Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Mekiki no Ginji, World Trade Centre, Causeway Bay

Mekiki no Ginji, World Trade Centre, Causeway Bay

This restaurant (P502, World Trade Centre, 280 Gloucester Road, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, tel :  +852 2895 0885) originated from a chain that started off in Okinawa. Hong Kong is apparently their first branch outside of Japan.

I'm not sure how much a representative of Okinawan cuisine Mekiki no Ginji is, but as with all restaurants of a foreign nature to the locale, it probably just scratches the surface. No more.

Mekiki no Ginji, cream cheese tomato

The above was cream cheese made in house with tomatoes.

Mekiki no Ginji, tamago mentaiko

Tamago with mentaiko. This was quite a sizeable portion and the mentaiko was spicy.

Mekiki no Ginji, tamago mentaiko

Not to mention generous.

Mekiki no Ginji, tamago mentaiko

I do mean generous.

Mekiki no Ginji, fried oyster uni sauce

What this place was known for were their deep fried oysters with uni sauce. This was delicious.

Mekiki no Ginji, gyutan

Gyutan was reasonably tasty.

Mekiki no Ginji, quail eggs bacon

And a safe order of skewered quail eggs wrapped in bacon. Their bacon was dry, not greasy as I had been expecting. I'm guessing that part of the reason could be because these looked more like back bacon rather than streaky ones.

Mekiki no Ginji, hotaru ika chazuke

This dish was similar to chazuke. I'm not sure if there was any tea in the kettle, but the dashi was definitely in the broth. It was served with hotaru ika.

Mekiki no Ginji, hotaru ika chazuke

Basically, the firefly squids go into the rice and then the dashi broth is poured in. We could see some parts of the squid edges curl from the heat of the broth. The shredded nori is then sprinkled over. It's then mixed and then eaten. The elements of the dish are very basic Japanese components that has resonated well in flavour with many people. Not unexpectedly, this was quite comforting and delicious.

Mekiki no Ginji, mentaiko onigiri

The other carb was their crisp mentaiko onigiri with butter which was pretty good too. What I liked was the soft and piping hot rice beneath the crisp. On top of that butter makes everything taste better. Again, the mentaiko was spicy and generous.

Mekiki no Ginji, orion beer

Orion draft is served here. This must be the first time I'm having it.

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