Hungry Rachey on the Loose in Hong Kong - Part Two

So it's our second and last day in Hong Kong, which I'm sad about, but not too sad that I'm going to miss out on eating some seriously good food. 

As we were flying out to Sydney that evening, we thought it best to have a long and suitably lazy lunch at the Langham Place Mongkok's signature restaurant, Ming Court.  It was a bit of a bonus that it also happened to be one of Hong Kong's two Michelin-starred restaurants, so it was going to be our very first experience in a Michelin-rated eating establishment.

And it was a delight to learn half an hour before we went to lunch that we were upgraded to Business Class on our overnight Qantas flight to Sydney.  More on that later...

As we sat down, I looked around the restaurant and had this weird feeling I had seen it before, somewhere.  I wracked my brains, until I finally I realised where I had seen it - yup, this was the Chinese restaurant featured in last season's Masterchef when the finalists went to Hong Kong for their challenge.  Now contrary to what a lot of people think, I'm actually not a fan of Masterchef, at all.  I can appreciate how the show has changed the way people cook and think about food, but the commentary just irritates the hell out of me, and I find the contestants plain annoying.  It just so happened that I was watching this particular Masterchef episode set in Hong Kong, and found it more interesting that the others I had cursorily seen.  All I can say is thank God my well-meaning friends and family have stopped asking me when I was going to apply to go on Masterchef - once you're paid to cook, you're ineligible.  Whooopeee! 

Now where was I?  Ah yes, the food.  We decided to go with the special lunch menu which featured a neat 5-course meal designed to not be too filling, which was good as we planned to do the tram to the Peak and some last-minute sightseeing before heading to the airport.  We started off with a dim sim set featuring their famous har gao (shrimp dumpling).  This was the most refined yum cha we had ever had, and you could tell masters were at work on the food. 

We followed it with the silkiest chicken and sweet corn soup we ever had.  Again, a really refined version of what you would get in a suburban Chinese restaurant, with no gristly chicken bits and clumps of cornflour to ruin the delicate flavours.

My favourite dish in the course was next - beautifully stir-fried prawns and asparagus with a Szechuan style sauce.  The prawns were lusciously fat and juicy, and the asparagus crisp and bright, bright green.  The only downside was that the fried rice was served AFTER the prawns - it would have been so perfect to have had that rice immediately after each yummy mouthful of prawns and veggies.

Dessert was a not-very-attractive looking red bean "soup" - and no matter what I did, I just couldn't take an appetising enough photo of this dish.  But the taste was something else altogether - even though I wasn't a big sweet bean fan, this dish was a fitting way to end the meal.  The best way to describe it is a slightly watery "champorado" - a Filipino sticky rice and chocolate pudding-like concoction that my Filipino friends may well have fond childhood memories of, just like I do.

All up, our first Michelin-starred eating experience cost us a grand sum of...wait for it...AU$30 each.  Not bad really, considering that we easily get up to $50-$60 eating yum cha in Sydney. 

And what of our lovely upgrade to Business Class on the way home?  Well, suffice it to say that it was a very "Kath and Kim" moment, with the Hubby and I all goggle-eyed at being seated on the second level, in the very first row of seats behind the pilots.  Yes, pointy end of the plane indeed!  And they gave us the toiletries bag (his and hers), AND the Morissey all-cotton pyjamas. And the seats!  You could lie down, FLAT, and have a massage too!  Oh my... 

I just had to start off our flight with a couple of glasses of champagne - yes, the French stuff - followed by a sumptious Asian-style chicken dish courtesy of The Ponytailed One (a.k.a. Neil Perry) and a slice of wicked chocolate tart with a glass of Rutherglen muscat.  Oh, but all this only after we had selected our breakfast (creamy scrambled eggs, hash, fresh fruit and yonghurt), all individually prepared for all 24 of us in the special end of the plane by two very lovely flight attendants.  I would have taken photos, but it just would have been too, too gauche.  All I can say that it was a very fitting ending to a lovely gastronomic 48 hours in Hong Kong.  Noice!!!

Hungry Rachey on the Loose in Hong Kong - Part One

A long held dream of feasting my way in Hong Kong was realised when the Hubby and I spent a glorious couple of days last week. It was a stopover on the way home from Cebu City in the Philippines, and despite feeling unwell from a nasty cough and cold, I was determined to try out a few of the "foodie musts" as specified by a few blogs, Lonely Planet and a few wonderful friends.

Breakfast on our first morning was an interesting one. We decided to have a wander around the streets of Mongkok around our hotel (the Langham Place - highly recommended and with the best pool I've ever swum in) to search for where the locals eat breakfast.

We bravely ventured into a little noodle place that looked the deal - linoleum tables, plastic chairs, patrons noisily slurping from the bowls and chatting with friends or reading the paper. We were welcomed by the loveliest man who spoke minimal English but who still eagerly tried to describe what a local would have for breakfast.

We are happy to report that we thoroughly enjoyed our beef and noodle soup followed by eggs, a "breakfast sausage" and white bread with margarine and lashings of warm tea. I suppose that's the rough translation of the characters are in the menu below!

Beats Vegemite on toast...just!

Translation, anyone?

We also had a wander around the fresh markets near our hotel.  The rain didn't daunt us from having a browse among really beautiful fruit and veggies, and of course the more unusual ingredients that make up Cantonese cooking.  Suffice it to say the meat and fish were very fresh, and the chickens were a bit too fresh for my liking, what with clucking, feathers and all!  We also beheld a bit of a sight of a fish monger beating the crap out of a madly flopping fish on the floor - oops, sorry, I should have had a warning to animal lovers and vegetarians then.  Even I felt really sorry for the fishie.  Still, we must be respectful of how other cultures treat their food. 

Very fresh meat...

Even fresher chickens!

'

Beautiful dried meats...damn those quarantine laws!

For lunch we supped at two supposed institutions in Hong Kong. First we ate at the Luk Yu Teahouse on Stanley Street. In Lonely Planet's words, "Most of the staff have been here since the early Ming dynasty and are as grumpy and ill-tempered as the emperor desposed...but the dim sum is really quite delicious".

As recommended, we stuck with the classics like BBQ pork buns (cha siu bao) and prawn dumplings (har gao), and it was rather yummy. We didn't find the staff grumpy at all - I actually find staff in some Sydney Chinatown yum cha places worse - and it was helpful to have an English menu with prices.

We didn't want to get too stuffed, as I specially wanted to make room for "Hong Kong's best roast goose" as served in Yung Kee Restaurant just a stone throw's away from Luk Yu. According to Gourmet Traveller, this place serves on average 400 geese a day all of which they rear and roast themselves. The goose didn't disappoint, although I was expecting the skin to be a bit crispier. The yummy surprise was their house-made XO sauce - absolutely incredible and a perfect accompaniment to the simple stir-fried greens and rice that we had with the goose.

Yummy XO sauce!

We couldn't let go of our only full night in Hong Kong without more exploring, and after a bit of umming and ahhing we decided to brave the dai pai dongs (street food stalls) of the famous Temple Street market. The slight hesitation came from a news article we read that day about a number of acid attacks on Temple Street shoppers over the past few months, with acid apparently flung indiscriminately from the tops of the buildings along the street. We thought the chances of an attack on a not-so-busy Monday night would be slim, but nonetheless I cast a few nervous glances up at the buildings as we walked and I conscientiously tried to walk in the middle of the street to be a bit away from windows and rooftops.

In the end we were glad with our decision, as we had one of the nicest meals. The beef brisket curry was melt-in-the-mouth and bloody spicy, and the lemongrass and garlic chicken wings were delightfully crunchy and tender. The steamed greens weren't half bad either!

The one thing that kinda disappointed us was how hard it was to a bar or pub that we could have a drink in. Not that HK didn't have any bars or pubs, but they were few and far between in Kowloon and around where we were staying. We were pretty much stuck to either drinking (expensively) in the hotel, or buying a few beers and drinking in our room. We opted for the latter and enjoyed a few bevvies while surveying our 35th floor view.

Tomorrow would be another day, albeit a short one as we fly back to Sydney in the evening, but who would have thought we would have our first Michelin starred experience, and an airborne gastronomic experience! But I'll leave that for my next blog post - promise! :)