Errr....So Random?

So some wise guy decided to open a Hyatt Regency Hotel in Shatin, University station to be exact. For people who are not familiar with the area, to put it politely....its in the middle of fuck nowhere! It takes an hour walk to the closest shopping mall and surrounded by the mountain and the sea side, its an odd place to build a hotel.

So happens to be my parent's anniversary. To try something different and new, we decide to give our local Hyatt hotel a sign of support and try out their soon-to-be famous chinese Restaurant Shatin 18. Why 'soon-to-be' famous? well...I will explain later...

The restaurant itself is going for that New Hip Asian look, with the dim lighting, dark wooden benches and comfortable sofa booth seats. It also has a large open kitchen where you see their chefs spin their magic with the oriental culinary weapon aka 'The Wok'. The glass covered open kitchen makes the kitchen chefs looked like caged animals. Anyways, the place boasts itself for their wide selection of regional Chinese food, from Cantonese, Shanghai to Beijing. They even had a chef in a noodle bar to prove it, he hand makes lanzhou liamen/noodle in front of an audience upon order.

Mainly the dishes there are forgettable....
Special Appetizer Platter of BBQ pork, Roasted pork, Marinated Beef, Duck Liver, Spicy Pickles and mushrooms. The only thing amazing here is the surprising juicy BBQ pork. Melts in your mouth at first bite.
Stir fried Scrimp Balls....meh
Bak Choi in Fish Soup.....nothing too special hereBraised Tofu with Bamboo Shoot (nearly typed Baboon there ahahaa). Really well done...but nothing too fancy

So....why I am writing this review....because i left the best dish at the last...
PEKING DUCCKKKKK!!!!!

Okay, I cheated...let me backtrack a bit

I first read about Shatin 18 from the uber awesome Time Out bi-weekly magazine, which writes some excellent food reviews in all areas of HK. It was the magazine that gave me the tip off of a amazing new style of Peking Duck, opening up in my own back garden. The chef in the house is an ex-chef of the infamous Quanjude/全聚德, one of the oldest and the most well-known peking duck restaurant in Beijing. The chef promises that he cooks the proper Beijing way, unlike the local method they use in local famous eateries such as Peking Garden. The ducks are hot blasted in a oven until all the fat melts away, leaving only a layer of crunchy skin.

(Sorry, the food was too good, I forgot to take photos...so have to steal from Open Rice...)

As the chef slowly peels away the skin of the duck, he explains carefully in the 3 unorthodoxymethods of eating

Method One: Only the Skin
You must dipped the skin in sugar. The crunchy skin will melt in your mouth, with a mix of roasted duck and sweetness swirling in your mouth. Hmmmmmm

Method 2: Only the Meat
Eat this the traditional method, with flour wrap, seafood sauce and a few stripe of pickle and onion. The tender meat and the wrap makes the whole thing taste like an awesome chinese-taco

Method 3: Skin with Meat Attached to ItMix this with Minced Garlic instead of Seafood Sauce. The garlic sharpens your taste bud and brings out the flavour of the duck from the skin.

The chef insisted that each serving must contain EXACTLY 88 pieces, no more, no less. I guess its for Good Luck?

So how random is it? You are in the middle of fuck nowhere of Shatin, so happens to find a 5 star hotel, in a restaurant that calls itself Shatin 18, being served by one of the best Peking Duck chefs in the World? And the Duck? Best you ever had! Don't care if it cost $360HKD each.

Final Verdict: Do it for the Duck. Its worth the trip. Maybe as good or even Better than Peking Garden. No Jokes. NOW GO THERE BEFORE MORE PEOPLE FIND OUT!

Original Time Out Review: http://www.timeout.com.hk/restaurants-bars/features/26793/sha-tin-18.html
Openrice: http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=30739

The Deadliest Meal Ever......

Your stomach is boiling, your head covered in sweat. Your breathing in uncontrollable, your lips are shaking.

Why is it so hot everywhere around you? Why do you feel so exhausted? Did you just ran a marathon?

No....you just ate Sichuan.

Recommended by a good friend of mine from Poly U, he said that some of the greatest food are hidden in the old neighbor of Hung Hom. He brought me and a bunch of friends from my summer internship to try out some serious 'authentic' Sichuan food you can ever find in HK. Funny thing was that it happen to be around the corner from my other review of 聯記川王涼粉, my other humiliating spicy ordeal.

The shop is unnoticeable, like an average looking cha chan teng, it blends in with the odd mixtures of shops along this aging street. During daytime, it serves only Spicy Rice Noodle so casual diners or office workers. The real good food is only served at night.

When we order the dishes, they give us a variety of spices to choose from, 'Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Super, Extreme'. The choice of words....interesting. It didn't help the store owner, a Sichuan Woman, tease Cantonese people that none of us could handle spices. So...us being young simple-minded students, decided to step up to the challenge and order EXTREME for all of our appetizers. BIG MISTAKE
The meal started with pig lungs and stomach, a chewy appetizer to open up the dining stomach. Spicy Pig Intestines and Red Chili Oil Dumplings. You can tell by the bits of chili and the red colour of each of the dishes that this place is seriously no jokes. The feelings and emotions you get from eating Sichuan is indescribable. I first thought that I was fine after the first few bites. Then eventually the spice crept up to me. My lips began to shake and rumble out of my control and I was starting to lose my taste buds. Every bite I took, my eyes began to water in pain. WTF? why does it feel like torture when I am simply eating a meal? I instantly ordered a beer to help cool down my mouth.
Amazing, the extreme spiciness from the appetizers made our mouths more adjusted towards the less spicy main dishes, making it taste extra better. The best dish in the restaurant, their 口水雞/ Spicy Chicken (or literally Saliva Chicken). The meat is surprising tender and not dry at all. The spices actually sharpens the chicken taste, making it extra tasty. It also came at a big portion. We loved this dish so much we ordered a second one. By the time the 水煮魚/Spicy Fish arrived, no one on the table had the energy or the taste buds left to enjoy this dish. Our mouths were just numb, and the fish was full of sneaky hidden bones, so the mixture of the two leads to very scary choking scenarios. I honestly need to come here the second time to try out this dish again, I honestly couldnt taste anything when I had eating it.

The owner was amazed how much spice our table endured throughout the meal, but laughed at how many bottles of beer that we drank to neutralize the spices. Everything in the restaurant tasted authentic, something you rarely see in HK and the chef is no joke when it is adding spiciness to the dishes. By the time the meal was over, I couldnt even stand up straight, my whole body was wobbly trying to control that burning sensation in my stomach.

Final Verdict: Definite must try for Spice Lovers. But you cant take spice at all, AVOID AT ALL COST
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=21183

sadly....the best ramen in town?

There are times when I get a bit of ramen craving. Just something about a simple bowl of noodles that makes me satisfy. And since ramen was the only food I could afford back in my trip to Tokyo, I guess Me and ramen bonded during that 5 day tour.

Here back in HK, ramen selection is a little....lacking. There is the Ajisen Ramen chain....which throws in odd mixes of ingredients and invents a new flavor of ramen every week. It really lacks the authenticity and the tradition of Japanese Ramen.

蔡瀾 recommended Domon, a small ramen store located inside Granville Circuit. Of course, Domon is already a large food chain with stores all around HK, but he recommend people trying its first original store, where the main chef still works. Apparently him and the chef go wayy back, and the chef spent 10 years in japan learning how to cook ramen, and decided to set up a shop in a quiet little alleyway, just like all good japanese restaurants. Of course, granville now blew up into a fashion street...so not so quiet anymore.
When you first enter the store, you already smell a very strong tonkotsu/Pork Bone Soup in the air, its bubbling from the ramen soup that is cooking in the open kitchen. On the counter was a row of shochou leftover from past customers. It is a tradition in some japanese restaurant to keep the unfinished bottles of rice wine for their customers, so that they could finish it for their next meal, I guess it is to build customer loyalty and a sense of community. Most japanese wannabe restaurants in town don't even offer such service due to the lack of shelf space, I guess seeing this shows that this place serves quite a few local japanese customers already. And by listening to the chatter around the restaurant, I could hear someone speaking japanese.
Anyways, I got myself a Butter Ramen in their famous tonkotsu soup, a 蔡瀾 recommendation. The butter slowly melts into the soup, bringing out the soup flavor even more. The soup base was a little bit milder than the ones in japan, I guess its to cater towards the chinese taste buds, but its nice and thick with a good pork taste to it, alot better than any crappy ramen joints out there. The ramen itself was alright, very chewy and was not overcooked, and it had a nice mix of ingredients of corn and bbq pork. But overall, it was the well cooked soup base that was the defining factor in the whole dish. Surprisingly, it was the amazing scrimp gyoza that stole the show. It is voted as the one of the best dumplings in HK by 飲食男女 magazine. The skin was finely crafted, thin enough so you could see the ingredients inside, but thick enough to hold the fillings inside. The filling was a mix of onions, minced pork and bits of pig fat...that slowly dissolves, giving a swirl of flavors in your mouth. Wow.....they should specialize in making dumplings...

Final Verdict: It's a little pricy, weighting in around $80 for a ramen plus the gyoza side. But IMO best ramen in town so far.....Sure, its not Japan good...but its sadly the best we got :(

NOTE: MUST TRY THEIR GYOZA
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=5301

L'Atelier de Suck!

The following restaurant takes place two hours after my last entry......

I guess I am extra critical on famous restaurants, especially critically acclaimed French restaurants that is featured in the Michelin Guide. With all the hype built up by food critics, you naturally would expect the food to feel like a divine intervention, as if the clouds in the sky will part and angels will descend from the heaven to spoon feed you. After all, these restaurants do cost a fortune to eat.

So it was time for me to try out L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, a Michelin two star international restaurant chain ran by celebrity chef Joël Robuchon himself. Ok I lied. I really didnt try L'Atelier, its just too damn expensive, not even Super Mom Saturdays could afford it. But what I COULD afford was its little brother, Le Salon de Joël Robuchon, its cafe branch located right below L'Atelier. Initially I was looking for a place for quick tea around Central, and was choosing between the wonderful looking Cafe Landmark, or the hidden Le Salon. Since the waiters seemed overly enthusiastic in sitting us, we chose Le Salon.

The seating in the place is a little awkward, each table is placed between each pillars on the 3rd floor of the mall. But the seating area is a little to small, so my seat pokes out into the mall corridor. It really lacks the comfortable seating like other cafes
We had to order the food at a separate counter across the mall, and the waiters will then kindly serve us the food.
Got a Chocolat noisette, a salted caramel tart, Freshly squeezed apple juice, and a Blue Mountain Coffee....The chocolat noisette was good, it had the perfect sweetness, like the Magnolia cupcakes in NYC. Nice and creamy. Funny how the sign says 'This is not edible'. The salted caramel tart was even better, very finely made and not overly sweet. The cakes and tarts in Le Salon were all made very well and bite size, not bad for $35HKD.
Here's when the rant starts........
For a $55HKD ($8CAD) coffee, you get a rather average sized cup,and it is disappointing that it is only half filled, as if the restaurant was having a shortage on coffee bean. What making it even moreee disappointing was that the coffee itself was sour, a sign that the coffee bean are kept in a moist area and had become moldy. It tasted like the sour coffee you get in Cha Chan Tengs, was pretty awful....and I felt robbed that I paid $55 for it....especially from a cafe like this.

The apple juice.....just tasted like normal apple juice.....but it cost $45.

And finally, the service! It was absolutely terrible!
1. First told us there were seats....then told us we had to wait because they were full
2. Finally got us seats....but only pointed at a general direction of where the table is in the mall....no escort service........we had to guess where our table was in Landmark...
3. Food took a long 20 minutes to serve, even though none of them required any additional heating or special preparation
4. The coffee came with no cream. what kind of cafe serves coffee without cream/milk?
5. Getting a glass of water and milk took the waiters another 15 minutes

Final Verdict: Cake set? Wonderful! Everything else? Yuck! Sorry, no angels here...no divine intervention or heavenly miracles. You better luck looking for them Cafe Landmark next door, you get better service....and better coffee.

At most....just get their tarts and cake sets takeout...and AVOID their beverages at all cost.
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=17506

Super Mom Saturdays: the SoHo Expedition

I noticed I am a little behind on the Super Mom Saturdays updates. Sor Sor. Been busy for the past few weekends, so there were a few 'canceled' SMS. Now its back to full swing....

First off, Dorothy, my old high school friend & idol food columist for HK magazine, tipped me off on a new restaurant that opened up in town. The place is an experimental restaurant opened up by the famous furniture shop 'Homeless', an trendy stores that sells a variety of designer furniture. It's not your average IKEA, the place is always stock with the latest gadgets and gizmos for the house that makes people go 'Ohhhh!' or 'Ahhhhh!'. Always a prime location to show around for tourists who wants to see the designer shops around the SoHo area.

Anyways, for a creative shop like this, it would be interesting to see what innovative ideas they could come up for a restaurant. Modestly named 'Basement', it is situated right under the original 'Homeless' store on Gough street, it sits hidden in a very run-down and dirty looking alleyway. Dorothy claims that it has a 'medieval cellar' like dining experience, and has uber SoHo cheap Italian lunch sets starting at $88HKD. The decor inside is honestly as crazy as it sounds, with half of the shop decorated in a wine cellar look...(photos from open rice)
And the other half of the place decorated like an art studio....So the meal started off with bread, salad and soup. Nothing too special here. Bread is nicely homemade and baked. The disappointing thing is that the soup kinda tasted like Campbell Canned veggie soup... I was more intrigued by the utensils and kitchen wares they use, from the odd looking shaped butter spreader to the weiner dog shaped salt and pepper holders (not in photo)I ordered a Grilled Sea bass with pesto sauced Rissottto....
This dish turned out to be AMAZZINNGGG. The risotto dissolves in the mouth in every bite, as it absorbed both the olive oil and the fish oil from the sea bass, giving a fresh Mediterranean taste. The good mix of olive oil and herbs makes the risotto not too dry in texture and also not too oily.

My mom had a cream sauced and mushroom parapadelle, a sort of like a big fatttt fettuccine. It was a little experimental as both of us have no clue what parapadelle is, and it turned out to be big wonton wraps looking noodles ahahaha. Sorry forgot to take photos. But it was equally as awesome as the risotto.

The only disappointing thing about the restaurant was that the proportionals were small. Extremely discouraging given by the looonng hot trek up the hilly district of SoHo. But for the fine quality, service and decor. The place is worth visiting again.......if I want another Supermodel diet....

Another funny thing was that not a SINGLE chair in the restaurant were the same! All imported from their parent designer store upstairs, we were given a choice to sit around odd assortment of stools, benches and chairs, from chess pieced shaped chairs to a bird nest looking ones. A few customers were actually leaving their tables to try out different chairs in the restaurant throughout the meal. Rather amusing and a smart marketing campaign IMO.

So for dessert.....
I guess I was a little too hungry to take a photo aahahhaa. We trekked up to near the top of the SoHo escalators...all the way to the mosque to find this little corner cake store...It's a tiny bakery that has a window stool seat of 3, and is always swamped with a nice buttery aroma steaming from the kitchen. I have been here previously with Kelvin and Moeha to try out their cake selections, most of them were rather average....EXCEPT FOR THIS!Their mouth waterinngggg White Chocolate Cheesecake! Originally discovered by Moeha, its starting to become the cake shop's specialty. In fact, a pair of couples were picking up their order of White Chocolate Birthday Cake when we entered the shop.

The cheesecake itself has a very creamy texture and not hard and dry like other crappy cheesecake you regularly get in cafes. The cake itself is mixed with coco butter giving it a hint of white chocolate in every bite. And the cake selection itself.....sad that only one thing in the whole bakery is good...but the White Chocolate Cheesecake is delicious enough to make me coming back :D

Final Verdict: I guess you get what you pay for, the cheap lunch set will come in small proportions. But the fine taste makes Basement worth the trip up to SoHo if you are looking for some European Food. Vanilla is not even worth asking, you should go NOW for the white choc cheesecake!

Basement: http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=31877
Vanilla: http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=15046

Escaping the HK Hustle Bustle....

A friend of mine once said to me....
'Omg Leo, Hong Kong is such a Hustle Bustle place...'

..naturally my reply was....
'WTF does Hustle Bustle mean?'

Of course growing up in this fast paced city, I never really knew how intense the city could feel. But even Hong Kong people could feel how stressful the city could be on the body, especially if they spend the day in the densest populated district in the world...Mong Kok.

Sometimes you wish for a peaceful place for you to sit down, escape the rushing crowd, and avoid the steamy sauna summer heat. With a help of HK magazine, I managed to find a small cafe tucked away in a run down apartment building in the heart of Mong Kok.

Full Cup Cafe, which naturally rhymes with its chinese name 呼吸咖啡茶館, meaning 'Breathing Cafe', I guess its a smart play on words as the cafe give locals a chance to catch a breath of fresh air, away from the smog-filled busy city streets. Of course the place is a little hard to find, and it tries really hard to hide itself, relying only by word of mouthadvertisments. The entrance is hidden a dirty wet side alley between the old apartment buildings of Mong Kok, soaked with air con water dipping form the apartment next door.
The two-story cafe has a nice vintage design, walls are littered with old movie posters, shelves of old toys, a projector showing clips of European commercials and a mix of odd looking chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. And it was surprising quite, an odd tranquility sensation you will never get in MK. According to HK magazine, the Art Director for the film 'Lust and Caution', Lai Pan, calims that Full Cup is the only cafe that can give him inspiration and a creative enviornment for him to work.

Anyways, enough about the place, how is the food?

The cafe claims to serve everything homemade, from the cheesecake to their coffee beans, so they charge a slightly higher prices than other coffee shops. They charge exceptionally higher prices for their 'specialty' coffees...This is my awesome looking Japanese White Mocha.....which turned out to be a float as well. Topped with whipped cream and a little stick of frozen coffee....it was Fatty McFatty in a cup. A little to sweet for my liking...but very nice coffee.Arvin's Chocolate Banana Coffee, I personally don't like it too much because I am not a banana person, it made the coffee taste slightly bitter. Arvin loved it though.Moeha and Aldric's Mint Latte. You can actually see the green mint syrup on the bottom of the cup. They loved it, it had a good mix of mint and coffee, not a drink you can usually get at a normal coffee shop.
Oh...and don't get their cheesecake. It was ridiculously small and pricey. We even used an iphone for size comparison. Even though it tasted wonderful.......its not worth the $40HKD.

Final Verdict: A nice escape from the city. Good coffee, relaxing environment, and its a nice change from Starbucks. Anyone around the neighborhood should definitely give it a try.

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=12537

Mong Kok Street Food Raid Part: 2

........meh........too lazy to update lately.....

Another crazy MK street food raid this time. This time I was trying the legendary 貢茶 Gong Cha, a newly opened bubble tea shop that is causing a scene in Mong Kok.

How So? Well....look at the line.....
AND it was raining too.....

....wtf....are people lining up for free bubble tea or something...?

Anyways, 貢茶 is already a pretty well known brand in Taiwan, and decided to spread the culture of bubble tea (again) across the channel. I guess bubble tea is 'in' again? Opening in the heart of Dundas Street, infamous for its neck-to-neck competition between the snack stalls, Taiwan is truly is planting its flag into hostile territory, trying to claim for rep.

So....half an hour in line later.......
BAM! For $12 HKD ($1.75CAD?) you get this massive bubble tea. I photographed Aldric's fist as a comparison. And trust me.....Aldric is a BIG MAN. Moeha told me even a Japanese magazine rated this place for having the Best Bubble Tea in HK. And it was actually pretty good. As silly as it sounds, there is a good tea flavour in the tea....so it obviously was not mixed with powder like the ones in your average Chinatown. The tapioca is exceptionally chewy.
I was having a caffeine crave, for I got myself a HK Cha Chan Teng Style coffee with Tapioca. Obviously not as good as the original Bubble Tea, but I like how dark & bold the coffee tasted.

Final Verdict: WTF HALF AN HOUR! AND ITS NOT EVEN FREE.......DONT WASTE YOUR YOUTHHHHH

but if the line looks short, definitely worth a visit. Certainly beats the other competitors on the block. Plus, the proportions are sooo big that there is enough tea to fill you up for an afternoon.

hmmmm....maybe I should try a Bubble Tea diet.....

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=30948

Cheaper Alternatives in Elements?

It kinda sucks being poor in Elements.

It's like going to a strip club....when you are blind. Everything looks pretty, but unaffordable. This ultra-snobby shopping malls, lined with equally snobby brands such as Chanel, Fendi, LV...to name a few. You hours wondering around aimlessly to find something that won't blow your credit limit on your credit card....but fail miserably.

Around the 6th hour, you will be starving for food....and find equally unaffordable restaurant. The menu selection in the mall makes you feel like buying disposable LV bags. Painful stab to the wallet in every bite.

So when my mom told me there was a decent restaurant inside Elements, I was pretty skeptical. Enter 牡丹 TMSK....
Amazing Decor? I was staring at it for a long time too. Created by the boss who owns Liu Li Gong Fong, a glass merchandiser which specializes in making exotic glass craft and selling them at ridiculous prices. It seems they put the same skills in designing this restaurant, from the wavy pattern ceiling to the individual plates and utensils. It gives a nice.....hip.....nu.......'insert lastest trend adjective here'......vibe to the restaurant.

Anyways, my main concern was that 牡丹 proudly serves Shanghainese, Hunan, Italian fusion cuisine. Argh, fusion never works. Chefs usually end up mixing the two cuisines together....and create a dish that fails on both sides. You can have a strictly good chinese dish, a strictly good italian dish, or a TERRIBLE Chinese-Italian dish. So being orthodoxy and unexperimental, we tried picking the most chinese dishes for a try.
獅子頭/ Braised Minced Pork Ball, was really disappointing. Maybe it was the chef's attempt to be 'fusion', the soup it was served in was either a failed Mushroom cream soup, or fishbone soup. Tasted terrible either way, the meat had a bad smell as if the meat wasn't fresh.
The stir fried vegetable was alot better. The mix with asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms and lotus leaves truly showed the chef's stir frying skills. The main surprise here was how fresh this dish tasted, without any hint of oil or heavy seasoning. 五花腩炆魷魚/ Fatty Pork with Cuttle Fish. This was an amazing dish, with a nice mix of sweetness and texture. The pork wasn't as fat as imagined, making the meat melt as it enters the mouth......mouth watering goodness. Just merely upset that they put in a boiled egg into the sauce to disguise itself as a cuttle fish. The dish should be called Fatty Pork with EGG for the lack of cuttlefish.The highlight of the night. 脆皮荷香雞卷/ Baked Chicken Wrap. This dish was the closest fusion dish we ordered for the night, because it looked incredible judging from the table next to us. The chicken was surprising tender for something that is baked. The chicken forms a wrap around a clump of oriental style mushroom rice. Extremely good dish and well presented.....but awfully small and bitesize for its price...

The bill came up to be $420 HKD for three person, which is a borderline modest number for the area we were dining. Food was TINY, although finely cooked, everything was close to bite size. Somehow the chef forgot to mention French cooking style when he offered us French porportions :(

Another random rant. IF you really want to call yourself a fusion restaurant, either make it GOOD, or just avoid it! This restaurant technically ISN'T a fusion restaurant, just a place that HAPPENS to serve both Chinese and Italian dishes.

Final Verdict: Skip it. 夏麵館 downstairs offers a bigger proportions at a lower price. This restaurant falls under the category for rich scene kids.....or anorexic Supermodels.
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=19415

SUPER MOM SATURDAYS!

Introducing........: SUPER MOM SATURDAYS!

So what is it.....?
It's that random time around every Saturday Afternoon, when my mom gets off work early and all my friends are still asleep in bed. Since both me and my mom are pretty experimental people, we tried to find the latest culinary treasures scattered across the city.

Rules are simple, I research for restaurants. She foots the Bill. Every Saturday Lunch meal is different. There are some Hits and Some Misses. It could either be dirt cheap or Uber expensive. Since my mom pays for everything, I called Saturday Lunch 'Super Mom Saturdays' and its usually the culinary highlight of my week. I will probably post some restaurant separately as my Super Mom Saturday category post just for its uniqueness. So yeah....call me a Momma's Boy...

So this time, me and my mom tried the infamous 丼吉日本吉列專門店餐廳 Tonkichi Tonkatsu Seafood. Simply put, it is a place that treats Deep Fried Breaded Pork Cutlet/Tonkatsu seriously. The first branch that opened in Causeway Bay, and due to its recent publicity by 蔡瀾 on TV, the place is pretty much packed 24/7. You need to wait at least 2 hours before getting a seat, its stops handing out tickets by 8.30 even though they close at 10.30. And reservations need to be made 3 weeks in advance. Crazy isnt it? All this for Fried Pork? Do they honestly dip in the pork in liquid gold?

Fortunately, the owner softly opened their 2nd branch across the harbor in TST. So we get to try out the place before all the publicity and the lines arrived. It was hard to find already, hidden in the basement of a office building, obviously trying to avoid any public exposure. Usually a good sign of a great japanese restaurant. We managed to secure a nice tatami lined booth seat in the corner of the restaurant.
When we sat down, the waiter handed us a mortar and pestle with sesame seed inside. She educated us on how we need to grind up the seed into powder, before pouring the sweet pork dipping sauce on the left. This is to prepare the sauce before the tonkatsu is served. I was already a little overwhelmed by how serious the place is treating its food...kinda giving me the creepy feeling that we are preparing for some kinda of religious cult ritual or something. We ordered the standard 2 person meal set which looked ridicously small in the photo of the menu, and at a hefty $300 price tag, we were ready for a big stab in the wallet. But when the waiters served the meal set, it came with soup, refillable rice, refillable shredded cabbage and special daikon vingear dipping sauce. The table became completely loaded with plates and dishes.....so maybe it might justify its $300 price tag....(Not My Photo) I added an extra $28HKD to upgraded my miso soup into their famous pork soup. The aroma the soup gives out was already saliva dripping good. It was surprisingly thick, with flakes of pork oil floating on the surface. It had a great taste of depth of the pork and other vegetables. Kinda like the pork bone soup based of the Hakata Ramen I had in Shinjuku, where they cook their soup in these giantantic pressure cookers. Amazing start to the meal.The cutlets themselves consist of a large slab of pork chop and a few balls of pork back. the shredded cabbage comes as a side as well as decoration. Each table actually comes with a jar of sweet seaweed vinegar which is used to mix with the cabbage, instantly turning it into a cabbage salad. The cabbage themselves are so finely shredded that it taste like tiny dried noodles. The sauce was also amazingly good with a nice ting of sourness. I was enjoying the cabbage so much that I forgot to eat my rice.
And finally, the main character. The Tonkatsu. Sort of indescribably in words actually. The first bite into the Katsu immediately made me into a believer.

The pork is surrounded by a fine bread coating on the outside, giving it the spiky and crunchy texture. Its not like the crappy Katsu Dons you get in normal japanese restaurant, the other layer is not soggy and will not fall off from the pork, and it was not oily at all. Somehow the restaurant manage to make the thick piece of pork extra tender too. Unlike those tough and dry meat texture you usually get from other restaurant.

The self prepared sesame sauce was a tad too sweet as dipping sauce for the pork, it hides too much flavour of the pork. The daikon vinegar sauce turned out to be the more superior sauce, the sour vinegar actually brings out the pork flavour even more.(Not My Photo) The waiter handed us some freshly sliced and really sweet japanese watermelon as dessert on the house. A real nice after touch to the meal.

The constant surprises, the decor and the presentation of the place makes me certain that the meal is definitely worth $300. But who cares? Mom is paying for the bill anyways hehehe

Final Verdict: Definite Try! You will never have anything quite like it before. This place convinced me that Deep Fried Pork is SERIOUS BUSINESS

Stay Tune for Next Week's Crazy Super Mom Saturday!
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=10055