Linguini Fini, The L Place, Central, Hong Kong

I read about this place (G/F, The L Place, 139 Queen’s Rd, Central, Hong Kong, tel : +852 2857 1333 ) which appeared in Hong Kong's 2012 Michelin guide for their home made pasta, house baked bread, locally sourced ingredients and their own house cured meat somewhere before, so we decided to give it a try. In my mind, I was thinking that the theme ought to be rustic but I was pretty surprised to see the first floor dominated by a bar with a DJ spinning music.

We managed a slot for dinner without making reservations. I think we just got lucky and managed to land ourselves a table. If only I had known....

There was a starter, I ♥ Milanese which sounded great on menu, but fell totally flat on the face with the execution. This dish was basically breaded and deep fried pig heart. Unfortunately, the slices of the heart were so thin, there was little identifiable flavour to the organ and whatever measly residual texture that might have been in there were lost in the avalanche of crisp from the breaded exterior.

The 8 Hour tripe sounded like the previous dish rather promising on menu. In fact, I couldn't have known how correct I was about the element of déjà vu going to happen here.

The reality was that the texture was mostly lost in the ragged scraps of tripe. The redemption of the dish was that it packed some nice heat and the toasted pancetta added some dimensions to the otherwise unimpressive tomato flavour. To add on, it lacked cheese which was suppose to be in the dish. It was definitely nowhere in the leagues of La Braceria and Pietrasanta for comparisons.

The first of their pasta was a salt egg cured Genovese capellini. The server had explained that there was salted egg in the dough that was used for their pasta and the same salted egg was also shaven on top of the noodles upon serving. Maybe it was a beer that I had earlier that numbed my tongue. I could only get a salted egg after taste. The coarse hand chopped/blended pesto was well done and the noodles were perfectly al dente. The dish needed a bit more salt and because of the mention of salted egg, had flavour that I felt was underwhelming.

By this time, things were starting to feel a little forlorn. The salvation appeared in the form of their chittara done in a meaty sauce of pancetta, pork liver, brown butter and 30 year old balsamic vinegar. The hearty sauce packed a daring punch of flavours which were sadly lacking in all the previous dishes. This has both richness from the livers and pork belly, tamed by the zest of the vinegar that prevented the said richness from being overwhelming.

As much as I would like to tell myself that I'm never coming back again, I probably would do so just for this!

We opted for a lemon olive oil cake with poppyseed gelato. No lemon taste in there.

It was quite a disappointing visit in comparison to what I had imagined the place to be for all their marketing.

Classified, Exchange Square Podium, Central, Hong Kong

This place (Shop 313, 3/F Exchange Square Podium, 8 Connaught Place, Central, Hong Kong, tel : +852-2147 3454) wasn't bad at all. Might have found myself a new joint for casual ang moh food to like when in Hong Kong.

What was this place? From what I could make out, a cafe that also does artisanal cheeses and argueably good sandwiches. Both of the latter right up my alley.

We started off with their baked Camembert with truffle which was also gently perfumed with roasted garlic and rosemary. To my surprise, they actually managed to pull off a balance in the aromatics applied to the baked cheese. That all of the flavours somehow worked without contention. If I could have my way about this, I would have done without the rosemary. The runny cheese was definitely a great spread with their poppy seed and sesame laced sourdough slices.

The grilled steak sandwich reeled me in with descriptives like Rocquefort butter. The butter did arrive late, but lived up to its namesake which made an excellent spread.

I was initially wondering how I could have eaten this thick ribeye (medium doneness, no less!) sandwich with my hands without spillage (yes, the onion chutney there!) and unhinging of my jaws, but I gave up after a modicum of token effort and stuck with it open faced with fork and knife. Thanks to my less barbaric method of eating, I was left with the top cover of the sandwich to enjoy the Rocquefort butter with.

Their burger was simply known as the Classifed burger. Was probably hands down, one of the best burgers I've had for that price point. For HKD 96, one got a nice grilled patty of hand chopped beef topped with Swiss cheese, English back bacon between sourdough crusted with black and white sesame and poppy seed.

The meat (of specifiable medium doneness) was sufficiently juicy and flavourful (of both the meat and the char grill) and for what was charged, there is nothing, I mean absolutely nothing in back home that can match it at this point of writing.

A cappuccino - which was decent if unexceptional with competently done foam to wash down the brunch.

Think I might make wanna come back again the next time I visit.

Fong Wing Kee Hot Pot Restaurant (方榮記沙嗲牛肉專家), Kowloon City, Hong Kong

This place was pretty good. It almost felt like I had to do an obligatory hot pot dinner just like the previous time round. The difference was that for this time there was the novelty of having a steamboat dinner without breaking sweat. Cool beans!

Fong Wing Kee hot pot/steamboat and one of the specials that they have is a satay based broth which was really quite tasty. Didn't pack much heat. There was much too much food for me to describe here so it's basically broad strokes with what I could remember.

The vegetables were fresh and the seafood was great. The surprise for me were their gigantic, fat and succulent oysters which were so creamy in texture. Tasted exceptionally fresh. There was deep fried fish skin that made excellent dipping platform for their satay broth.

Amazing oysters here!

Yee Shun Milk Company, Mong Kok, Hong Kong

egg and beef sandwich

hot steamed milk with ginger

chilled steamed milk

chilled steamed egg

luncheon meat sandwiches

We were kind of fortunate to have been staying at a hotel that was a convenient few minutes of walk from one of the Yee Shun Milk Company outlets (G/F, 246-248 Sai Yeung Choi Street South, tel : +852 2393 3301) that we could revisit easily for desserts (and sometimes snacks). So this post was kinda formed from the authority of three separate visits. And if anyone was wondering what's good here, I'd say that the desserts were on the whole pretty decent. Especially their hot milk pudding with ginger juice which had a texture that I could only describe with the word 'ethereal'.

If I had to put my preferences into context, the flavours were a little more subdued that what I had expected. The steamed egg tasted less eggy and the ginger juices used were less sharp (or spicy) than what I would have preferred. With those things being said, I'd still have to give them a thumb up for a well moderated texture and flavour balance.

Skip the beef and egg sandwiches. It's as what I was expecting (but hoping against hope that it wouldn't be), an unidentifiable meat matter that had been tenderized to death.

First meal in HKIA

This was a slightly different first meal in comparison with the previous trip and a first time with airport food here. With what sounds like digression on hindsight, visiting Hong Kong has so far been interesting because I get to re-align my spectrum of taste of both the expected and sometimes, unexpected. I might have mentioned before that the food here wasn't all that different from home but was also different in flavours that it might have been another thing altogether.

These were just a quick meal between breakfast and lunch that was the option based on the arrival timing. What in Chinese/Cantonese is referred to as the 3 treasure rice and a bowl of ubiquitous wanton noodles from Maxim's Food² (Unit No.5T151, Passenger Terminal 1, Hong Kong International Airport, Lantau) at the Arrival Hall in the Terminal 1. Back to the previous topic on the alignment of flavours, the salted egg was definitely less salty here. Soy sauce chicken packed a burst of flavour that can only be uncommonly found back home.

I'm definitely learning not to ignore airport food here. Appearances can be deceiving.

God Fire ramen from Ikkousha

This bowl from Ikkousha (111 Somerset Road, #02-15, TripleOne Somerset) had to be by far the spiciest ramen that I've had. Then again, I've never really made it a thing trying spicy ramen. While this packed a respectable amount of (woody and almost herbal) heat in the still savoury pork bone broth, it wasn't anywhere close lip numbing. God Fire was really just an impressive name for their chilli based tonkotsu broth. I prefer their regular option down at Ramen Champion.

The charshu that they had in this bowl was much more thinly sliced and it resembled those from the tonkotsu bowls at Keisuke's Tonkotsu King.