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...

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.

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.