Shoot First Eat Later

Lunch at Hutong 2

I’m glad I had a chance to eat at Hutong again because the last time we ate there I didn’t bring my camera and had to use my lousy cellphone camera.
Hutong is a very popular and pricey restaurant. It’s no. 9 in the Miele guide to Asia’s Top 20 restaurants for 2008/2009. Their food is unique and is based on traditional Northern Chinese food with a contemporary twist. The restaurant is beautiful with their antique furniture, decorations and even their serveware are antiques. And the view of the harbour from the 28th floor is just spectacular. Eating in Hutong should be experienced even once in your lifetime.

Hu Tong

even the button for the elevator is unique

hanging bird cages at the lobby

view of Hong Kong side from the restaurant

cruise ships docked

our host’s fave room with the best view

assortment of sauces & appetizers

I didn’t like this cold chicken appetizer. It wasn’t salty and I didn’t taste any special flavor. It was just cold, expensive chicken.

hand shredded salty chicken fillet HK$128

a serving of double boiled chicken soup w/ coconut strips

minced pork & fennel seeds dumplings HK$88

This is my favorite dish in Hutong. It’s crispy skin boneless lamb that reminds me of lechon kawali or fried pork belly. It’s their specialty. I wanted to order beggar chicken which I heard was very good in Hutong but when I called to order it one day before I was told they don’t serve it for lunch. How silly is that?

crispy deboned lamb ribs hutong style HK$248

braised mandarin fish fillet w/ preserved vegetable sauce HK$328

sauteed kale w/ salty fish HK$128

wok fried winter bamboo shoots w/ dark soya sauce HK$108

mashed taro pancake for dessert

Menu of Hutong (click to play slideshow)

Hutong Restaurant
28/F One Peking Rd.
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon
telephone: 3428-8342

Dinner at Macau Chinese Restaurant

A friend told us about this restaurant. We didn’t even know there was another Macau restaurant in the area. He said the specialty was the chicken with durian. Nope not trying that.

We were pleasantly surprised with the nice ambiance.

shark’s fin soup

Macau baked eel HK$78
(acc. to the menu it’s baked but it came out fried)

This is my favorite “bad” dish. Rice cooked with Chinese sausage & cured meat is really bad for your health with the fat from the duck liver sausage (darker), pork sausage (red) and cured pork dripping and flavoring the rice. But what the heck I’m on vacation!

All the stuff on the plate below are actually cooked on top of the rice in the claypot. They just transferred it to a plate for presentation. A bowl of sweetened soy sauce is also provided. It’s so bad I love it!

There is a method to eating this. First the waiter mixes the rice in the pot til fluffy. Then put some rice in your bowl, top with some slices of sausage and some of the soy sauce mixture. Mix and eat. Another way is just to transfer everything on the plate back to the rice, pour in some sauce and mix everything together. Either way it’s so good.

special baked rice w/ Chinese sausage & cured meat HK$148

We ordered this fish head because it was one of their specialties. We didn’t like this dish very much not because it wasn’t good but because we didn’t know how to eat a fish head. I didn’t like the gelatinous parts of the fish head. Next time we should order something else. I think this restaurant has promise.

sizzling fish head in pot HK$78

Macau Chinese restaurant menu (click to play slideshow)

Macau Chinese Restaurant
Basement Level, 40-46 Lock Rd.
Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
telephone: 2628-1990

Lunch at Spring Deer Restaurant

Of all the restaurants in Hong Kong, Spring Deer is my most favorite. It should be since I’ve been going there for more than 20 years. Spring Deer has been open in the same location since 1969. It’s a landmark in Hong Kong. It’s also a favorite destination of tourists from Manila, Japan and the USA. They specialize in Beijing cuisine specifically Peking duck and shark’s fin soup.

If it’s your first time to go to Spring Deer it’s not that easy to find. Although it’s in popular Mody road you have to look up to see their sign amidst many other signs.

watch out for this sign

You should see Stanley Market that’s when you know you found the entrance to Spring Deer. There’s another building just beside this also selling stuff on the ground floor that looks just like this but with an Indian restaurant on top.

Go up a flight of stairs or take the elevator.

The place is very simple and quite small compared to other restaurants in Hong Kong. It’s easy to get a table during lunch but it’s IMPOSSIBLE for dinner. You will need to make a reservation a few days before if you want to eat at 7:30 pm. If you go at 6:00 or 9:00 pm there may be a chance for you to get a seat.

This is my favorite manager. He’s known me since I was a little girl. He also knows what I always order. When I brought my cousin La and her hubby Chee to have lunch here they were amused when I ordered food from him using a combination of hand signals and a minimum of words.

For lunch they also serve some dim sum which is very different from the usual Cantonese dim sum. They push around stainless carts with a variety of hot and cold selections. This stewed chicken is what I always order. In Cantonese they call it “Siu Kai”. It’s fried chicken stewed in a soy based sauce with Chinese herbs.

The server gets a whole chicken and rips it into big pieces using tongs and a fork. The chicken is very tender and I love the sauce that goes with it.

“siu kai”

shark’s fin soup (chicken soup base)

fresh water shrimp

Tian Jin cabbage with Yunnan ham

These fried dumplings are another favorite. There were 6 of us for lunch so I was able to order this.

potstickers or (鍋貼, guōtiē)

The beef in this dish is sliced into very thin strips and fried to a crisp. A sweet and spicy sauce is then added to it. To eat this you simply put the beef inside the sesame bread which has a hollow pocket. This is sooooooooooooo good!

crispy shredded beef with sesame pockets

This next fish is my favorite dish in the restaurant. It’s called shad fish or “Si Hee” in Cantonese. In the Philippines it’s known as Hong Kong fish. This big fish can be ordered half or whole. It’s served on a sizzling plate. It has a million bones big and small. I usually take a big chunk of fish and patiently remove all the bones and transfer the deboned fish to a bowl then top it with sauce and eat it. It’s worth all the effort. The fish is so fine and has a different taste and texture. You must try this fish even once in your life.

The waiter uses chopsticks to remove the scales still covering the fish.

When the scales are gone a sauce made of soy sauce, vinegar and ginger is poured on the fish. This creates a huge cloud of steam on the sizzling plate.

This is what’s left. There’s still a lot of meat on the top portion but we were all so stuffed already.

But not too stuffed for dessert! The eight treasure rice pudding is a well known traditional Chinese dessert. It is cooked with sticky rice and 8 different freshly dried fruits and nuts. Mashed red beans are used as a filling in the middle of the rice. It was very good. Just don’t put any syrup which was way too sweet.

8 treasure rice pudding

Spring Deer Restaurant
42 Mody Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui
Kowloon Hong Kongtelephone: 2366-4012

Dinner at Jimmy’s Kitchen

Jimmy’s Kitchen has been operating in Hong Kong for 80 years. And I haven’t eaten there in 20 years. We needed a change from all the Chinese food we’ve been eating so we decided to try it. Overall the food was perfectly cooked. No wonder they’re still in business after all these years.

The caesar salad was very disappointing. It was very bland and the dressing was sparse.

caesar salad HK$88

The corned beef was very tender and not too salty. The portion was quite generous too.

corned beef HK$166

The veal was fabulous! I’ve never eaten veal so good specially with a generous squeeze of lemon. The cheese and tomato sauce complemented it perfectly.

veal cordon bleu HK$198

Jimmy’s Kitchen
G/F Kowloon Center
29 Ashley Road
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon
telephone: 2376-0327

Lunch at Chiu Fat Porridge Noodle Restaurant

This hole in the wall noodle restaurant thankfully has an English menu and the prices are dirt cheap and the food is so good. They don’t offer anything free like hot water or even paper napkins. Everything is for sale. I guess that’s how they keep their prices low.

really small place

they make their own fish balls and dumplings

congee w/ sliced fish HK$22

kailan w/ oyster sauce HK$14

For noodle soups you can choose your kind of noodle. They have vermicelli, e-mi and below is ho fan. The two bottom balls are the same and are cuttlefish balls. The top left is my favorite, the fish dumpling. On the right is a fish slice wrapped around ground pork. There are 2 pieces of each kind of ball. All their balls are very good. The black thing is seaweed.

3 delicious balls in noodle soup HK$28

Chiu Fat Porridge Noodle Restaurant
Shop B G/F Howard Building
Hankow Road. Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
telephone: 2311-1117
open from 8:00 am – 1:00 am

Dinner at Pokka Cafe

Pokka Cafe is like UCC cafe only they have much, much more choices and better food, drinks and dessert. It’s a great place to eat Japanese, Korean and even Italian food. It serves all kinds of food prepared the Japanese way. The servings are big enough. We’re there often enough that I have a Pokka Cafe card to rack up points that will give us free food. The smoked duck breast roll we ordered was free!

I wish somebody would bring Pokka Cafe to the Philippines. I’m sure it’s going to be a big hit. The food, coffee, cold drinks and everything else is superior to the UCC cafe here.

display of plastic food

Everything we ordered was very good. Actually everything in this restaurant is good.

smoked duck breast spring rolls HK$45

This tasted like sukiyaki without the noodles and eggs instead. It’s also less sweet. It’s uber tender beef poached in a broth and eggs stirred into it. It’s light and yummy.

Japanese premium beef, tofu w/ scrambled egg

Yes, rice and foie gras. Strange but delicious. All their fried rice variants are good. But this is my favorite.

Ginza foie gras & cha siu fried rice

Poke Cafe (branch closed)
Basement & G/F (Portion),
63 Peking Road, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon
telephone: 23113968

Lunch at Wu Kong

Wu Kong is a very popular Shanghai restaurant in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui. It’s been in business since 1984 and business has been really strong since they had a total renovation a few years ago. At lunch they offer their version of dim sum and light meals. It’s easier to get a table during lunch. It’s virtually impossible to eat dinner there unless you have a reservation or go at 6:00 pm.

nice, bright interiors

Most places in Manila that serve gyoza or fried dumplings usually fry the whole dumpling. This is the right way to do it. Just the bottom should be fried to a crisp while the top dough remains soft. This is one of the best fried dumplings I’ve ever eaten.

best potsticker or fried dumpling

fried Shanghai noodle w/ shredded pork & cabbage HK$68

Their xia long bao or soupy dumplings are excellent and I think better than the ones from Din Tai Fung which supposedly serves the best.

steamed Shanghai pork dumplings HK$28

xia long bao

mini rice dumplings in rice wine & osmanthus HK$60

Wu Kong Shanghai Restaurant
Basement, Alpha House,
27 Nathan Road,
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon
telephone: 2366 7244

Dinner at Cafe de Coral

When you’re in Hong Kong and you want a fast, cheap and filling meal go to your nearest branch of Cafe de Coral. They’re the biggest chain of Chinese fast food. They have pretty good food too. They constantly have new dishes as well as old time favorites.

You order in the front where the menu and the cashier is and pay. Then you go to this counter and collect your food. They change their menu for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner.

This is the best milk tea I’ve ever tasted. Nothing in Manila or Hong Kong has come close to it. The tea is strong and not drowned out by milk. It’s so strong that if I drink it in the afternoon I can’t sleep that night. But I’d drink this milk tea over Starbucks anytime. An order costs HK$8 but if you order if during afternoon tea it’s HK$6.

milk tea or nai cha

Eating in Cafe de Coral is perfect for rice lovers. Their meals usually come w/ a huge amount of rice. Not good for us since we eat more viands than rice. The rice in this pot is very good. It’s flavored with chicken and soy sauce. But still the small quantity of chicken and taro barely made a dent on the rice.

steamed rice w/ taro & chicken HK$32 w/ a drink

So I had to order this combo of chicken & bbq pork to eat with the taro rice

lung kong chicken & bbq pork HK$26

The soup, chicken and wanton in this dish is very good. It was another wipe out.

chicken w/ wanton in pot HK$38

dinner menu

Halo Halo

It’s summer now in Manila so that means it’s hot, hot, hot! What better way to cool off than to eat Halo Halo. Halo halo means mix mix. It’s a popular Filipino dessert of sweetened boiled fruits and beans then served with shaved ice and milk. Our Asian neighbors also have their version of an iced dessert like Ice Cacang from Malaysia, Ruamit from Thailand, Chè from Vietnam. There is no standard recipe to halo halo. Every restaurant and neighborhood outlet has their own version of it.

Take for instance Sandosenang halo, a mainstay in Manila’s shopping malls food courts. That literally translates to “a dozen ingredients”. You can choose not to put the ingredients you don’t like. In my case I omit all forms of beans.

top row (l to r): langka (jackfruit), pinipig (toasted rice), sago (tapioca balls), ube (purple yam)
middle row: nata de coco, saba (bananas), gulaman (jelly), leche flan
bottom row: kidney beans, red beans, macapuno (cocnut sport)
that’s 11. I guess milk is no. 12

waiting for ice and milk

halo halo

Next we go the extreme end with the minimalist Razons. They only use 3 ingredients. Banana, macapuno and leche flan. This is my favorite halo halo since I don’t like any kind of beans in it. What makes their halo halo so good despite having so few ingredients is it’s so creamy and they use very fine shaved ice. It’s like eating melted ice cream.

Whenever I have guests from the USA this is an absolute stop in the “eat till you burst and your plane leaves tour” that they all go through whenever they come to Manila. Although I’ve noticed Razons prices have gone steadily up while the portions are decreasing.

Lastly we have the hotel buffet halo halo. Even with the best ingredients made by the hotel this comes out as my least favorite. It never tastes as good as when you buy it ready made. It’s probably because I always get too much of my favorite stuff and the proportion of filling to ice and milk goes whack. A case of too much of a good thing huh?

halo halo fixins from Heat’s buffet

(click on the pic for the names of each ingredient)

the finished masterpiece

There are many, many other sellers with their own combination if ingredients. The type of milk they use is another variable. Majority use evaporated milk but some use fresh milk. So the lesson in eating halo halo is eat what you like, mix well and enjoy the brain freeze. Happy summer to all!

Lunch at Super Star Seafood Restaurant

Super Star Seafood restaurant didn’t have a dim sum menu in English. But their regular menu is in English. Their dim sum is ok but I like Chuk Yuen’s better.

This is their version of peanuts on the table. They automatically put it on each table and it’s not free. You’ll see it on the bill added with other extras like chili sauce. This is a common practice in Hong Kong restaurants. Anyway, I don’t mind since I love it. It’s called crispy whitebait with peanuts. It’s tiny fish fried to a crisp and seasoned with salt. It’s very addicting.