Hungry for Hong Kong

August 27th, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

Some of the best meals I had in Hong Kong I didn’t get to take pictures of. They included: street food at Tsim Sha Tsui1, dinner at a Western-style restaurant on Discovery Bay2, and brunch at a Shanghainese dim sum restaurant3. However, the rest of the pictures speak for themselves.

Lunch at a tiny but busy Japanese joint near Causeway Bay MTR. They are known for their fatty tuna sashimi.
Tuna sashimi with salmon roe on a bed of preserved shrimp and rice.

Combo meal (raw egg to be mixed with tuna sashimi), miso soup, preserved radish, and egg cubes.

Lunch at an apartment-turned-restaurant near Sham Shui Po, Western-style cuisine, prix-fixe menu that included appetizer and entree. The dessert (every single dessert on their menu) was compliments of the owner, who seemed to know my friend’s aunt.

Some sort of meat-in-pastry appetizer and a side salad.

Vegetarian pasta in tomato sauce.

Beef tenderloin strips in a tomato-based sauce with sweet corn and buttery rice.

Dessert 1: No idea what this was, maybe a hazelnut cake? But it wasn't a spongey cake, it was very dense, as if it was made out of peanut butter.

Dessert 2: Coconut pudding with sliced grapes.

Dessert 3: New York cheesecake with strawberries and a chocolate stick.

Dessert 4: Souffle with cream and ice cream on the side. » Read the rest of this entry «

  1. Curry fish balls, lobster meatballs, sausages, roasted octupus, and deep-fried calamari. With a side of Hong Kong milk tea. [↩]
  2. Deep-fried seafood platter, soooo good. Pumpkin risotto was also delicious. [↩]
  3. I got two pictures from it, but the rest of the meal went unrecorded. I can’t remember what else we ordered, other than xiao long bao and shrimp dumplings, but I know there was an order we added at the end that was delicious. [↩]

Exploring food in China

August 2nd, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

I’ve been eating extremely well in China, which isn’t difficult given that everything1 here is better than anything I’ve had in Canada times ten.

Let’s walk through a typical day of eating for me in Nanjing.

Breakfast starts at 5am2 and is usually at a xiao chi dian which is kind of like a dim sum stand with road-side aluminum furniture. Sketchy? Yes, a little. Delicious? Definitely. Luckily, I’m not someone with a sensitive stomach and I have never gotten sick from eating in China.

In the last four days, I’ve had quite a variety of breakfast items: plain steamed buns (man tou), veggie or pork-filling steamed buns (bao zi), glutinous rice buns (shao mai), fried dough sticks (you tiao), soy milk or tofu soup (dou jiang, dou nao), congee (xi fan).

Tofu soup (dou nao)

Some xiao chi items can be repeated for lunch, such as steamed buns. Nanjing has the best xiao long bao in the country, many would argue.

Soup-filled pork steamed bun (xiao long bao) » Read the rest of this entry «

  1. When I say ‘everything’, I’m mostly referring to all Chinese food. [↩]
  2. Everyone gets up really early here because mid-day and early afternoon is too hot to function, so that’s usually nap-time. [↩]

Eating Europe: Cinque Terre

July 18th, 2010 § 0 comments § permalink

Cinque Terre refers to Cinque Terre National Park, five towns on the west coast of Italy. The towns are connected by hiking trails, and there is nothing better than hiking along the Mediterranean coast for a whole day and then dining at an authentic Italian trattoria for some fresh seafood and home-made pasta.

It was in Manarola that we discovered the best food we would have in all of Italy. We randomly walked into this restaurant for lunch – the restaurant was no different from any of the other dozen restaurants along the street, except that it was quite busy – which is usually a good sign.

Service was quick (by European standards) and friendly, and soon we were served with a large deep-fried seafood platter with calamari, prawns, squid, and anchovies.

The seafood could not have been more fresh, the batter was light and did not soak a lot of oil, and everything was fried to perfection. The squid was unreal.

I had a trofie with sea bass in tomato sauce. The trofie was definitely made in-house, perfectly chewy. The sea bass was tender and delicious, and my only complaint was that there wasn’t more of it. The tomato sauce was somewhat uninspired, but this was honest to goodness Italian home-cooking, straight-forward and uncomplicated. » Read the rest of this entry «

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