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...

My Neighborhood

So two things. First is I found my camera (it was under my couch) and second is that Lucky and I decided to move. We're planning on moving to Kowloon (one of the worlds, maybe the worlds, most densely populated places). Right now we live in Sheung Shui way out in the New Territories near the mainland border and about the closest thing to a small town Hong Kong has to offer. I'm excited to get to the bright lights and big city but I'm gonna miss Sheung Shui. I've become quite fond of this little town of cha chaan tengs and barber shops and I've grown especially attached to the snackies here. So, for this post I'm gonna give you a little photographic tour of my favorite (or at least most frequent) Sheung Shui snacks. These aren't always something special or michelin worthy but they are meals I eat almost every day and they all make me quite happy.

This is what I've just returned from eating and has been my go to late breakfast for the last week or so. I'm not quite sure the correct chinese for this dish but to order it I say something like min qi niu rou fan. Which means something like minced beef rice. The dish itself consists of a huge pile of white rice completely submerged in sweet tomato sauce with ground beef and a fried egg thrown on top for good measure. The sauce tastes super cheap in that bangin way. In fact it tastes almost exactly like the sauce in spaghettios. Delicious! When it is served you mix it all up so the egg yolk binds the sauce to the rice and the fried egg gets all shredded and mixed in. Often times this is served as part of a special set meal with a light broth soup and a milk tea or coffee for about $3.80US. I always spring for an iced milk tea which kicks the price up to a whopping $4.00US. All in all a hearty, delicious and affordable meal.

Now, I must take a moment to talk about the iced milk tea (冷奶茶). Basically they just brew the shit out some tea, pour it over crushed ice, then over-compensate for the over-brewing with way too much sweetened condensed milk. I cannot begin to explain how amazing this stuff is. And so addictive, I'm shocked the CIA hasn't already flooded America's inner-city streets with it. I drink this stuff everyday and it is making me kind of a fat ass but I figure if I really wanna be a food writer a little pudge gives me some credibility. Here's my boy Lucky enjoying his ice milk tea


This picture was actually taken at dinner a couple of days ago. I always go to cha chaan tengs for breakfast and lunch and Lucky said I was missing out on all of there dinner-fare so he took me out to one of his favorite neighborhood spots to try some. We ordered his two favorite dishes, Fish Fragranced Eggplant (鱼香茄) and Three Cup Chicken (台式三杯鸡). The fish fragrance eggplant is really a bad translation on my part. It is eggplant cooked in a thick sauce with salted fish and ground pork. This stuff is bangin, real filling comfort food with a really strong savory flavor.

This particular dish was especially strong. Cantonese cooking is all about the light flavors so strong flavors are usually a sign that the chef is covering up less than perfect ingredients. In this case that rule proved true as we found a maggot burrowed in one of the eggplant pieces had to stop enjoying this dish after a couple of bites. The other Lucky favorite was the Three Cup Chicken. Another heavily spiced dish of chicken chunks stewed with onions and a thick spice paste.


This dish was delicious. A perfect dish for a cold (50o) winter night, although I'm stil retraining my mouth to get used to the Chinese method of butchering chicken which somehow manages to leave at least a sliver of bone in every bite.

Probably my favorite type of eatery in the neighborhood (right next store in fact) is the roast meat or siu mei spot. The most common roast meats are duck, goose, bbq pork (cha siu) and roasted fatty port with crispy skin (check out the "pork map" in an earlier post). I'm sure you've seen these places in Chinatowns all over the place with the ducks hanging in the window but they are WAY better here. I absolutely love this stuff but its so rich and unhealthy (apparently especially frowned upon in Chinese medicine) that I can almost never get anyone to go with me. The other day I recieved the good news that I'd gotten the internship I was tring for so I decided to take myself out for a celebratory late lunch of fat meat and cold beer.



Check this plate out!!!

Thats crispy fatty roast pork, roasted chicken and BBQ pork. Yummy yummy. In order to get at least a little bit of vitamins I also copped a plate of garlic and broccoli greens. I kind of ordered the greens as an after thought but they were actually the star of the meal: Perfectly par boiled to a crisp and fresh iridescent green, lightly sauced and chopped full of whole roasted garlic cloves. Delicious.


Before we get away from the roast meats entirely I just wanted to share a pic of some of the Hong Shao Rou (红烧肉) we had the other night at the Shanghainese spot in the basement of the Sha Tin mall.

Jealous?

Some other neighborhood favorites of mine are the noodle soup places. I always order the extra spicy broth and the waitresses gather around to laugh as I choke and sweat my way through the bowl, my face covered with snot and chili oil. The way it usually works is you check off different ingredients on a list, pick your broth and kind of noodle then they go put it together for you. As of now my usual is beef brisket or duck meat, beef tendon, fish balls, fried fish balls, shrimp wantons, fried tofu and tofu skin in spicy broth with ramen style noodles. Sometimes I'll order sausage too but thats always a risk because sometimes they just throw a hot dog in (see below). I always order my soup with a side of fried fish skin. You dip the fish skin in the broth (it makes a nice popping crackling sound) until it is nice and soft then munch. So good. The fried tofu is especially good becasue it soaks up the soup like a sponge but the fried skin keeps it all inside in one juicy bite.




The last thing I wanna share about my neighborhood is the desert place.


I don't know if your familiar with chinese deserts or not but them shits is crazy. Chinese deserts are like what people on acid would think people on mars ate. They're mostly all neon colored and full of all kinds of wild textures. Want some chilled black gel cubes with condensed milk, how bout cold tofu with black sesame balls and suger water or highly sweetened corn stew with tiny neon orange cubes and a side of tapioca ice cream? I gotta give it to this place, there menu is huge. They must serve two hundred different deserts and the posters and chalk boards all over the walls advertise like a hundred more.



I wish I could say I've tried a lot of them but on my first day I got addicted to the black sesame ice with banana and mango. Now, I know that sounds basic but I can't even begin to explain how bizarre it is. The ice is oddly dry and almost powdery and is always either in stringy piles or odd gossamer ribbons. Basically its like eating a pile of frozen sesame flavored cob webs. To be honest the desert for some reason kind of reminds me of "The Secret of Nimh" and I LOVE it.


Alright I guess desert is a good place to end. I hope you've enjoyed the snackie tour of my neighborhood!

Take my broth away

My first week in Hong Kong found me in kind of a foodie haze. All the cheap and delicious snackies. All of the new flavors. I was overwhelmed! My senses numbed and everything sort of blurred together making it very difficult for me to be objective about whatever it was I was eating. By now, I think the madness has come to an end; all thanks to a noodle shop that cut through the bullshit.

Last week Lucky's friend Killer agreed to take me out for some drinks and show me around a little bit. We met at TST station and before going out both decided the time was ripe for a fortifying light lunch. Killer took me to the first noodle shop outside of the station and ordered me a fat bowl of beef noodle soup with everything in it and a plate of leafy greens with oyster sauce. I thought it was just some random noodle spot chosen for convenience but the first bite floored me. When I couldn't speak, a slurping killer confessed "Oh yeah. This is my favorite place. I used to live around here. I only come here for beef soup noodles; the family that runs it is really nice". It was then that I realized the degree to which I'd been f'ng around before.

All of the random neighborhood spots I'd been trying were great (some were excellent) but this place was exceptional. The noodles were thin, ramen style and cooked perfectly. They started with an almost crunchy bite then, as they sat in the soup, mellowed into a perfect al dente. The soup itself must have been stewing for days. Although the broth was not dark the taste was so rich and beefy it tasted like sucking on a marrow bone. Paper thin slices of beef floated in the soup their connective tissue having complelty melted away leaving little pools of unctuous lip-smacking goodness floating on the surface. In the soup were pork balls, fish balls, pork wantons, shrimp wantons and a big sheet of tofu skin. The best bite of the whole meal for me was the shrimp wanton. The wantons themselves were huge, just slightly smaller than my cell phone. The noodle was delicious: paper thin with a slight bite. Inside each wonton wrapper were curled whole, or barely chopped large shrimps. The shrimps were perfectly, barely cooked and unbelievably fresh. The wrinkles of the wonton skin held just enough rich beefy broth, the firm shrimp providing the perfect pleasant little crunch. A perfect bite.

Also, the place was cheaper than the other noodles I'd been eating. Thank god for those too few moments in life when the best is also the least expensive. So now I'm ratcheting up my networking skills and getting all of the local recommendations I can handle. Once you've tasted the level of what Hong Kong has to offer you never want to go back. This weekend Killer, Lucky and their boys Rainbow Rider and Piano are taking me out for some more local snackies and I cannot bare the waiting much longer. I'll keep you posted. Now I'm off for my morning egg tart and milk tea...

錫記雲吞麵食 Shek Kee Wanton Noodles

尖沙咀宜昌街5號B舖

Tele:2317-4649

Near the C exit of TST station