Chocolate steamed milk from Yee Shun Milk Company and...

Oooo...chocolate flavoured steamed milk, never seen this before. It tastes like it's made with Milo. Not a bad thing indeed.

And because we were here anyway, hot ginger steamed milk.

And also because we were already here, a savoury comfort snack was also in order. Nom nom nom......

Butchers Club Burgers, Landale Street, Wan Chai

Dry aged Black Angus beef burgers? Yes please. That was basically the bait to me for Butchers Club Burgers (G/F, Rialto Building, 2 Landale Street, Wan Chai, tel : +852 2528 2083) which I bit. Pun intended. This place seem to be part of a trending better burgers phenomenon in Hong Kong. Their meat is minced in house and there is only one burger to order (really? nawww...it ain't so). Open 7 days a week. Butchers Club does a few things apparently. A New York styled deli at Aberdeen, a steak frites joint at the same location and even an online store selling meat.

The ordering is fairly straightforward here. The shop is pretty small. One queues to make the order, pays and gets a chit. You can get a seat if you're part of the early bird queue, or you can stand/squeeze in any corner, even on the outside for your food. The ready order is called out and you simply acknowledge and someone will deliver the order to where you are. That's all to it.

On the left, the burger with a spicy mayo, pickles, tomato, cheese and bacon. Eastside stands Return of the Mac which can be gotten off their "secret" menu. Two all beef special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions in a sesame seed bun their style. That secret menu can be found on their website or extracted from a QR scan at the shop. These were pretty good burgers there. Salty, greasy with sufficient beefy juicy goodness and for the latter, slightly hefty. The texture of the grind was good in my opinion as it was course and that creates texture. Duck fat fries were pretty decent too, but I do generally like my fries a little soft.

Meanwhile, somewhere along Portland Street...

It's not going to take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the location of this shop.

We've had wanton noodles a number of times at this shop. Twice in this trip alone. Their bowls were fuss free and quick. As usual, the noodles were characteristically wiry. 

Their wantons were no slouch as well.

Shrimp, minced pork and a light hit of sesame oil. Skin was light and the stuffings tasted fresh.

In a revisit, we tried their noodles with add on of fei ngau (thin sliced fatty beef). This was good stuff too.

Doppio Zero, Bonham Strand, Sheung Wan

Doppio Zero (The Pemberton, 22-26 Bonham Strand, Hong Kong, tel : +852 2851 0682), as the restaurant is named means 'double zero' or 00. It is used to denote a highly refined (read also as costlier) grade of flour that is well regarded for use in the making of pasta. This trattoria/bar is located at the basement of The Pemberton down at Sheung Wan and has been quite hyped over talked about in the past couple of years.

The entrance to the restaurant starts with the bar - which looked a lot more rustic than the actual restaurant behind with furnishings that are a little more polished than I would generally associate with the word 'trattoria'. But then again, my impressions of what a trattoria is might have been more rose tinted.

A quick one with the service. Attentive and generally welcoming. But we were on an early dinner with not much crowd.

Bread. Good for olive oil and mopping up sauces.

We started with their truffled fried oysters. Truffle aioli and creamed spinach. Could taste some truffle from the aioli, not really so much of the creamed spinach and the oysters were outstandingly ordinary.

We had the half portions of the pastas which on hindsight was a good thing. It would have been too much food otherwise. This above was their beetroot ravioli. It says red wine braised beetroot on the menu and it's actually pureed as well. Butter, Gorgonzola which I couldn't get at all and poppy seed. I'm particular about Gorgonzola. If the menu says it's there, I need to taste it and enough of it. This tasted like it had none. It was cheese for sure but I'm positive I didn't get that funk. Those poppy seeds are really just there for aesthetics since they hardly contributed to texture.

But otherwise, it's kinda nice.

Their chitarra was suppose to be a signature pasta. Menu stated that sea urchin and crab roe were involved. There was some sea urchin flavour in there to be fair. But otherwise, the roe was more prominent and more salt would have been great. I didn't quite feel for this.

Next up, their grilled USDA ribeye with bone marrow. As much as I like a good steak, this was quite the fat overkill. The meat was fatty and glazed over with that anchovy garlic butter. That's on top of the bone marrow to be had and then the drizzles of olive oil. You see what I mean about overkill? The menu says gremolata. Where's the lemon to cut through all the oil? 

Dessert was a crepe/mille feuille thing with lavender Mascarpone with candied tomatoes. This was actually quite nice. My fear of being overwhelmed by the lavender was unfounded and the flavours were quite balanced. The torched sugary top was a nice touch of bitterness and I liked the tomatoes.

Jasmine Place (怡翠軒), Jardine House, Central

We managed to get a seat at Jasmine Place (Shop 5, LG/F Jardine House, 1 Connaught Place, Hong Kong Central, tel : +852 2524 5098) without prior reservations on the condition that we had to vacate the table when the people who made reservations arrived. Wasn't a problem. This restaurant as I found out is run by the Maxim Group. 

Their char siew is apparently one of the items to order. We did and it was good. I haven't been eating a lot of char siew in Hong Kong, this was definitely one of the better ones I've had so far. The savoury barbecued pork was latticed with fat that crumbled in the mouth.

These char siew sou are done with lemon. Juice maybe. There was definitely an accent of lemon in the pastry. While competently done, it didn't quite come on par with the ones from Imperial Treasure which are still one of the best I've had.

We ordered stuffed chicken wings.

They were stuffed with glutinous rice. Pretty tasty. The flavours of the dried shrimp came through in from the rice.

These are one of the better siew mai with toppings that we've had. These here are topped with scallops. Which weren't overcooked and managed to preserve their rather delicate flavours. I thought they were quite nicely done.

Har gao was decently done as well. Definitely way ahead of those at Luk Yu Tea House.

The other item that we've never had before anywhere else were their crispy beef briskets. Beef briskets that were deep fried in a batter. This was really quite good. The portions were rather large for a single order as well, so it's definitely for sharing. Those briskets were moist and tender under their crisp batter. This stuff comes with some chilli oil and a sweet & sour sauce for dips, but it actually works quite well with just some salt.

This restaurant belongs to the 'refined' category, so be prepared to pay a little bit more. The non dim sum sections of the menu looks pretty good as well. Well, maybe next time in bigger numbers we come.

Spasso Italian Bar & Restaurant, Mody Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

From the DiVino Group to TripAdvisor to the South China Morning Post, I hear about the stunning view of the Victoria harbour at Spasso (Empire Centre, 68 Mody Rd, Hong Kong, tel : +852 2730 8027). It's a view I'm sure, but I really don't know about stunning. And it's far too close to the busy road that I'd be inhaling vehicle exhaust along with my olive oil. I know because we were almost as close as it could get to the outdoor terrace without actually being outdoors.

That aside, food was pretty good and service was rather good. But the latter is likely to be because of a particular wait staff that attended to our table. I could tell we would not be getting the same type of service from simply anyone else. The restaurant is helmed by a Michele Senigaglia, Venetian born but the menu isn't from that part. I can't pin point exactly where, but it's probably southern Italian. One detects Sicilian and Sardinian. But to the food...

This was the sequence of the food based on the recommendation of the wait staff due to what we ordered. The recommendation made sense and we agreed with doing the seafood stuff first before the lamb. For the first time in a very long time, we skipped starters/antipasto.

The first dish that was served was simply called Sardinian sea bass fillet. With potato scales and a very delicious orange-rosemary sauce. This was sophisticated yet simple at the same time. The individual components were nicely done and it was all presented with some effort. I am curious as to how those potato scales were done.

Then came the Sicilian red prawn and blood orange risotto. Carnaroli rice. They took al dente really seriously and it was much more toothsome than we had expected out of the rice. A little more cooked would be nice. The flavours were a balance of some crustacean, I'm guessing stock from the prawns and blood oranges. The fruit left a light citrus element to the rice but the dish was on the overall savoury. I was hoping that it would be a little fruity, but I guess that's not how it was meant to be.

This was simply New Zealand lamb chops on the menu. It came with a black truffle crust and a fresh thyme jus reduction. This was really nicely done as you can see from the beautiful shade of pink.

So good that I just needed to put up another picture of the other side.

The black truffle crust was the damp kind, superbly balanced by virtue of quantity to match the lamb-y flavors of the meat where neither overpowered the other. The meat was tender, fat laced and....just very delicious. It came to the point where we had to cast the utensils aside for a more primeval method of removing the meat off the bones. Followed by wiping the plate down with bread so that none of the jus went to waste.

And this was the clean bone tribute paid in testimony to how much we enjoyed the lamb.