Motorino Pizza, Shelley Street, Central

I had forgotten that Motorino (G/F, 14 Shelley Street, Central, Hong Kong, tel : +852 2801 6881) had opened up in Hong Kong until we were walking past Ship Street on the way to Landale Street and stumbled upon their Wan Chai branch. But since we weren't headed to Wan Chai and Central has another outlet, it was here.

I got tempted by the Gragnano, which was a cold sparkling red made from Campanian grape varieties that the pizzeria had claimed was their "pizza wine". It was so good and easy going in the summer heat that I was halfway through my second before the food arrived. This stuff can seriously be addictive.

Their cockle clam crostino was pretty delicious. The clams were fat and fresh while the salty wine broth was great with the garlic bread.

Unfortunately, I didn't think much of the pizza at all. This was their Brussels sprouts pizza. 

There were too much burnt elements on the pie (both the Brussels sprouts and the crust) that left a bitter after taste. The crust was soggy in the middle with texture was akin to appam. The rest of it was kinda like naan. While I'm not an expert on New York styled pizza, I'm pretty sure this didn't quite represent it well. We didn't get any fruitiness from the EVOO neither. Even with pancetta and Pecorino cheese, the salt in the pie was a little too little. Something was just not right with the ingredients.

Not impressed in the slightest.

For Kee Restaurant (科記咖啡餐室), Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan

For Kee (Shop J-K., 200 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan, tel : +852 2546 8947) has been memorable for me for various reasons. It's not so much of the fact that it's the go to place for many locals. It's partially because it's in a less touristy corner down at the Central/Sheung Wan region I remember being in. Mostly, it is likely due to the fact that we stumbled upon it purely by chance when we were staying at the Mid Levels some years back and hadn't a single clue what this shop was to the place. We just wanted to get food.

Speaking of which, it was my first meal then as an adult in Hong Kong a few years back. My first milk tea here too. Any time before that time, was way far too far back for me to remember as a child. So this memory of recent years stay. And that their pork chops are really good. Crisp on the outside, respectable chew texture for the meat, savoury from the soy and the sweet from the sugar. I may not be local or a frequent enough visitor to eat with any regularity, but it still resonates a familiar hum of comfort. Especially with rice and molten yolk-ed fried egg. My words don't have to be taken as sole value for that. Just observe the crowd when you're there and watch what the locals order.

This now would be my first iced lemon tea in HK. Another first for me in this place. It's usually been milk tea but the weather was sweltering and I needed the citrus and ice. 

This was an order mistake. Probably mine and I blame in on poor pronunciation on my part. Where the word 饭 inflected in a different tone (in this case 粉) could mean the difference between rice, or rice noodles. I wanted the former but got the latter. The pork chops tasted pretty much the same as the one with the rice except that these were cut to smaller bits. The rice noodles were however too greasy, tasteless and pretty damn lousy. I'm kinda sorry to have to say that for a place I liked.

Aberdeen Fish Ball & Noodles Restaurant (香港仔魚蛋粉), Sai Yeung Choi Street South, Mongkok

This was another slice of locality. We have come across various outlets of this noodle shop (G/F, 148 Sai Yeung Choi Street South, Mong Kok, tel : +852 2399 0699) on multiple occasions and have done nothing further than ponder over the menu for a little bit and then moving along. This time round, we decided to get some food.

We've been doing a bit of the fei ngau thing this trip. Here's another bowl of them. This one was just blanched with no seasoning. Not even salt. It came accompanied with their satay sauce which was quite salty. No gripes, nothing to blow the socks off anyone, just regular blanched sliced beef that's thoroughly cooked.

As implied by the name of the restaurant, fish ball noodles are supposed to be their forte. It's also supposed to be Aberdeen styled fish ball noodles. I don't know what that means, but the soup looked like tonkotsu. But it sure didn't taste anything like tonkotsu. It was much lighter than I was led to believe from appearance. 

This was bacon fried rice. The bacon was not very well crisped and didn't impart much smoky flavours. But in spite of it's relatively unexciting appearance, it tasted decent. The rice grains were fairly well coated with eggs and the plate had no excessive residual grease from the stir frying to boot. Sure beat the hell out of many fried rice back home.

The outstanding beverage here was their hot lemon Ribena. Yes, it's definitely something that one can easily make at home, but I liked that they didn't stinge on the Ribena or the lemons which resulted in a very robust fruity hot drink.

More goose-gasm from Yat Lok

Here you go, some better looking roasted awesomeness from Yat Lok that we had in this trip. This time round, it was their goose leg and char siew rice.

Mekiki no Ginji, World Trade Centre, Causeway Bay

This restaurant (P502, World Trade Centre, 280 Gloucester Road, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, tel :  +852 2895 0885) originated from a chain that started off in Okinawa. Hong Kong is apparently their first branch outside of Japan.

I'm not sure how much a representative of Okinawan cuisine Mekiki no Ginji is, but as with all restaurants of a foreign nature to the locale, it probably just scratches the surface. No more.

The above was cream cheese made in house with tomatoes.

Tamago with mentaiko. This was quite a sizeable portion and the mentaiko was spicy.

Not to mention generous.

I do mean generous.

What this place was known for were their deep fried oysters with uni sauce. This was delicious.

Gyutan was reasonably tasty.

And a safe order of skewered quail eggs wrapped in bacon. Their bacon was dry, not greasy as I had been expecting. I'm guessing that part of the reason could be because these looked more like back bacon rather than streaky ones.

This dish was similar to chazuke. I'm not sure if there was any tea in the kettle, but the dashi was definitely in the broth. It was served with hotaru ika.

Basically, the firefly squids go into the rice and then the dashi broth is poured in. We could see some parts of the squid edges curl from the heat of the broth. The shredded nori is then sprinkled over. It's then mixed and then eaten. The elements of the dish are very basic Japanese components that has resonated well in flavour with many people. Not unexpectedly, this was quite comforting and delicious.

The other carb was their crisp mentaiko onigiri with butter which was pretty good too. What I liked was the soft and piping hot rice beneath the crisp. On top of that butter makes everything taste better. Again, the mentaiko was spicy and generous.

Orion draft is served here. This must be the first time I'm having it.

Beef & Liberty, Wing Fung Street, Wan Chai

Beef & Liberty (2/F, 23 Wing Fung St., Wan Chai, Hong Kong, tel : +852 2811 3009) which started off in Shanghai is part of Hong Kong's forward moment towards better burgers. Their claims to their burgers are the use of hormone-free grass fed Hereford and Angus cattle from Cape Grim in Tasmania. Ground in house. Personally, I preferred the patties that they're doing down in Butchers Club Burgers which featured aged beef which were also little more charred with flavours that struck more of my chords, but this place isn't too bad.

Ginger and vanilla milkshake. I was hoping (against hope) that they'll be doing this with old ginger, but it wasn't the case. I guess it was okay and that the tall glass of it went down much lighter than it had appeared.

Scotch quail eggs weren't much to talk about. Actually, I recommend skipping this.

Their bacon and cheeseburger was pretty decent. Frills free and quite nicely done. The whole burger was constructed to be eaten properly with hands. I could always lament about how it would have been nicer for the bacon to have a little more char for flavour, but honestly, it's a decent burger with a grill toasted sourdough bun.

The regular burger tasted like how it looked. What was nice about here, was the choice of sides. Fries aren't forced into you here as a default if you don't feel like it. In this case, we picked a mandarin orange salad with sun dried tomatoes and candied walnuts which was refreshingly tasty.

The meat's done pink and the grind isn't too fine. Which is one of the attributes that I liked of the patty.

While I may not have sounded very enthusiastic about this place, I'm pretty glad it exists. It's better value in terms of cost to product ratio than most if not all for the same price point back home. Why is that I wonder.