Home made roti john

Re-visiting Pizzeria Mozza

I remember being quite impressed with Pizzeria Mozza from the first visit so here's a second one to reinforce that thought.

Their fried squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta were very good. While I had some idea how they might have tasted, I still ended up pretty impressed. Especially by the savoury and piping hot ricotta cheese. One has to be careful not to pop these things into your mouth too early.

Damn, these oven roasted calamari were fragrant. We picked them today because we remembered their smell from the last visit and they tasted as good as we had expected. Especially the charred bits. I'll be hard pressed not to want to order them again the next time.

I'm not complaining but I thought that the oven roasted bone marrow was quite heavy on the oils. Oil from the unctuous bone marrow and the butter soaked toast that they provided for accompaniment. Great stuff which I loved that had robust flavours. But I dread what it is doing to my arteries.

What drew me to Pizzeria Mozza's bianca with fontina, mozzarella, sottocenere & sage for me was mostly just the sottocenere. I hadn't known what to expect out of it but the truffle flavour from the cheese was a little too mild. The sage broke monotony, While it was a pretty decent pie, it was also quite a bit of nothing for what they were charging.

I was as impressed with the desserts this time round as the previous time. What I thought was great were the rich flavours from the dark chocolate sauce, fragrant caramel with almond brittle and the nice crumble base that was all caught up in the light banana gelato. What really left an impression were the quality of those flavours and the fact that amidst all of that, it was never at any point overly sweet.

An obligatory shot of Tai Cheong's egg tart

The last time I had these was a couple of years or so ago when I had the luxury of having a friend waking up early to buy them for us for breakfast after a late night of drinks. This time round, we stumbled upon the bakery (35 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central, Hong Kong, tel : +852 544 3475 ) whilst wandering a long Central. While this wasn't as amazing as many people have over hyped, it was a very very decent egg tart. It just didn't seem right that we would just walk past and not get one "for the road".

More airport food from Terminal 2, Hong Kong

These were the last meals we had before leaving. The top picture features char siew and siew yoke from the food court in the airport. My take on this is as before, never to knock on them until you've tried them. While it wasn't the best representative of roast meats and rice to be had, it wasn't shabby at all. One can see from looks alone that the fat is ready to dissolve once you popped the meat into the mouth. The crackling was a little below the usual expectations though. The roast goose was missing from the above because the stall had ran out of them for the day.

The below came about in the departure hall where there were more eateries and we were determined to have that last bite of roast goose before we left. This particular twin roast was from 正斗, where we got back the awesomely crispy cracking off the roast pork belly and also crispy fragrant skin from the roasted goose. It was a lot more expensive than the food court, but since it was the last time we'll be having some decent goose, I'm not gonna complain. I hear that they have a restaurant that have made it into the Michelin guide.

Triple-O's by White Spot @ Elements, Hong Kong

I had this out of curiosity. I've never had Triple-O's (Shop G004, G/F, Elements, 1 Austin Road West, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong) before so here's a roast beef sandwich which was not too bad for fast food if I might say. The last time I had one of these roast beef sandwich things from a fast food joint was Hardee's, back in probably the 80s?

The meat portions could certainly have been doubled and that would have made it borderline awesome. Still, I was pretty glad that they didn't over do the mayo and mustard on the inside and those buns that they used were pretty soft and airy that the sandwich didn't come across as heavy at all.

Spring Deer Restaurant (鹿鳴春), Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong

This place (1/F, 42 Mody Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, tel : + 857 2366 4012 / 2366 5839) served the best Peking duck I've ever had. Bar none. Each morsel of meat was filled with juices from the bird and melted fat beneath the skin. The quality of the duck was hardly surprising since there was always the option of fresh meat supply. The wraps that were used here were like pita instead of the thin slices of skin that I was used to.

I think the pictures would suffice in doing the rest of the talking here.

These deep fried egg white soufflé that they served for desserts were unfortunately somewhat of a bore. They were a little too dense and floury rather than fluffy and light. I recall the menu mentioning that they were suppose to have bananas in them, rather than just red bean paste.

And possibly for posterity, this was the first time I have ever had Tsingtao. It's actually not to bad after all these years of imagining that it would taste exactly like Tiger.