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

why yuk ho is broke for the month: Part 1

'Yo! come out and eat, we are waiting for you on the island side already'
'Ummm, my friend actually booked a place already.....its somwhere in Hotel LKF'
'.......wtf? are you serial..?'

The phone call itself was already unsettling. For people who don't know, Lan Kwai Fong is famous for drinking and not eating. Restaurants that could afford rent in LKF are usually famous for either tricking tourist or catering towards snobby expats who have cash to blow.

This time, we are going to Azure, a amazingly bar situated on the penthouse of Hotel LKF. The view there is absolutely mind blowing, as the hotel sits on the hillside in the middle of Central. The panoramic view the skycrapers huddling around the tower makes you feel like you are on the set of Bladerunner or Metropolis. Honestly, a recommend anyone who is new to the city to grab a cocktail in Azure on a friday night.....but for dinner?

Since Han and Cirline are both in town, so what the hell, might as well try, it wouldn't be too expensive....right? Walked into the restaurant and already felt a little underdressed. The place is surrounded by people in suits and dresses, and i was caught wearing shorts. Cirline didn't fare any better, since she and her friends just came back from Disneyland, everyone on the table was dressing pretty shabby for the location. nice nice

Open the meal, BAM! $1000HKD wine list. Skip
Flip through the many pages of entrees....shit shit shit.....every dish was $300 HKD and up.
Getting a little nervous and sweaty, drinks a entire cup of water and the waiter helps me refill the glass.
Finally found something affordable, a simple Carbonara for $220 HKD.
*phew*

The meal started out pretty well, a nice platter of refillable bread, all handmade by the kitchen. The platter also proovide a variety of cheeses as spread. Since I am pretty uncultured in cheese, I just slab the purple looking cheese (err....Blue Cheese?) into my bread. The olive oil they provide with the bread was really fine, giving out an exceptionally rich olive flavour everytime i use it as my dip.

When the Entrees finally landed on the table, I could see a few frowns in the dining crowd. The proportions looked a little small, especially for a crowd of hungry tourist who just spent a day roasting in Disneyland. The size of my carbonara turned out alright, around the size I imagined a fancy restaurant like this to be.
Deception; The keyword for this dish. Even though by display the carbonara appears to be the plainest dish on the table, it gave me a few surprises.

I first started poking the white blob sitting on top of the dish, thinking it was cream cheese, i thought i could spread it across the pasta. Then yoke started bursting out of the blob and melted into the cheese. OH CRAP OH CRAP, its actually a finely disguised poached egg! So I took a bite of the pasta, and was met by an explosion of flavours. Wow, the bacon smokiness, the fine selection of cheese and melted egg yolk, all mixed together into a mindblowing experience.

'Hmmmmmmm.....'
I am getting more and more surprised by the pasta. The spaghetti was cooked perfectlyinto a chewy texture, wasn't too hard nor too soft. Digging around the pile of spaghetti, I saw flakes of mushroom, but WAIT! thats not mushroom! It's actually flakes of TRUFFLES. Wow, first time ever in my life. As I was slowly enjoying the best pasta I ever had in my life, I was getting more and more convinced that $220 may not be so bad after all.

I took the opportunity to try Han's baked cod, which turned out medicore for its price. Wasn't exceptionally mind blowing and the proportion was really small. Same with Cirline's baked chicken. Nothing too special, underwhelming for something that cost around $300 HKD.

The meal ended with a nice aftertouch with chocolate coated icea cream balls and chocolate dipped strawberries on the house (ok, couldn't find photos of the strawberries, so just raspberries here)
......then comes the sad part...the Bill. Turns out that the water they served us was actually brand bottled water, which was given to us without our consent. Since we took our time, chatted a little bit, and sipped a few cups of water, they managed to charge us an extra $350HKD of water. A little excessive right?

Splitting the bill, I paid an extra $50 for water, which totaled up to around $270 HKD, the cheapest meal out of everyone. There were a few moans and groans as people paid their bill, most of them topping arond $350. Definitely a stab to the wallet.

Final Verdict: Conflicting Signals. Best Carbonara I ever had in my life. Even worth the full $220. But other dishes were excessively overpriced and underwhelming. Maybe I was just lucky with my dish and the restaurant was always poor? I will never know, because I am never going back there for dinner. As for you? err....if you are rich, what the heck? Get their Carbonara!

Low on cash? just popped in there later the night for a simple cocktail. Azure is honestly a place built for drinking, and not for fine dining.

And now....let me mourn over my wallet....I think I just blew my lai see money in this meal :'(

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=17304

Kinda Like a Big Deal

This place is Kinda Like a Big Deal in HK. Its probably one of the oldest cha chan teng in HK, and it also claims itself to be the first inventor of the silk stocking receipt of making milk tea.

Love it or Hate it. 蘭芳園/Lan Fong Yuen conveniently sits on the edge of Soho and Graham Street, the oldest street market in HK, so a tourist exploring in central will probably cross paths its path a couple of times.

Everytime a tourist comes to town, its usually one of the first places i take them. The classic outdoor kitchen, the cramp tiny seating inside, the rude waiters that teases your chinese, it pretty much has HONG KONG written all over it. And after the meal, i usually bring them a walk around the street market, before it gets torn down by the govt., have the famous egg tarts around the corner and a trek through the soho district. Awesome place for sightseeing. If you feel a little adventurous, you can also dine outside on the outdoor kitchen, u literally squat on those little wooden chairs.

Anyway, Han was in town, what better way to show my Ningbo friend around than to show him some local food cultural. I was also starving cuz i didnt eat the whole day.

I got myself a 蒜蓉雞肉撈丁/garlic & onion chicken with fried instant noodles.
I explained before, HK people love eating instant noodle for the texture. Fried instant noodles is also the place's speciality. Cooked not too soft or too hard, giving it an awesome chewiness. The noodle doesnt come with soup, just a swallow dip of soy sauce. So it kinda gives a weird feel of a mix of italian spaghetti with chinese spring onion sauced chicken ahhaha. PRetty damn unhealthy, but reeally a must try.
This is what han got, 港式豬扒包/pork chop bun, another speciality fro the place. Its always sold out in the later afternoon. Its a tiny bitesize burger of porkchop, tomatoe and special cream sauce, perfect for girls or people looking for a light snack for tea. Different from the famous macauinese 豬扒包, the ones here uses normal burger buns. The boss claims that he hates the macauinese style because the bread is too hard and scratches his mouth alot.

Anyways, very tender and chewy, nice and bitesize. Their cream sauce gives it a bit of flavour. Good Snack.
The Main Course. The sole reason why you would come to 蘭芳園 in the first place. It's one of the smoothest lai chai HK has to offer. It has a good mix of tea and condense milk, and it doesnt have that horrible coarse tea aftertaste texture that other noob cha chan teng has. This place boils the tea and pours it over a silk stocking looking net, this is to filter out any remaining tea leaves, keeping the tea smooth and clear. Sometimes they even served cold milk tea with froze milk tea ice, to prevent normal ice in diluting the tea when it melts.....serial stuff.

Final Verdict: MUST TRY. I didnt even mention other signature dishes such as French toast and salted lime 7-up. Good place to go for a true taste of HK, either you are just a tourist, or a person wanting a trip back to memory lane....

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=1814

this is why americans are FAT!

Subtlety..........is not a very American thing.

And I guess this place proves it. FAT BURGER, seriously not trying to hide anything by its name. Its the infamous burger joint from the West Coast LA (and also recommended by Moez). Mentioned in Ice Cube 1993 hit 'Today Was a Good Day'.....

'....No helicopter looking for a murder
Two in the morning got the fat burger
Even saw the lights of the goodyear blimp
And it read ice cubes a pimp...'

As well as Letterman's Top 10 things he missed about LA.

So personally, I think having Fat Burger open in the middle of Wan Chai is straight up gangstaaaaa, although I don't think it opens until 2am. Designed as a American style deli with an open kitchen, it issurrounded by a chinese street market which make it seems a little out of place.

Looking at the meal, the burgers come in FAT BURGER, DOUBLE FAT BURGER and TRIPLE FATBURGER. Due to the size of my aterties, I only got the DOUBLE burger, which comes nicely as a meal set at whopping $90 HKD ($13CAD)
The fries were real good, came fresh from the deep fryer. The burger itself consist of lettuce, tomatoe, relish, onion, cheese and I added an Egg for an extra $5. Here is a close up on this artery clogging MONSTER.
So how did it taste? Well.....disappointing. At first bite, the burger literally exploded in my hands with oil and juices bursting in all directions. It got my suit pants (a bitch to dry clean) and eating the damn thing became a race against time aas the hot oil slowly burns my fingers. All the ingredients were exceptionly good and fresh......it was surprising the beef patties themselves that were lacking. The beef didn't have any flavour! It was so flavourless that a blind person will have no clue that he was eating beef.

My heart probably dropped a few times during the meal, had to punch myself in the chest to restart it. The photo below?
It's all the oil that was dripping from the burger, by the end of the meal, the oil slowly solidify into white blobs of fat....ewwwwwwww.

Final Verdict: Maybe its a bit of home bias. But I think Triple O's provides much better burgers at the same price. At least the beef patties actually taste like beef there. And seriously...even my arterties couldn't handle it. This place is a definite skip.....unless you are looking for a slow method of commiting suicide. Maybe Fat Burger was lost in translation sometime between the flight across the Pacific.

And by guilty conscience, I couldn't stand the meal and actually hit the gym right after. Yeah....scary shit.

http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=26321