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

why yuk ho is broke for the month: Part 2- STREETZ of MONG KOK

FML!

I can't BELIEVE I spent $300 for dinner, and I am STILL HUNGRY

After only a few hours after the wallet rapage in Azure, and a few drinks in Lan Kwai Fong, my inner beast of stomach is already growling for more food. Argh, what can I get thats open in freaking 3 in the morning?

'What about 潮州打冷?'
'Errrr.....you mean the shit that gangstas eat at night?'
'Yeah! In 砵蘭街/Portland Street....'

So after taking the mini bus with Herman to MK, we walked to the once infamous 砵蘭街, an aging red light district of the Kowloon side. Once the dragon's nest of the Hong Kong Triads, now it is slowing withering in the rising rents from the newly built Langham Hotel nearby. The place is STILL full of gangsters at night, and lots of old aging prostitutes, but the once common street knife fights are long gone. Plus we werent looking for troubles.

Anyways, 潮州打冷 is the midnight munchies for the old HK population. It usually only opens late at night for people getting off night work, so it always has an interesting mix of crowd. From the Formula One qualified Mini-Bus drivers grabbing dinner/breakfast, Prostitutes before a night of work, or shady Triads kicking back before drug deal. It serves solely food from Chiu Chow; a proud group of people from Southern China famous for loud business man, good seafood and self proclaimed culinary experts. Their cuisines tastes distinctively different from the rest of Cantonese cooking, which makes them extra special. Herman led me to 新泉發潮州飯店 Sun Chuen Fat Restaurant, and we grabbed a table sitting outside on the street side walks for some extra authenticity. It also makes its more convenient to run if a fight breaks out inside ahaha

As we waited for Kelvin to join us for munchies, we ordered a bottle of Tsing Tao and 蠔餅/Oyster Cake as appetizers.
Basically a chinese omelet, it is mini oysters mixed with battered goose eggs and then freshly deep fried. As you can see by the old man standing behind me.
The result is a ery vcrispy omelet, filled with the fresh taste of seafood from the oysters. Really good dish to sober up from a night of drinking.

Next we ordered 鹵水墨魚拼鵝腸/ Marinated Goose Intestines and Squid. Kind of not very friendly to the Western Tongue. The goose intestine has a very chewy texture like rubber bands, but it absorbs the taste of 鹵水. 鹵水 is a old chinese sauce that Chiu Chow people like to cook meat and tofu with, its a mixture of different types of herbs. It is regularly kept after every meal as the sauce slowly absorbs more and more fragrance and flavor from the ingredients. Therefore the older the restaurant is, the more flavour the 鹵水 gets, and the better tasting the food gets. The 鹵水 here is very strong, making both the squid and goose intestine extra tasty.
We also ordered a platter 鹵水鵝/ Marinated Goose and 蠔仔粥/Oyster Congee. Sorry, we were too hungry and ate half the plate before taking photos.鹵水鵝 was very tender, the meat wasn't exceptionally tough. It also smelled very fresh and surprising didn't have a horrible poultry smell to it. 蠔仔粥 is my favorite! It a very watered down congee cooked in chiu chow style, a good source of carbohydrates for treating hangovers! The oysters inside makes the soup based extra sweet.

The highlight of the meal is really the environment around us. The fast moving taxis squeezing through the narrow street, the dodgy character walking past the table, the bright neon signs. I guess it gives the food extra flavour. Plus a sense of masculinity for us since we had the guts to eat at Portland Street at freaking 3am in the morning. We felt like real MEN.
Final Verdict: Honestly, if you are girl. You should probably skip this joint. Unless you are fine with people constantly asking you '......How Much for a Night?' Just avoid wearing any hotpants, skirts or heels as much as possible hahaha

Dude, you need to try it at least once. Separate the Boys from the Men! Real Gangsta Dining Foolz. Plus its really good authentic Chiu Chow food thats hard to get unless you are in Kowloon City.

After spending $120 with a couple bottles of beer and a full satisfied stomach, I looked back on the $300 I lost in Azure...wow.....what am I gonna to do now that I wasted all my allowance on food? this is why yuk ho is broke for the month -_-

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=16567