Yue Hing (裕興), Stanley Street, Central

Ahh... an actual sit down breakfast. It is a luxury of time for the majority in this part of the world where one sits and enjoys the first meal (oftenly mentioned as the most important as well!) of the day in leisure. Something that usually does not happen on company time during the working week. Much too often, it is often reserved as privilege for the majority during the weekends, holidays or during vacation. And even so, that's assuming that one has slept in often enough to want to give up the precious morning shut-eye to get up early.

This is Yue Hing (82 Stanley Street), just a few short paces from Wai Kee Congee Shop. And this is breakfast. Of hot milk tea and sandwiches uncommon; down in the bustle of Hong Kong Central.

The thing to order at Yue Hing in the morning, are their sandwiches. The choices that you get for those sandwiches are really just the option of the meats that you want. Luncheon meat (or spam), ham or corned beef. It's all pan fried with eggs and cabbage, slathered with some peanut butter and then placed between wholemeal bread. No fuss, no frills and no pretensions. Each order of those sandwiches comes with a choice of beverage which is usually, tea.

Dumpling Yuan (餃子園), Wellington Street, Central

This slightly dodgy looking shop, which I noticed some years ago along Wellington Street does Chinese styled (Beijing?) dumplings. It also strangely seemed to share the same address as Tsim Chai Kee (98 Wellington Street, Central), but it's actually located just next door to the wanton noodle shop. We dropped by for something light and things turned out to be rather promising in this no frills joint.

This chilled diced tofu and century eggs were as it appeared. Topped with bits of chopped scallions and garlic in a soy based sauce. This stuff is pretty good nibbles for the warm summer evenings while waiting for the rest of the food to arrive.

We had only managed to try their mutton dumplings which were honestly, pretty tasty. The marinated stuffings paired up nicely with the natural flavours of the mutton. The skins of the dumplings were not as thick as had feared, so I guess how they do the wrappers here works for me. The dumplings were served piping hot and juicy.

An innocuous looking plastic cup of hawthorn tea? Or so I had thought. I was almost dismissive of it until I took my first sip. It turned out to be the most powerful hawthorn tea (read thick, read delicious) I've ever had. The flavours were rich and punchy and certainly did more than its part as a palate cleanser for the grease in the food here. A whole load of herbal-ish sour and enough sweet to balance the taste. Note to self, come back again and order chilled hawthorn tea. There's also donkey meat on the menu.

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.