Food in HK – Agnès b. le pain grillé

Posted on 20 April 2010 by christao408

After all the wonderful Chinese food, we decided one afternoon to take a change of pace and visit the Agnès b. le pain grillé at the IFC mall.

Gary had recommended this and when we arrived, we faced some confusion. It turns out there is both a café as well as a restaurant and in our confusion we wound up in the restaurant. The slightly more expensive than the café restaurant.

Nonetheless, it was lunch, the food and atmosphere were wonderful, so it worked out as a nice treat. Note to anyone who goes to Hong Kong and decides to stop by Agnès b. le pain grillé: the café is the one outside the doors.

Lovely interior reminds me a bit of our home, except with a nicer bar. I like to wood flooring.

Attempting to not feel out of place after we looked at the prices! Nah, I’m kidding, it wasn’t that bad. The three-course fixed price menu was HK$288, about US$38. Pricier than my normal lunch but not the most expensive lunch I’ve ever had.

Elegant place settings.

Iced lemon tea.

Truly amazing bread. Oh, I wish Bangkok had good bread. I wish I had an oven that could produce bread like this.

Penne pasta with a seven-hour slow-cooked lamb. It was really tasty.

Tawn had a seared tuna salad. It was really tasty, too. So all in all, while it was a little pricey it was a really enjoyable, elegant lunch.

Cute little “garden” outside the restaurant. I really like the tile.

At a gallery in Central: Watanabe Ryoko’s painting Marathon Man.

Revisiting the Red Shirts

Posted on 19 April 2010 by christao408

Will return to the review of Hong Kong restaurants tomorrow. In the meantime, I went to check up on the Red Shirt protesters Sunday afternoon. Here are some video and photographs. The link to my first visit to the protest area on April 9 is here.

T-shirt being sold by one vendor, commemorating the move from Saphan Phanpha to Ratchaprasong. Last week a few days after the army clashed with protesters at the Panfa Bridge (“Saphan Phanpha”) in the old city, resulting in two dozen deaths and more than 800 injuries, the Red Shirts left that encampment, moving instead to the Ratchaprasong intersection at the heart of Bangkok’s high-end shopping district.

There are probably 4-5,000 protesters at the intersection, although they are spread out in the midst of the day seeking shade. This view is looking south along Ratchadamri road. The Grand Hyatt Erawan is the first all building on the left behind the Skytrain tracks. Gaysorn Plaza shopping center is the building immediately on the left of the picture.

Turning around and looking north towards Phetchaburi Road, you can see Central World Plaza and Isetan department store on the left, and Big C on the right.

In the old city, protesters defaced much of the encampment they evacuated, including the Democracy Monument. It seems that their respect for property (or lack thereof) continues at Central World Plaza.

The famous Erawan Shrine, a popular destination for tourists from elsewhere in Asia, is closed. A few Red Shirt protesters used a small side entrance to light incense and candles, paying their respects to the Hindu god depicted in the shrine.

One thing I noticed was a large number of monks who have joined the protesters. Unlike the situation in Burma, where the government is clearly repressing the people and I can understand why the Buddhist clergy is at the forefront of the protests, the Red Shirt position doesn’t seem to lend itself to religion. Of course, neither does the position of the Yellow Shirts, who are threatening to counter protest this week.

There were a few other farangs wandering around. Most were taking pictures while this couple just seemed to not have received the news about the area being shut down. Note to visitors to Thailand: when I talk about Thailand being a conservative country, I’m talking about the inappropriateness of this lady’s manner of dress: cover your shoulders and a bit more of your legs, please.

This farang seems to really be getting into the act, joining his wife (girlfriend?) in the crowd. I guess it is nice to support your spouse’s politics, but I’d remind him that the Immigration Department might not look too kindly on foreigners engaging in political protest.

This was about the only thing for sale in the protest area that wasn’t red.

It was a family affair with children dressed up and indoctrinated into the fun. Perhaps they are planning on being away from home for several weeks more so brought the whole family.

The heat was immense, especially in the direct sun, and I was impressed at the organization of the crowd. There were security patrols, meals being dispensed, and first aid facilities. With so much infrastructure, you have to wonder who is bankrolling the protests.

Food in HK – Lan Fong Yuen

Posted on 18 April 2010 by christao408

Continuing the Curry Puffy Cuisine Crawl, Tawn and I headed out to Central one morning to retrace Gary’s secondary school breakfast steps, on the hunt for Hong Kong milk tea. Our destination this morning was Lan Fong Yuen, ostensibly (but unverifiably) the place where milk tea was first created.

Located on the north side of Hong Kong Island, Central is the business district. Immediately to the south of it is the 1800-foot Victoria Peak. The rapid elevation gain combined with the population density creates an interesting warren of narrow streets that are great for exploring. The Central Escalator, a public conveyance system that combines moving sidewalks and escalators, makes it easier for pedestrians to go from Central to the Mid-Levels, a popular residential and, increasingly, commercial area part way up the mountain.

The Central Escalator bisects Gage Street right where it meets Wellington and right below it sits Lan Fong Yuen. The original shop (there’s a second one a few doors down) still has a pair of wooden stools out front on which you can sit and enjoy your milk tea and a light meal. The picture above shows the Central Escalator in the top left of the picture. The red taxi is on Wellington Street.

Looking down Gage Street from Wellington, you can hardly resist the urge to go explore. It is a lively street with vibrant sights, well worth a post-tea stroll. But before strolling, it is time for tea.

The interior is clean but dingy, looking just like a hundred other similar restaurants that have been around for ages. The staff is friendly and a picture menu makes it easy for those who don’t speak Chinese to order. Tawn, being part Chinese, gets spoken to in Cantonese everywhere we go in Hong Kong. He’s much too polite, of course, to tell them that he doesn’t understand, so just smiles and nods, occasionally responding in Thai or English.

This is the milk tea. Not much to look at, right? This is the essence of simplicity. It is a very strong black tea cut with evaporated milk. The flavor of it is almost coffee-like, in terms of the richness of the tea. It isn’t your grandmother’s Lipton.

The tea is made using pantyhose – the leaves steep inside a pantyhose strainer set in a metal pot. The pantyhose is attached to a wire handle and it is lifted up and the tea is allowed to drain into the cup. Worth noting, this is the exact same technique used by street vendors in Thailand for making Thai coffee and Thai tea. (Note to self – that’s a future entry needing to be written.)

Lan Fong Yuen is an all-day operations offering the tea along with a dozen snacky type dishes to satisfy your hunger.

The fried pork sandwich, a single piece of fried pork loin put on a hamburger bun with a slice of tomato and a slather of sauce. Incredibly simple, but very tasty. While at first glance you might think it is tremendously unhealthy, consider that the alternatives offered at fast food restaurants have been heavily processed with added fillers, salts, etc. This is just a slab of pork with some salt and pepper, fried up and placed on the bun. Relatively speaking, better for you than a filet-o-fish.

Probably a little less healthy for you is the French toast.

Two pieces of white bread stuffed with jam inside, battered with egg and then fried in lots of oil. I couldn’t identify whether it was butter or margarine on top and was tempted to think it was the latter. This was tasty but after two bites was a bit overwhelming. Probably best when trying to mop up a hangover.

Tawn ordered one of his childhood favorites – this is what qualifies as Chinese comfort food, it seems. A plate of noodles with some veggies and fried chicken on top. I looked at the noodles and remarked how much they looked like instant ramen. Which was the point at which I learned that they are instant ramen.

So what’s the verdict? Pretty tasty tea and the chicken and pork were both good. There were several other menu items we wanted to try but we had lunch plans just two hours later and needed some room for that. The French toast was fine but was pretty oily, all things considered. For a quick breakfast or a spot of afternoon tea, though, Lan Fong Yuen is definitely on the list!

Food in HK – Shang Shang

Posted on 16 April 2010 by christao408

Our friend Big Michael is a yoga instructor for Pure Yoga, a Hong Kong based chain. He’s been teaching for several years, primarily at the Langham Place location in Mongkok, Kowloon. As Tawn is an active yoga practitioner and has even considered becoming an instructor, he wanted to attend numerous classes during our vacation. Michael arranged for Tawn to have a guest pass and so Langham Place became a frequent destination during our trip.

Mongkok used to be the heart of the dark underbelly (mixed biological metaphors) of Hong Kong, home to the red light district, gambling dens, and the base of the Triads’ operations. In Hong Kong popular culture, movies such as Portland Street Blues immortalized the nefarious underworld of Mongkok, where the allegiance of gang members and police officers was always suspect and subject to double- and triple-switches.

These days, however, Mongkok is much cleaned up. The building of Langham Place, a large office, mall, and hotel complex, has transformed the neighborhood into a seemingly respectable district with bright lights, clean sidewalks, and plenty of legitimate business. Of course, “cleaned up” is as much a cosmetic matter as a systemic one. Walking back to Langham Place from Yau Ma Tei just before dinnertime one evening, Michael and I were accosted by a number of touts trying to sell us women from a range of nationalities: Thai, Filipina, Indonesian, Chinese… I will say, though, that these activities were much more subtle than, say, Soi Cowboy in Bangkok, even if we were just a block away from the mall.

After Tawn completed yoga one evening, Big Michael suggested we try Shang Shang, a Shanghai Cuisine located on the fourth floor of Langham Place. There is actually a very decent food court there, both with sit-down restaurants as well as the typical food court take-away places. Shang Shang is a bright and modern restaurant with attentive waiters and a reasonable price. Oh, and tasty food, too!

Fried prawns with spicy sauce. Delicious and not as spicy as you might expect.

Braised string beans with minced pork – always a favorite of mine!

Fried rice

“La Mian” noodle in spicy and sour soup.

Sauteed chicken in spicy sauce with cashew nuts.

Shanghai style steamed pork dumplings – the Xiao Long Bau that we enjoyed so much in Taipei.

Wontons in hot chili sauce. Again, similar to a dish we had at Din Tai Fung in Taipei while there with Andy and Sugi last November.

For dessert, a feather-light bun filled with black bean paste. Almost felt like meringue, the dough was so light.

A gelatine dessert made from an aromatic flower similar to chrysanthemum. I didn’t catch the name. This is made with rock sugar and agar agar (which is made from seaweed).

Above, Michael serves the noodles to Tawn. All in all, this was a really tasty restaurant. Total price for three persons was HK$400 – about US$51. Worth a visit.

We’re concluding our holiday today, taking the ferry back to Macau and connecting to our flight back to Krungthep. I’ll continue posting HK meals over the next few days as there are at least four more I need to cover. I’ll also get these listed on a Google Map so you can reference them in the future if you so desire. Remember, these suggestions primarily came from Gary, a foodie who really should blog more frequently. (Hint, hint…)

Food in HK – Tim Ho Wan

Posted on 16 April 2010 by christao408

Most of my eating in Hong Kong this trip could best be described as the Curry Puffy Cuisine Crawl, since most of the recommendations came from Gary’s suggestions based mostly on his December trip back to Hong Kong. Each time I return to Hong Kong, eating good food is a central objective. This time was no exception.

Tim Ho Wan is the least expensive, and perhaps the unlikeliest, Michelin-starred restaurant in the world. Its one star shows that Michelin can overlook dismal locations and lack of pretty presentation and focus its attention on the food.

Located several blocks from the Yau Ma Tei MTR station, this restaurant was opened by the former dim sum chef at Hong Kong’s Four Seasons Hotel. It is fair to say that the only things missing are the fine china and refined ambience. The quality of food is exactly what you would expect from the highest calibre restaurant, especially when it comes to dim sum.

I think most of you know that dim sum (yum cha in Cantonese – “drink tea”) is the original “small plates” dining experience, a breakfast/brunch type meal that features small dishes with dumplings, noodles, buns, and other tasty morsels. Eaten with a group, it is an excellent way to enjoy many flavors and textures while socializing. Good dim sum is light and refreshing, made with high-quality ingredients. Bad dim sum is heavy and made with whatever scraps were leftover from the previous night’s banquets.

Even at 10:00 on a weekday morning, there was an hour wait for this twenty-seat restaurant. Instead of a queue, customers took their number and wandered off, coming back closer to their estimated seating time. While waiting, a few other gweilo (foreigners) arrived, including a couple from San Francisco, foodies with whom we struck up a conversation. Non-Chinese speakers need to pay attention or learn how to count in Cantonese, otherwise they might be passed by! Even with a local friend waiting with us we still managed to miss our number.

With an hour to kill, Tawn entertained me with his many expressions. Lest you think an hour is a ridiculous amount of time to wait, let me assure you that this was one dim sum place worth waiting for.

The restaurant itself is nothing fancy. This was about half of it. I wanted to go take a picture of the kitchen but knew if I didn’t get yelled at, I’d get run over by the workers. This is a no-nonsense place attentive to just one thing: turning out good dim sum.

The highlight of the meal was the barbecued pork buns. Unlike the usual steamed buns, these were lightly fried, so were flaky and crispy at the same time. The pork filling was made of good quality, sizeable pieces of pork rather than the ground-up remnants of yesterday’s pork that you so often find in these buns. These are cooked several dozen at a time so the waitress will bring out nearly all the tables’ orders at once, causing much ooh-ing and ah-ing around the room as diners taste these succulent treats. We placed a second order (plus two additional orders for our friend Michael to take home) after we tried this first basketful.

Har gow, steamed shrimp dumplings, were very nice, too. A good measure of dim sum quality is how thin and translucent the wrappers are. Thick, heavy wrappers are coarse and filling. These wrappers were almost transparent, very pliable, and light on the tongue.

We ordered another typical dim sum dish: glutinous rice stuffed with meat and other goodies and steamed in a lotus leaf.

Again, instead of the usual barely identifiable contents, there were large slices of good quality pork loin and vegetables inside. Very tasty!

Siu mai, steamed pork dumplings with shrimp, were also very tasty, again with a light skin and good quality ingredients.

One of my favorite dim sum dishes is the rice noodles stuffed with shrimp or pork, served with a soy sauce. We had pork in ours and found it to be a really lovely dish. The theme kept repeating: light, delicate wrappers with generous, high-quality fillings.

My favorite dish, second only to the barbecue pork buns, was the fried daikon radish cakes. These are made of shredded daikon, seasoned with bits of pork, and then pan fried until crispy. The perfect cake is delicate and creamy inside with a crisp exterior that isn’t too oily. These were ideal.

Tables were shared and so the three of us dined with an old granny, who informed us that she was having her usual lunch of deer tendons and a bowl of noodles. She explained that the collagen from the tendons kept her looking so young. I have to say, she did look youthful, so we ordered a dish. The texture is a lot like eating pig knuckles, the cartilage is soft and flavorful with a sweet soy sauce.

The total before we ordered the deer tendons and three extra orders of barbecue pork buns was only HK$94 – about US$12. At a price like that it and with quality like that, it was well worth an hour wait.

Food in HK – Sushi One

Posted on 15 April 2010 by christao408

Ah, Hong Kong! I lived here in 1998-99 and ever since it has been one of my favorite cities. It has the cosmopolitan nature of New York, the civilized infrastructure of a former British colony, the good food of anywhere with a large Chinese population, and the awesome views thanks to the close proximity of hills and harbour. Whenever I’m back in Hong Kong, I feel like I’m back home.

With all the good Chinese food here in Hong Kong, it might seem a little strange to begin my food entries with a sushi restaurant, Sushi One. This place was not only near our hotel but it was also well-reviewed. To top it off, it was open late and offers 50% off the sushi after 10:00 pm.

Sushi One has several locations throughout Hong Kong. We chose the location on Cameron Road (near Chatham Road) in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon.

There is a row of fish tanks along one wall with a series of small tables surrounding the sushi bar in the center of the room. A conveyor system was in place but pretty much everyone was eating sushi to order. We found the sushi to be of high quality with fresh flavors and good attention to presentation detail. Plus, with the half-off discount on the sushi (although not on appetizers and other plates) our total bill was about HK$170 – about US$23. Not too bad.

Seared crab stick with uni – sea urchin roe. They did several seared dishes, which adds a nice flavor and texture contrast.

Smoked duck breast.

Left: Salmon and mango roll; Right: Salmon salad gunkan maki

Japanese pumpkin and sweet potato tempura

Left: Eel handroll; Center: Soft shell crab handroll; Right: Spicy tuna handroll

Seared salmon

Left: Seared Hamachi; Right: Inari – sushi rice wrapped with tofu skin.

A nighttime shot of the venerable Peninsula Hotel facing the Hong Kong harbour.

Macau

Posted on 14 April 2010 by christao408

This weekend Tawn and I flew to Macau for a week getaway. While the getaway was planned almost six months in advance, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. With the ongoing political troubles in Krungthep, a week away was well called-for.

This is the first time I’ve been to Macau and the only reason we flew there was because the tickets were one-third the price of tickets to Hong Kong. We spent one night and the better part of a day exploring this Special Administrative Region of China. The visits to the Venetian and the Four Seasons didn’t inspire me – I’m not a gambler and needn’t fly three hours to go to a mall.

Tawn, however, did enjoy some time browsing the shops at the Four Seasons, coming away with several pages of notes on looks, styles, and outfits that interested him. Meanwhile, I sat at the espresso bar and worked, which was a good change of pace from working in my office.

While waiting to order a latte, I observed the lady in line in front of me. She seemed very blurred for eleven in the morning. As she went to pay for her drink, she fumbled with her wallet and at least a hundred HK$1,000 bills fell out (about US$13,300). She didn’t have anything smaller with which to pay for her coffee. Must have been up all night and those were her winnings. She scraped them together and stuffed them back into her wallet.

After the shopping we headed into the old city, which has a lot of European charm. Senado Square and the old post office, above, are very pretty from an architectural standpoint but the shops could have been in any mall or shopping district most anywhere in the world. The further you travel, it seems, the closer you are to feeling at home.

We headed into the side streets and alleys, though, peeling away from the tourist track and peering into the small shops and houses where everyday life takes place.

Narrow streets with tall buildings lining them curved and snaked down the sides of the hills. Even though it was a very humid day a nice breeze cut down these manmade canyons, making the weather quite tolerable.

Many of the buildings had a faded glory to them, beautiful colors standing out against otherwise drab facades.

Modern buildings with very utilitarian design stood shoulder-to-shoulder with more elegant European architecture. Sometimes as you walked along the street, it seemed as though you were going from Asia to Europe and back again, all in the course of a dozen buildings.

Other areas, mostly those around churches and other tourist attractions, were very nicely done up with fresh paint and flowers. Interestingly, though, there were very few tourists in most of these areas and the stroll was quite pleasant.

The payoff to our wanderings: the illustrious Portuguese Egg Tart. Flaky pastry with yolky egg custard with a lightly burned top. Perfection in three bites.

Full Disclosure

Posted on 14 April 2010 by christao408

Please pardon this brief interruption to my normal blog entries for this announcement. A reader commented on my previous entry about Ugly Foreigners in Thailand to (politely and respectfully) criticize my choice of such a non-topical topic. The reader also decried my lack of “typical nuance and insight” and compared my writing with something one could expect from Fox News.

While I welcome all readers and all constructive comments, I want to make one thing clear to all my readers: This blog exists as a way for me to keep family and friends informed as to my activities and observations as I live abroad. In my role as a “private citizen” blogger, I make no claims or pretensions to being a journalist. My choice of topics and my editorial judgment are mine as an individual and I reserve the right to choose whatever topics and to editorialize in whatever way I see fit.

With all due respect, we now return to my normal blog programming…

Ugly Farang

Posted on 12 April 2010 by christao408

There is a small soi (alley) in Krungthep (Bangkok) called Soi Cowboy. It is a privately owned street that is lined with bars. In addition to a drink, you can buy true love there, or at least the kind that lasts thirty minutes of an hour. This is hardly the only street in Krungthep – or the rest of the world – that is like this, but it remains an example of one of the more negative stereotypes that people have about the capital of Thailand.

From my perspective, though, Soi Cowboy and other similar corners of this town are less about the services offered by the locals and are instead more about the behavior of the visitors. Without demand there would be no supply. And what ugly demand it is, too.

Walking by Soi Cowboy on my way to an appointment with my Thai tutor, this was the scene I saw:

I think the problem is more than adequately captured in the sideways glance the motorcycle driver is giving them. Inappropriately dressed, these guys are the epitome of what’s wrong with farang. Ugh…

You Don’t Like Panini?