Mei Garden (味苑), Lockhart Road, Wan Chai

I noticed this restaurant (128 Lockhart Road, Wan Chai, tel : +852 2880 0112) last year and made a note to come back. So here we were. After a bit of searching online, we found out that Mei Garden is a homegrown brand that isn't run by any conglomerate. This outlet and the original from Tsuen Wan were all there is of them.

This dish was described as honey baked spare ribs with preserved olives. I liked them. Whatever preserves they had used reminded me of preserved plums or lemons. That and the caramelized sweetness from the honey pretty much made these ribs. 

We had claypot lettuce. What we didn't see coming was that the lettuce was cooked with dried prawns. Not those little dried shrimps that's commonly in use but meaty strips of dried large prawns. The flavour from those along with garlic and whatever else they put in made it a very umami vegetable dish which was great with steamed rice. 

Those above were deep fried beef briskets with crispy batter. Pretty tasty with the sweet sauce that was provided but I thought they could have done better with slightly thicker slices for texture.

The sweet and sour prawns with peaches were a letdown. For some reasons I was thinking that the prawns would not be battered. There was too much soggy batter and on top of that, their rendition of the sauce was mundane. We had to scrape all those gooey batter off to get to the prawns which we subsequently dipped in the broth from the claypot lettuce.

Those canned peaches were nice though. Haha!

With all the flavour going on, steamed white rice was a no brainer.

Some strong jasmine tea helped with the make believe that we had washed away some of the grease from the food. 

Complementary dessert from the restaurant when we got the bill.