PaiGu

After my first taste of culinary paradise, who can blame me for scheduling a weekend stopover in Hong Kong just for food (and maybe a bit of shopping)?

As soon as I made it through immigration, I headed straight to Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao for some xiao long bao. I hadn’t had pork in ages since I’d just been in Malaysia, and I had it on good authority that the Crystal Jade xiao long bao in Hong Kong was better than the ones in Singapore. I was not disappointed.

Second stop was Greenland Taiwanese Cuisine in Wan Chai. Hearty and filling Taiwanese food for very reasonable prices. Set meal for two included seaweed soup, mixed rice, choice of drinks (we chose lychee and bubble tea), and several delicious entrees.

At the last minute, I accepted an invitation for an alumni dinner at Yixin Restaurant, which has been around for quite some time in Hong Kong, its survival no doubt due to its consistently delicious Cantonese fare.

On my last day, I went for xiao long bao one more time, at Wu Kong Shanghai Restaurant. We also had some popular Shanghai-region dishes, such as Shanghai fried rice cake and yu xiang qie zi (eggplant with minced pork). The xiao long bao here were the best I’ve had outside of China.

Although the trip was short and sweet, I know I’ll be returning to Hong Kong for more. 香港真是一个美食宝地！

I’ve already reviewed Ambassador Chinese Cuisine, but this Sunday, I returned for more, and my experience only reinforced my previous review.

I’m always a fan of crispy noodle bowls just because they’re fun to eat, but the vegetables were good too.

The chicken feet were cooked until they were very tender so it was easy to eat.

I’m still not sure what exactly this was, but it was quite savoury.

Crispy perfection. I didn’t find any meat in this pancake, just some dried shrimp and scallions.

This was the only disappointing dish. They could have picked better cuts of pork. The pork was also not cooked long enough. And there needed to be more black bean sauce.

This is actually a common dish in Singapore, although I’m not sure where it originated. This was a little too chunky and thick.

Har gow, tender and delicate, perfect as always.

The egg custard was good, but I thought the puff pastry could have used a bit more “puff.”

Like last time, most of the items were good, but some were so mediocre you wondered how it could have come from the same kitchen. Still, the good items seem to be consistently good, so if you know what you like, you can come back for the same thing and you won’t be disappointed.

Golden Court Abalone is a Cantonese restaurant in a plaza of like-minded restaurants in Richmond Hill. I ventured in one day for Cantonese-style dim sum, seeing that it was packed with Cantonese people – they know their food best after all. It’s a large banquet hall, and you order off a menu, very similar to its neighbour, Ambassador Chinese Cuisine, but with a smaller, and as it turned out cheaper, menu. Nonetheless, many items on the menu were ones I’d never seen before, like spicy duck tongue or steamed tofu wrap with pork, mushroom, taro, and duck web. I admit I ordered rather randomly when it came to items I didn’t recognize, but with dim sum, a little adventure never hurt anyone, right?¹

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1. Ok, very debatable, but humour me. [↩]