroles especially were way below standard. The pastry was oddly dry and crispy, instead of soft and flaky. The ice cream was fine but too icy and not creamy enough and the sauce might have once been warm but by the time it made it to our table was cold and hard.

The first taste of almond cream was amazing. It was the richest almond cream I had ever had, frothy, creamy and super sweet but that richness actually sabotaged it as within about one minute of arriving at our table it had congealed into a thick puddly kind of almond pudding. It had nothing on the best almond cream I've ever had from Sun Tung Lok. We didn't finish it.

All in all I'll probably come back to this restaurant. With the view and the ambiance and the reasonable price it would be a great date restaurant. The food really was pretty good and I'm excited to try some of their less white person oriented dishes. Also I hear they serve dim sum...

So, one out of thirty one floors down. I'll keep you posted.


And another thing, before the food they served these amazing little shrimp crackers that tasted like a mix between shrimp crackers and pork rinds, god bless 'em.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

COW FACE COW FACE


I’ve been hearing about this place since the first night I landed in Hong Kong. Cow Face. Even the name makes me hungry. Unfortunately it’s way out in Tai Po Market, only opens at one and tends to sell out of most of the good stuff (the face) in a couple of hours. So, it’s been tough actually getting out there to try it. Well, last weekend we made it and I’m already planning my next trip back. Rainbow Ryder, Lucky, Nickie and I arrived just before opening time and already the line stretched down the street.

Luckily there’s a fresh juice place next store so we had something to sip while we waited. Basically cow face is a beef soup noodle place. They are famous for their rich broth and their cow face soup which is basically stewed beef cheek and all those good facey bits. The beef stock is diluted to make the soup broth but you can order a side of beef that is served in the unadulterated super-rich pure cow face stock and add as much as you like (a lot) to the soup.

I ordered a cow face soup with thin egg noodles and a side of butterfly beef. The butterfly cut is something you really only ever see old heads in Hong Kong eating. At least I think it’s called butterfly beef... I can’t find the website I learned about it from now. Anyway it is SUPER FATTY. We’re talking at least sixty percent fat to forty percent meat and that’s the low end; most of my bites were ninety percent fat at least. In the picture all of that stuff that looks like cabbage or something is cow fat. See what I’m sayin’?

Now just think how amazing a piece of beef fat stewing all day long would be but...

the cow face was even better! A cow’s cheek is pretty much all connective tissue so you can imagine the magic that occurs after a day spent stewing. The meat gets so soft and all of the connective tissue completely dissolves and the fat becomes almost custard like so that you can literally swish the whole bite of beef and fat through your teeth, which by the way is my new test for beef tenderness. And if you think the beef sounds good just imagine what all of that fat does to the broth! Jesus! I want to put that thick beefy broth on everything: pancakes, salad, vanilla ice cream...

Now obviously I was partial to the meat but, you won’t believe this, the noodles were actually my favourite. I’m in the land of noodles and these were the best I’ve had so far. I ordered the e min, which Rainbow told is actually pretty rare these days. E min is a medium thin egg noodle which is often lightly fried. These noodles really got me going. They were very eggy and rich but also managed to really soak up the broth so that they had this real decadent eggy-beefy thing going on. Also, I insist this is true although my dining companions say I was crazy, they had this super subtle almost acidic bite to them that really did it for me. That, and they were cooked perfectly: fully cooked but you could still really sink your teeth into them and munch. Nothing soggy or slimy about these guys.

We also ordered the obligatory greens with oyster sauce which at first I thought was kind of a joke. Actually the oyster sauce proved the perfect foil to the rich soup and really helped cut the grease. Also I think the vitamins in the veggies might have saved my life, as I was starting to lose feeling in my extremities...

Monday, March 7, 2011

Flossy Nordic

Here we go! Things are really starting to p p p pop off. The other night I got invited to an intimate unveiling of the new spring menu at FINDS. FINDS (which stands for Finland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden) is a kind of Nouveau-Scandinavian fine dining restaurant here by renowned Chef Jaakko Sorsa. It’s been around a long time and people love it. I’ve wanted to go for a minute when I got the invitation and was especially juiced because they just relocated to a new spot just a few blocks away from my house. This was my first real restaurant-press event and if the people at other restaurants are anything like the fine folks at FINDS then I’m in for a very happy time here. Jaakko was great. I got to interview him a few weeks ago and he’s one of the most laid back, happy and personable Chefs I’ve ever met. I also finally met James Gannaban, their marketing and PR manager, of “Asia’s Most Hyperactive Gay Boy” blog fame who was just as wonderful as I’d been led to expect.

Anyway the restaurant is beautiful; it’s like eating in a psychedelic Scandinavian tree house. I got started with one of their cocktails, some new take on a Mojito I believe, but really tart and with Gin so right up my alley. Before I talk about the food I gotta talk about the bread. The bake all of their own breads in house and it is bangin! Their dark bread is great but I actually found myself pounding the crusty, warm, white bread. They serve the bread with olive oil, cottage cheese mousse and butter. The butter is their own house blend of Danish butters and it is some of the best butter I have ever had in my life. I had to stop myself from buttering all of my entrees.

Ok so lets see...

The meal started with smoked danish mackerel mousse with french bean, asparagus, potato and radish salad with crispy malt bread. Anyone who knows me knows this dish was bound to please. This kind of fish preparation was exactly what I was hoping for when I heard I'd be enjoying Scandinavian food. To be honest I would have loved an even stronger fishy flavor as the (delicious) bread kind of overwhelmed it. That said, the dish really showcased the mousse's unbelievable lightness. I think James said something along the lines of "it's like eating a fishy cloud" and that was exactly it. I could have eaten a whole bowl of the stuff. The surprise star of the plate for me was actually the simple potato salad, and the potato's themselves in particular. They were waxy, flavorful and savory, a perfect backdrop to the mousse.

Next up was "Jaakko's Spring Salad" with baby tomatoes, air-dried ham, feta cheese, white and green asparagus,
French beans and butter lettuce with an aged sherry vinaigrette. Yummy yummy. There was just so much to love about this salad. The baby tomatoes were individually pealed and marinated so they really packed a punch. I'm a little obsessed with bite construction and this salad really got it. The sharp feta with the salt of the ham and the fruity acidic burst of the little tomatoes all bound together with the vinaigrette and mellowed by the french beans made for a perfect little bite.

This was the real savory star of the night for me: slow-baked fillet of John Dory with green pea puree, potato gratin and red chard. I don't think I'd ever had John Dory before and its one of my favorite fish now. Which is a surprise because its mild meatiness is not usually what I look for in a fish (the oilier and fishier the better I say) but man oh man this guy was lovely. The fish was just so savory and had such a good filling quality to it. The gratin was also lovely. I should have written down the ingredients in it and to be honest I can't really remember (some sort of bangin cheese and...something) but it was sharp and very flavorful. What really blew me away was that pea puree. My god! I would have had a milkshake of that stuff. So sweet! It tasted like eating peas off the vine in the spring as a child (not sure if I ever really did that or not). It was a puree that just tasted of sunshine and joy, I can't really explain it. They were so good I actually asked the chef where they were sourced from and it turned out like me, they were from the U.S.A. Holla! I knew it. They're sweet because they're free.

Next up was this little lovely pile of meat. Spring Lamb Tenderloin with potatoes simmered in veal stock, edamame beans and lamb jus. They source their lamb from a small farm in Australia and it was great, cooked very well and tasty. It just didn't blow me away like the fish. I've always considered myself very much a meat over fish guy but not in this meal. The potatoes were lovely as well, and I do really love when the juice of two baby animals is mixed in one dish.

This was another wow moment. We were all chatting during the meal but we fell silent for this one. I actually said "holy shit" when I took my first bite but I think I covered it up pretty well by pretending to cough into my napkin. This banana-toffee pie was the best I have ever had. Hands down, without a doubt. It was made with licorice flakes and rum cream. A layer of cookie pie crust, then thick gooey toffee, then some rum cream, then some caramelized bananas, then some whipped cream with mint and licorice, then I'm pretty sure he just poured rum all over the whole thing. It crunched, it oozed, it was light, rich, sweet but tempered with the more complex burnt flavors of toffee and rum. The chef confessed that he used a lot of rum, "because I like alcohol" and it worked so well here. This desert was strong!

After desert we had some sort of molecular, nitrogen, vanilla, vodka, neo-ice cream thing but to be honest I barely remember it. I did enjoy blowing the nitrogen vapor out of my nostrils like a dragon but my mind was completely preoccupied with images of banana-toffee pie.

All in all a wonderful meal with great people. I'm excited to bring my girlfriend to FINDS on a date when she gets to town. I already know what im gonna eat: Spring salad, John Dory, Banana-toffee pie and about fifty slices of heavily buttered bread. Oh man.

Sunday Snackies

I’m starting to feel real guilty about this blog. I was so excited about it, still am in fact, but I’ve started working (gasp) and this has seriously cut down on my time to go out and try random restaurants. This is especially frustrating because I work at a food magazine, so I spend all day looking at all of the snackies I could be eating. The job has also shown me how little I really know about the Hong Kong food scene. I started making a list of places I have to try from noodle shops to Michelin starred fancy pants spots but the list is already like sixty spots deep and I haven’t gotten to try even one of them. I have had the opportunity to interview some of the chefs at some of the swankier spots so that’s been fun and maybe soon I’ll start to actually eat a little professionally and that would be pretty tight.

Anyway, it occurred to me that I haven’t really touched on dim sum. And that’s a shame because dim sum makes me really extraordinarily happy. Pretty much every Sunday, if we wake up before dinner, Lucky and I switch off between getting a fat sushi brunch or an equally fat dim sum brunch. This Sunday was dim sum. We went to the neighborhood spot just down the street. This spot is especially bangin because it is 24hrs and often I will go twice in a day, once for dinner and again at like one or two in the morning. This restaurant isn’t amazing or anything. It’s typical of a thousand other teashops around the city but that’s just the thing, if it were in NYC or San Francisco it would be BY FAR the best around. I just can’t believe how much cheaper and better the dim sum is here than in the states. Although, truth be told the very best single bite of dim sum I’ve ever eaten was a steamed jade shrimp dumpling in Millbrae California at the now deceased Fook Yuen. But that was just a fluke. This shit here beats all the rest by a mile.

This is the restaurant. Notice the fat stacks of steamer baskets out front. You can alway order to go dim sum if you want but seeing as how the food gets to your table within thirty seconds of ordering it I always just kick it. Also that way I can have a milk tea and watch the cooking shows on the tv. That reminds me! The TV here is wild. I'm pretty sure its all about food in someway. Even the soap operas have scenes of people eating or cooking or talking about food. There are basic cooking shows, restaurant review shows, food game shows, a show where they make models with no cooking experience prepare really complicated dishes then laugh at them and there's my favorite show in which around ten super attractive friends go to wild restaurants, order a thousand different dishes then spend half an hour stuffing their faces and looking pleased. The first week I got here there was what seemed to be a really important press conference on the big screen tv at the neighborhood mall. It was zoomed in on two really serious looking Chinese businessmen's faces, one had a little Hong Kong flag lapel pin and one had a little Mainland Chinese lapel pin. When the camera zoomed out you could see they were both holding the same over-sized golden carving knife, then a roast pig was wheeled out and the men sliced it in half pausing for a photo opp. Perfect.



Anyway, so this was the first dim sum I ordered. Its a meatball. They are so good. The meatballs are held together with tofu skin and very heavily spiced. They're big too, about the size of the palm of my hand and I can usually only eat one or two because they are so juicy (greasy). Seriously they spray and squirt juice everywhere. Sometimes in a concentrated scalding stream, sometimes in a fragrant grease colored mist.



These little guys are wild. I'd never seen these before coming here. I can't remember what's in them... I think its pork but what really makes them special is that there is a hard boiled quail egg stuffed in each one. Damn Hong Kong knows how to push the health envelope. Nothing goes better with pork fat than rich quail yoke.



These are actually my favorite dim sum. No funny business, just plane old steamed shrimp dumplings. Man when these things are done right it's on a whole other level. I wake up most mornings craving these. When their perfect they have skin thats so thin its see-thru but strong enough to get roughed up with my chop sticks without ever breaking. They should never get stuck to the paper in the basket but should have a slight tackiness in the mouth. Inside one medium sized, recently deceased shrimp, quietly curled and just barely steamed to firm, crunchy perfection. A little soy sauce and holy god.



These are another favorite. You can't see in the picture but the rolled up rice noodles contain cha siu pork, the famous Cantonese sweet bbq'd pork. They're always swimming in a really mellow, not too salty soy sauce that when combined with the sweet pork really gets going.



Here it is. The reason I can no longer walk up stairs without taking a rese. Look at the beautiful chunk of roast piggy. Portioned perfectly so every bite contains equel amounts of pink salty flesh and creamy fat, all topped off with a crunchy porky bit of roasted skin. The photo can't convey the crunchiness of this skin; the sound you make eating this sis the same one you make when you eat corn chips. On man, you take one of these little guys, drag it through the green onion infused oil, then a good long thorough bath in the fiery yellow mustard, and its worth the inevitable coronary episode.

Ok, I'll leave you with that. I'm actually too hungry to keep this up right now. Much love.