Paparazzi Style Pub Grub?

Was doing some pro bono work around LKF the other night when I got a little hungry. Knowing that its Central, there wouldn't be anything too cheap around the area. And the bars and pubs gave me a little craving for some pub grubs, so I remembered this new shop called Nuke'Em Wings in the alleyway on D'Aguilar St, that hilly road that leads up to LKF.

This joint is obviously catered towards drunkiness looking for a place to sober up after a wild night of binging. How did I know? the prices dude! It's ridiculously expensive and you have to be completely smashed to think its reasonable.

For a little bucket set of 10 wings, the bill came up to a whopping $50 HKD. Like pub wings, they are ordered alongside with the spicy level. I tried hot which is 3 chili, the highest being 'Nuke 'em' at 10 chili and I found it managable. Kinda softcore compare to the Sichuan Place I went earlier. The wings itself came in this weird unappetizing orange colour, look at the photo below.........kinda looks like errrrrr.....stuff you floating at the bottom of those outhouses in campsites? Yeah, uber unappetizing.
How did the Wings taste? Surprising....just normal average breaded wings. Skin is cripsy, as it should be. Also freshly deep fried, which gives it a slight edge over the local KFC. Chicken wasn't too dry, but the hot sauce was alittle weak, and too watery to be like actual pub grub.

On the Flipside: Beer comes cheap? At $20 HKD per bottle, its alittle pricy than club 711. But hella cheaper than those happy hour prices in actual bars. And the outdoor high tables gave an odd culinary experience to the place.

Being at the foot of the hill to LKF (next to the eyecatching Ben & Jerry's), it is an awesome place for people gazing, as you see beautiful dressed girls glide through the crowd, equally as entertaining are the sterotypical tourists that visits the area. Be it the suit wearing mainlanders or the crocs wearing white tourists. This paparazzi style grub eating kinda makes the place enjoyable. But I have a feeling this will allll change when REAL HK summer arrives. When its too bloody hot to be anywhere outside.

Final Verdict: Skip it. Not worth the Money and not good pub grub. If you like people gazing, stand in one place and ponder slowly about life.....maybe give it a try?

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=26409

I wonder if you know, how they live in Tokyo...

Tokyoooooo, a land filled with mind-blowing looking women and the cutest kids you will ever see. And why the hell are people for skinny? It's like they only eat once every full moon :/

Anyways, back to the real food, was Tokyo a culinary paradise? well....if you are ballin on Arab money, probably it is. But for budget eaters like us....its like walking through a mine field

Here are some Hits & Misses:
Softee Ice Cream on the hills of Hakone.....AWESOMME. Best Ice cream I had in my lyfeee. Whipped with the milk from local farms, it was so tender and chewy that it taste like turkish ice cream (you know the ones with the silly man and the lonngg stretching stick)

Yuck, I didn't even know what this was. I brought it thinking it was mochi dipped in syrup. Turns out the syrup is actually soy sauce, and the balls are made out of..........rubber? I threw it away after first bite.
Wouldn't be in Japan without trying out takoyaki/squid balls. It was some touristy looking shop in 台場(Odaiba), turns out to be....average. The balls were a little too mushy for my liking, I dunno if it was really authentic or just bad cooking skills. I prefer the ones in 築地GINDACO where they fry the outer layer slightly to give it extra texture and crunchiness to the snack.

Lesson Learnt: Snacking in Japan needs lots of mulla. :'( Was dead broke and begging on the streets by the 3rd hour on my first day. Learning japanese would help too, at least you know what you are getting into. After a few lessons, I decided to stop snacking and save my money for other good shitz.

So what is really worth eating in Nippon?Firstly, Wagyu Beef! It's these ridiculiously priced steak straight from the cows of JPN. Why? they claim to be cows that a fed beer and sake, and also daily massages, this is to generate a perfect balance of fat-to-meat ratio. Not a bad life to be a wagyu cow right? These steak could be pan fried or bbq like the photo above. These steak doesn't even need seasoning or cutting utensils. When you put the steak in your mouth, it instantly sublimes into...well....oil and omega explosion of good taste. Ever had a steak melt your mouth? neither have I. My mom said I was silent for five minutes and tears of happyz were streaming down my cheeks when I took my first bite. Exaggeration? well...a little. Wagyu doesn't come cheap too, depending on the quality, you probably need to get a mortgage to pay for a filling meal, mine cost around $80-$100 USD. crazyyyy stuff. At least they give you this for compensation:
It is letter containing a certificate that certifies the bloodline of the beef to be 100% wagyu, they even plotted their graph and other weird measurements to verify its quality and taste. Even a background history of the cow's paternal orgins. No jokes!

Second thing to eat? RAMEENNNNNNNNHK people loooveee ramen, I am no different. For us, its like a tradition to eat ramen in Japan, kinda like seeing the Eiffel Tower when you are in Paris. We are born to conquer every single noodle joint in Japan as a comeback for the Second World War....I guess.

Good ramen joints, at least from my experience, typically lie in out of sight alleyways and look inconspicuous to the untrained eye. They are never ever open on main streets and busy roads.
Soup, Noodle, Ingredients. Ranked by the order of importance, makes a perfect bowl of ramen (applies for all soup noodles too). The soup based must be hot and smooth, with a lot of depth and flavor. It can't be too strong nor too weak, a critical factor that could completely change the outcome of the noodle. The noodles itself needs texture. Must be chewy enough for it to 'bounce in every bite'/彈牙, but not too chewy to a point that its hard to bite. The ingredients should be fresh and tender, like the meat or the onions. Now I am starting to sound like as if I worship noodles. -_-

Here are the ramens I tried in JPN.
I had this in Odaiba, absolute rubbbish. It was in a shopping mall, where they put six of their so-called 'well-know' ramen chefs side by side each other to compete. This one claims to gave the best soup base of all its competitors, turns out to be average. The noodle was too hard and the pork was a little dry.
The ramen in the previous 2 pictures was from a hidden alleyway around Yokohama, was alot better then the one above. Soup was still too salty for my liking. (btw, Moez! helpz me translate the menu, I honestly didn't know what I got, it just looked good and I pointed at it when I was ordering.This was amazzinggg, a little joint hidden in Akihabara called jangara ramen, voted the most popular ramen joint in Tokyo Metropoliatian area. A literal hole-in-wall of just bar seats and a litte high table. Barely able to fit 15 people inside. It usually has a enormous line forming outside the resturant for the morning and night time, I fortunately came at late afternoon, manage to squeeze in before dinner rush hour.
Soup base was wonderful, a very thick pork bone flavour. Drinking the soup felt like eating a rack of pork ribs with a spoon. The noodle was tender and they put in amazing ingredents, the egg was half cooked with the egg white boiled but the yolk still watery, yummmm. They also added in a whipping of scrimp egg (the pink pile in the photo) to add a bit of seafood sweetness to the soup base, and a few slab of fatty pork belly that melts in your mouth in first bite. The mix of the soup's aroma, the atomosphere of otaku anime music playing in the background and the crowded elbrow-to-elbrow claustrophobia makes this joint one of the best of its kind.
Another ramen joint hidden in Kabukicho (歌舞伎町) of Shinjuku, this one is where my dad's business client took him on his first visit to tokyo, back when he had more hair and I was still sucking my thumb. This place have been around of decades, or at least it looks like it. It looked shabby on the outside, and we saw a group of stray alleyway cats sneaking into the kitchen. It was fluorescent-lit like an old HK cha chan teng, and didn't look pleasant at first.
But OH MAN, WAS THIS NOODLE GOOD. The soup base was goddlike. Clearly well made pork bone soup, it was so thick like 老火湯 (cantonese soup). It might be the deceptive decoration of the restaurant, but this bowl of ramen was soo good it was beyond words to explain. Their secret?
gigantic pressure cookers, placed right infront of the bar. Looks like they simply add pork bones, water and other ingredients into these cookers early in the morning. After a long of of intense pressure and heat, the pork bone dissolves into the soup to form the base. Wow. I saw every customer left the restaurant with their bowls completely empty, drinking all the soup entirely.

Anyways thats all for my Japan food adventures. I didn't get to eat sushi, due to a mixture of lack of time and money. Stupid traveling tours, we couldn't spend more than 2 hours on one location. I highly recommend everyone to travel Tokyo by themselves, all you need is a reliable traveling book, some good improvisation skills and alot of money. You seriously cannot miss the hilarity the interaction between you and the broken-english waiters there.



P.S. I seriously did not go looking for this, but I was picking up coffee in Ginza when I spot this sign in the starbucks

ho ho ho, me and my luck. I stumble on a tourist attraction! It is probably the 1st in Asia too. i seriously think it was divine intervention.

Small Update

Off to japan to enlist for Sumo Wrestling, won't be back until Wednesday. I will try to post anything crazy that I ate in JPN. Just a little housekeeping to do.

1. Just read the latest issue of Time Out. Their food reviewers actually had Lung King Keen in the morning and lined up for 添好運點心專門店 in the afternoon for comparison, and they found the dim sum they had in 添好運 were exactly the same. Nicccceeee
2. Heard there is an actual Japanese Maid Cafe hidden somewhere in Causeway Bay. ho ho ho ^^
Anyone care to try it with me for shits and giggles?

Looking for a Romatic Dinner in Wan Chai?

Was looking for service apartment for a friend with Momz in Wan Chai, it was getting late and I have no idea where to grab dinner on the island side. Then Spoil Cafe hit my mind, a little hole in wall cafe hidden in the corner of Sun St. A little dead end alleywall lined with old chinese food distributors and a refuse collection center, kind of an akward place to open a trendy cafe. By the time we got there, the street was dark and was lined with metal gates of the closed distributors. A tiny light in the distant corner assured us that the place was still open.

The joint itself is TINY, barely enough to fit a party of 10, with a couple of tables and a tiny display of their cake selection. It is ran by a staff of four, 2 in the kitchen and 2 as waiters. Honestly, I have no clue how this place makes money with such a small space. The waiter greeted us at the door and told us we were lucky to come at this time of the night, usually customers need to book for a table in advance. We ended up sitting elbow to elbow between a party of people sipping red wine and a table fucking loud yuppies girls. Hmmmmm posh crowd

The menu itself is lined with dishes of random italian and french ingredients that I never heard of. Most of them are pricey too, coming to around $100-$200 HKD each :/ Value meals don;t exist here, so coffee and soup are ordered separately.
Seafood Gnocchi with Cherry Tomatoes. Gnocchi is little lumps of pasta mixed with potatoes, giving it a very chewy texture. When you look at it from afar it actually looks like little cooked maggots *shiver*.....ANYWAYS....the dish itself was pretty good. It had little minced bits of salmon mixed together with the gnocchi, giving each bite a gush of seafood freshness. It comes with a scallop and prawn, each done perfectly to a point where it melts in your mouth slowly....hmmmmm. The gnocchi itself were alittle disappointing, it was little too undercooked and lacked a bit of texture and flavor.

Spoil's King Prawn Linguine. The better of the two dish. I got it with red Thai curry sauce. This dish was amazingggggggg. The thai curry gave the linguine a hint of coconut, and mixed together with sauce very well. The linguine was not too dry to a point its out of flavour, and not too wet as in swimming in a pool of sauce. Similar to before, the King pawn melts in your mouth as it touches your saliva. And the dish was madd spicy, making each bite more refreshing...and dangerous.

I ordered soup and coffee as well, nothing exciting there. They served soup in these ridiculously small espressos cups, the soup didnt have much flavour and its defintely not worth $40. The coffee redemmed the soup, a very dark roast but nothing too special.

We couldn't help ourselves but to order their deliciously looking cake selection, and their very own house special Crunch Cake. A fine mix of cream, cake and littered with bits of caramel crunches. The point of is to eat the cake with the bits of crunch in every bite, and feel as the caramel sublimes in your mouth. Crunch cake comes rare in HK and This cake was seriously the highlight of the night. Excellent way to end the meal.

Final Verdict: The portions were a little small, and bill was rather pricey ($400 HKD for 2). But judging from the location and the crowd, this place is really targeted towards for couples looking for a romatic dinner. Highly recommend couples looking for something different. A little lame that I ate it with mom....well at least she paid for the bill :P

For people low on dough, I suggest coming here for afternoon tea, the crunch cake is seriously worth a try. And if you are single, skip the dinner.

WARNING: This place do not accept card. CASH ONLY. Bleeding Wallet Syndrome will occur. Expect to PACK HEAT.

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=16173

Mong Kok Street Food Raid

Woke up late, it was around that awkward time of 4pm, when its too late for lunch but too early for dinner. So we decided to go cheap and eat street food.

阿土麵線 is smacked in the corner of one of the busiest intersection in MK, kinda easy to find with that huge Happy Lemon store next to it. 阿土is actually a well known Taiwanese snack and its boss decided to export the goodness to HK people. So we had a Hong Kong Taiwanese Hong Kong Street Food Session. O.o

The snack itself is scooped from this huge bucket of gooey soup, with little pieces of thin noodles submerged into it. The soup contains little bits of chopped pig intestine (yummm for some, yuck for others) which gives a very...errr......if you ate it before, you will know the taste. Anyways, thats just what they serve in default, kinda like a cadillac with no rims, rappers with no bling, mexico with no swine.....well you get the idea. The point is to 'Suped up' your snack with many other ingredients you order extra. I got oyster and extra pig intestine, and sprinkled on some spicy white raddish.So how does it taste?: The spicy raddish gives the noodle an overall sweetness, and a very strong garlic smell. The oysters give the noodles a bit of texture, and a hint of seafood taste in the soup. The noodles themselves are....funny? its kinda too thin and gooey to have texture, but the soup has too much noodles to be consided a soup. So overall....very weird mixture of favours....or should i say....very Taiwanese?

Final Verdict: Worth a try for street food addicts. Those with a picky taste wouldnt find it all that exiting

And of course, what is a post without a candid picture of kelvin enjoying his food? Look at those eyes of satisfaction as he digs in his bowl of noodel. If you ladies are interested, msg me for his details :D

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=22660

Michelin 3 Star: At Budget Price :)

Gonna be backtracking a little bit today.


The Story: For those who don't know, the 'Michelin Guide' is a world acclaimed culinary guide, started by the tire company who has a mascot that uncannily looks like the mashmallow man from Ghostbusters 2. Kinda like a snobby version of the Zagat Guide, it covers international cities such as Paris New York, Toyko and now...Hong Kong. It rates restaurants by a star system, giving 3 stars only to the world's best. The major criticism is that most places that are rated serve in tiny proportions, properly require a mortgage to foot the bill and abusrdly unheard of from the general public as it only caters toward billionaire fat cats. (click here for the full hk michelin list)

Enough with the rants, I can go on hours with this. So what now? You see, the only 3 star restaurant in HK was granted to 'Lung King Heen/龍景軒'. Completely unheard of by everyone, and so happens to be conveniently located within the Four Seasons Hotel (Fat Cats?).Where is this damn story taking us?: In comes 添好運點心專門店, a specialized dim sum joint that sits right in the middle of a street that is littered with BB guns store. So what so special about this place? It is ran by a local folklore hero, a rogue chef from Lung King Heen, who decided to hang his coat on culinary cooking and decide to start fresh by opening his own resturant!

No longer do we need to pay ridiculous $100 for a dimsum, this place only does it at a tenth of the price and at the same quality. Kinda like a fat kid's wet dream.

The line took 30 minutes, i guess news spread fast around the city. And it didn't help that the place only had seat for properly 30 people. You had to share tables with someone, and there was barely enough space to tie your shoelace.


We ordered some pretty standard stuff, scrimp dumplings, siu mai, white raddish cake. You have to slowly chew each dish to realise how finely made they are, how the quality of traditional cantonese dim sum in local restuarants have deteriorate over the years. The skin wrapped around the scrimp dumping and siu mai was as thin as paper and tough like skins of siao long bao. Each dimsum was perfectly bitesize and seriously reminds eaters what dimsum was truly about. Not that knuckle size dim sum bullcrap they serve in china town. And as surprising as I am going to sound, you can actually taste the ingredients here. You can taste the scrimp in the scrimp dumpling and the fresh white raddish taste in the raddish cake. Weird? this simply proves how badly dim sum has gotten locally over the years, all ridden with MSG and salt. -_-

Saving the best til last, this dish itself is worth the wait, it is the chef's very own invention, the 酥皮焗叉燒包. This dim sum isnt joking, when we sat down, the lady in front of us got 5 orders of it and packed them into a styrofoam box, i guess she was saving it for dinner. Wrapped around like a pineapple bun, with char siu/BBQ pork in the middle. The bun instantly melts in your mouth when you bite it. An explosion of flavors in yout mouth, the sugary topping of the bun, the sweet BBQ sauce from the pork, all mix together in an orgasmic experience. Am I exaggerating? Maybe. You have to try it out yourself to find out. :P

Final Verdict: Must Try. People who don't usually eat dim sum wouldn't know what the fuss is about, but that 酥皮焗叉燒包 is enough to change your mind.

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=30806

(Gonna have to apologise for stealing images from openrice again, RaM is being a n00b photographer again)

Hung Hom Adventrues vol.2 : World War 3 in My Mouth!

So why vol 2? Because this happened 5 minutes after 時新. Burger wasn't filling and saw this place on openrice, it was also conveniently smacked right next to the burger joint. So...what the hell?

The Story: the place is ran by a loving couple, an HK man and his Sichuan wife. Seeing that his wife cook awesome food and wanting to spread the appreciation of sichuan food in HK, the man decides to open a takeout place and imports ingredients straight sichuan provience. and his wife runs the show in the kitchen. This.....is what it says on the newspaper article posted on their wall...no clue if its true ahah.

Before we sat down, we already heard a tai tai struggling to stand, she told her friend '辣到跳舞! 千祈唔好食ah!' Nice nice, thats nice to know. The place is seriously trying to compete 時新 for redefining the world 'ghettoness', a shitty electric fan for central cooling, a metal bench, and one folding table on the sidewalk. They should seriously called this the 'HK mininalist' design style.

So why such a high rating on openrice? Authenticity.
I ordered a 麻辣牛肉粉. You can tell by the red in the soup that this place means serial business. The noodle was tender and chewy, like big thick vermicceli. You can tell that its pretty authentic by the aroma it gives out, the 麻辣 smell actually burns your nostils. The soup base is relatively sour, with a hint of spice in the end, and that spice slowly creeps up on you, like Michael Jackson on a group of little kids.

After 3 bites........'OMGWTF! WORLD WAR 3 IN MOUTH!'
*drinks half a bottle of water*
Now i realise why there is no aircon for this place, you feel sooo hot inside you actually find the weather cool. I was sweating intensive and I can slowly feel the spice churning in my stomach, like I just had a intense workout of runing 12983984km

Final Verdict: Awesssommmeee. Beats 時新 anyday. Real Sichuan for those who never tried it. Recommend people who thinks they can handle spice, this place will whip your tongue like a little girl and make you cry home for mommy. If you don't like spice....ah....go to 時新 then?

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=18842

NOTE: The boss is a G, here are the convo between me and him
Boss: 'you want big, medium or small spice?.....look at you, you can handle 大辣'
Me: '....小辣......I dont have the balls..'

*drinks half a bottle of water*
*Boss sits there on his folded chair laughing*
Boss: '3 bites and already drinking water? Are you gonna take the whole afternoon finishing your noodle?'

:'(

(Thanks openrice for the photos, I will take my own next timez)

Hung Hom Adventrues vol.1!

Due to the enormous hype, we visited the mystic 時新快餐店 home of the chinese style hamburgers. It took me and kelvin a while to find it because it was hidden behind a foot bridge pillar, under a large canopy, and sandwhiched between two 'dead people' flower stores for the funeral home across the street..... nice location therrrr.

The restaurant clearly looked like a it was trying to copy an american deli...back in 1970s, because the walls are rusty and the chairs are pretty much broken, but still PACKED with students grabbing their burger.

We ordered their burger, and they made them fresh on their grill so it took a while waiting. The burger? it was really juicy with packed with onions in the patty and surprisingly chewy like the beefballs they have for dimsum. They also had this white mushroom sauce to give the burger an chinese twist.

Final verdict? honestly, there are a billion burger joints in HK now. Did you know a Burger King opened up in Shatin? This just makes this place...slightly better than average. Not really worth the travel if you are not from Hung Hom

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=18220