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!!!
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