Trip to Hong Kong - Part 2

This past weekend I went to Hong Kong, and yesterday I posted about the first half of my trip (you can read about it here). I'm sorry I don't have any of the addresses, but the street names in Hong Kong confuse me :( but the places that we went to are all super famous, so just Google the names and it should be the first search result! So continuing chronologically:

翠華餐廳 Tsui Wah Restaurant
This was just a quick afternoon tea, although you can get noodles and rice dishes here, too.

We got iced and hot milk teas, an herbal tea, and Tsui Wah's "butter pig"--toasted, buttered bread with condensed milk. The bread was so good--the condensed milk was light and creamy, not cloyingly sweet.

The Peak Lookout Restaurant
This restaurant is at the top of the Victoria Peak, and I feel like it's pretty underrated--most of the tourists there are Chinese, so they tend to eat at the Chinese restaurants. But I think it would be such a shame to not try the western food in Hong Kong, since it used to be a British colony and continues to be a super international city. The food here is really good, but it's not unique--the point of coming here is really for the beautiful view.

We got six St. Hellen's oysters, which are from Tasmania. They're super fresh and really briny, which I love in an oyster; however, I find that they can be a little fishy. If you're sensitive to fishy flavors, I recommend getting a sweeter oyster (the menu has brief descriptions of each one).

I got the mushroom and duck risotto; it's really good, and the rice is al dente, but because the duck is in shreds and cooked medium well, its gamey flavor is spread throughout the dish--I would've preferred a couple of large slices of duck. I love duck, but the gaminess got a bit too strong towards the end.

The Indian food here is actually really good. Usually when I see more than one type of cuisine on a menu, I feel like the chef might not know what he's doing... but the chicken tikka was amazing. It's super moist and tender; I'm not sure if I've ever had such tender chicken breast before.

If you ever eat here, sit outside! The view is absolutely gorgeous.

After dinner, you can go to the other side of the peak and get an incredible view of the city.

橋底辣蟹 Under Bridge Spicy Crab
One of the most famous Cantonese seafood dishes is spicy crab (避風塘炒蟹--in a brochure I've seen it translated into "Hurricane Shelter Spicy Crab," but whatever). It's crab stir fried with chilis and a literal mountain of fried garlic--my favorite. When you stir fry something with a shell, the flavor can't permeate into the meat, but they crack the shell a little bit so you get that incredible aroma of garlic. I'm allergic to crab--my lips swell and itch--and the garlic gave me really bad heartburn, but this is so worth it.

We also got clams stir fried in a black bean sauce--it's so perfectly rich and savory, and enhances the sweetness of the clams.

Our third dish was spicy snails (or "escargots," if you want to be chic). I think this is how snails should be cooked--blanched or boiled, then immersed in a really strong, savory sauce. Snails taste pretty bland and watery on their own, so they need to be heavily seasoned and flavored.

To wash off that fishy smell on your hands, they give you a bowl of warm tea with a slice of lemon. First, wipe your fingers with a wet towelette (this gets rid of the grease) and then rinse your hands in the tea. Your hands will smell deliciously lemony. (You can also wash your hands with toothpaste).

鏞記酒家 Yung Kee Restaurant

This restaurant is Michelin rated, and is most famous for its roasted goose. 

We ate this as a late lunch/early dinner, so we just got goose, pork, and some rice. I feel like the goose is definitely worth the hype. The skin is so crispy, and the meat is so juicy and just melts in your mouth. It does have some unrendered fat, but I find that it doesn't have the flavor of raw white fat--it just melts and makes the meat even juicier.

We also got a platter of chasiu pork--roasted pork loin. This may be the best I've ever had; it's so tender and juicy, without any tendons in it. The outer crust is a little bit sweet, and so nice and sticky.

If you're familiar with Cantonese movies, I had this moment from God of Cookery:

So that's it guys--so much food, so little time. If you go to Hong Kong, definitely go to Yung Kee and Wen Huei. Dim sum is also a must. And for dinner, get seafood; I've had a lot of seafood, but I feel like Hong Kong is the best in freshness, variety, and cooking techniques. Seriously though, this trip was really bittersweet, because it ruined American Cantonese restaurants for me; I don't think I could love any ever again.

Trip to Hong Kong - Part 1

I just got back from a long weekend in Hong Kong! I must admit, I didn't eat quite as many things as I'd thought I would, but everything I did get to try was absolutely fantastic. There are some things that I'm going to talk about that aren't unique to the restaurants that I went to (like dim sum and seafood), because they are just very common Cantonese things that I'm sure many, many other restaurants do just as well. This also turned out to be a much longer post than I'd anticipated, so I'm splitting it into two parts. So, in chronological order:

文輝墨魚丸大王 Wen Huei Cuttlefish Balls

Obviously this place is most famous for its cuttlefish balls, which are served with fun (rice noodles) and a fish broth. The cuttlefish balls are really nice--they're perfectly firm and a little bit sweet, and don't have any trace of fishiness. The broth is so good; they add salted, pickled cabbage (冬菜), which functions to season the broth, and the little bit of tartness makes the soup taste really light and fresh and really appetizing. I recommend eating this with red vinegar and fish sauce, too.

We also got a plate of blanched "Chinese broccoli" (芥藍菜) with oyster sauce. It seems to be the ultimate poor man's vegetable, because no high-end restaurant has it, but it's really delicious. Hong Kong has the most beautiful vegetables.

全記海鮮 Chuen Kee Seafood Restaurant
There's a little town on the east coast of Kowloon called Sai Kung (西貢), which has a ton of seafood restaurants lining a pier-like street. Some are definitely better than others, and it's really a matter of preference (or trial and error), but our favorite is Chuen Kee. The walk past all the restaurants is really interesting, and you can see all the different sea animals that, apparently, you can eat.

Are these not the most terrifying Pokemon you've ever seen? I have no idea what they are, but the fact that they exist makes me very, very scared.

The way dinner works is, you tell the lao ban ("boss," or really whomever offers you a table) how many people you have, what kinds of seafood you want, and how you want it cooked--although their recommendations are always great. If you don't know what to get, ask them--they really know what they're doing.

Our first dish was fried giant prawns (賴尿蝦) with salt and pepper. To be honest, this was not the highlight of the meal, because there was hardly any meat! However, it tastes so nice and juicy and tender, and the spice on the shells tastes amazing.

Our second dish was boiled clams. This was by far the best dish; they used pickled cabbage (the kind I described in the previous section) in the broth, which really enhances the incredible sweetness of really fresh seafood.

Our last dish was sliced geoduck stir fried with celery. If you've never tried geoduck, you really should; it's a giant clam (Google it), and it's actually kind of crunchy when you slice it thin. Stir frying it with celery and minimal seasoning made it a really fresh-tasting, light ending to a heavy meal.

東湖海鮮酒家 East Lake Seafood Restaurant

By day, this place serves dim sum. You can get really great dim sum in America, but the atmosphere of getting the real thing is pretty unbeatable.

One of my favorite dim sum dishes is turnip, fish balls, and pig skin (蘿蔔魚蛋豬皮), all of which are cooked in a broth and served as kind of an overpiled soup. Pig skin is actually really good, guys. It's translucent and chewy and a little bit crunchy, and it holds so much broth that when you bite into it, that delicious, savory broth pours into your mouth. It doesn't have any pig flavor (or hairs) which I think may be most off-putting for most people.

Pan-fried chung fun (basically rice noodles, but in large, rolled sheets) are so nice; if you like pho, you will love this. It's pan-fried with some dried shrimp and scallions, and then you dip it into soy sauce.

You can also get steamed chung fun, and that would come with different kinds of fillings. My favorite is shrimp, and you get a light, sweet soy sauce to pour on top. If you've never had it, it's really hard to describe, but again, it's kind of like one giant sheet of pho--so good.

I love shrimp dumplings; it's just lightly seasoned shrimp wrapped in a translucent rice-based skin, but I think the simplicity of it makes it a really refreshing, light item in the midst of all the other heavily flavored foods.

My absolute favorite is steamed pork buns. It's lean pork in a rich, sticky sauce (that's a little bit sweet, but not gross) wrapped in a fluffy flour bun.

We got water chestnut cakes (top) and turnip cakes (bottom). The water chestnut cakes, I think, are meant as a dessert, because it's sweet and has the texture of a firm gel. The turnip cakes were really the highlight of the meal for me, because it just beats out every other turnip cake I've ever eaten. It's really simple--just shreds of turnip mixed with a flour-based batter, then steamed to solidify it--but it seems like it's really hard to do it well. You need to pan-fry it for that added flavor and crispy texture, and you need to add pork for flavor--because honestly, turnip is pretty bland on its own.

I find that shumai (dumplings that are half-wrapped) are never particularly thrilling, but they can be nice additions if you really want to stuff yourself. Like all other dumplings, they can really be filled with anything, but ours was just pork.

*****

This isn't even half of what I ate this past weekend, so come back tomorrow for even more goodies!