Po Lin Monastery Vegetarian Restaurant

We made a day trip to the monastery and the giant Buddha statue at Lantau so it made sense that we stopped over at their vegetarian restaurant for lunch. This came from the deluxe meal ticket and the food was unsurprisingly very tasty. I liked most if not all of the things they had served, even those Chinese mushrooms that I normally don't enjoy. And I blame them for making me ask for seconds of their delicious steamed rice.

Sister Wah (華姐清湯腩), Electric Road, Tin Hau

Sister Wah (G/F, 13A Electric Road, Tin Hau, tel : +852 2807 0181) has apparently been compared with Kau Kee; both in their standings of well regard that places them as the top dogs of beef brisket noodle vendors in Hong Kong. I didn't think very much of the latter location some years back when I tried their noodles. Here's a trip to the former.

What I found odd about the particular bowl of noodles that we had was that it was really oily. It wasn't the case for everyone else and we were a little disturbed by it. After skimming off all the grease, it was a rather enjoyable bowl. The briskets were tender and the rice noodles were light and smooth.  

Their curry beef briskets were equally tender, but I couldn't get past feeling that the salty curry was saturated with MSG. But - their vegetable rice was really good. Good like it was the best thing I remembered of Sister Wah and would be the one thing I would be looking forward to if I ever came back.

Lung King Heen (龍景軒), Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong

There were a couple of reasons for visiting Lung King Heen (Podium 4, Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, 8 Finance Street, tel : +852 3196 8880). They're the first Cantonese restaurant in the world to receive 3 Michelin Stars. They are as of this year, still the only Cantonese/Chinese restaurant to do so. Bo Innovation does not count. I wanted the experience or a close semblance to the actual experience. That and a couple of people I know have recommended me to give it a go so, here I was.

I get it that this was dim sum and isn't an accurate reflection of how an experience could have been like for say, dinner. Still. 

That's the steamed shrimp and crab meat dumpling with egg white. Not bad, I could identify that it was crustacean meat even though I couldn't tell it was crab or shrimp or even that it had egg.

If there was any point of equilibrium where one could consider as balanced in terms of flavours for siew mai, I suppose these here would qualify. Honestly, we liked them.

I've generally never been a fan of abalone but these whole mini abalone tarts seemed to the one of the pastries that LKH is known for. I guess they weren't too bad. The pastry was especially buttery.

And those are baked bbq pork buns with pine nuts.

Not bad too, but they could have omitted the pine nuts and I wouldn't have known. I thought that the only thing we could taste apart from the char siew were bits of onions?

That's the Lung King Heen Appetizer Combination. That's from left to right; roast goose, suckling pig and barbeque pork with honey. There was a four appetizer combination platter, but the last item was jellyfish so I decided it wasn't worth the money. That barbeque pork was tender, fat laced and the meat grains fell apart easily in the mouth. The favourite of the platter. The rest was unfortunately, quite mundane.

The other item I was recommended was their lobster fried rice with seafood. It's quite nice, very competently fried and what would be impressive for most was that there were actually chunks of lobster that you could identify by taste. Each grain was well coated and there was a medley of textures from the rice the greens and the seafood. Nice, but rather pricey. I wouldn't have minded eating this again if not for the fact that I actually needed to plan for some months in advance to get a table here. 

That's a dessert of bird's nest with double boiled egg white custard. A signature dessert of Lung King Heen. Again, all I could say was nice. But I've had better done bird's nest than most of the rest of the world, so very little outside impresses me.

And a closing of their petit fours of osmanthus flower jelly and Chinese walnut cookies.

I kept my expectations really low and so I left with little disappointment. The service was commendable. It's been a while since I have had any that were at the level that Lung Keen Heen provided. The servers could actually answer questions, were very polite and knew now to manage a discreet distance while paying attention.

Kam Wah Cafe (金華冰廳), Bute Street, Prince Edward

We must have walked past this shop (G/F, 48 Bute Street, tel : +852 2392 6830) a couple of dozen times in the past few years and never thought of walking in until today. Good thing we did. Came across a friendly chap who was kind enough to educate us that we learnt to deviate from the usual 奶茶 to a condense milk fuelled 茶走.

Their bo lo yau (a.k.a. bolo or pineapple buns) are the thing that you should try here. The crispy crust on the top of the bread is thick. It doesn't crumble as much as it cracks and they're definitely one of the better ones I've had. The great thing about having them in the morning is that you get them pretty fresh out of the oven and the turnover for each batch of bakes is high.

One can get a staple of luncheon meat and egg sandwich between steamed bread here too. Nothing extraordinary, but I couldn't find a time in my life when these things don't work for me at breakfast.

Update 19/11/15

So we came back for another breakfast. This is their bolo bun with pan fried ham and eggs. Yes, apparently one can have it in that configuration here. But this doesn't have butter. It would probably have been better if it had butter too.

So there's corned beef and egg sandwiches to be had here too. Again, nothing extraordinary; but it works for a quick brekkie.

Their coconut tart, or was it cake, looked good on the display. Fat, glistening and fresh from the oven. I had imagined that it was a tart filled to the point of spillage with juicy shredded coconut. But there was only just a layer of that shredded coconut on top. The rest of it was just cake. Not bad though.

Lau Sum Kee Noodle (劉森記麵家), Fuk Wing Street, Sham Shui Po

Lau Sum Kee is famous for their noodles tossed with prawn roe (蝦子撈麵). The noodles from what I've read, are made daily and the dough is kneaded traditionally with a bamboo pole. Man made with blood, sweat and tears. That alone warrants a visit right? We came by their other outlet (G/F, 80 Fuk Wing Street, Sham Shui Po, tel : +852 2386 3533) simply because. It was either the original older shop on the adjacent street or this one and I picked this.

We liked this. And I think I liked it mostly because of the texture of the noodles which were hard and chewy and that there was a generous bit of that prawn roe that's tossed into those wiry noodles. That in itself took the centre stage in comparison with the other ingredients that one might have chosen or added. Sure the wontons were decent and braised beef briskets acceptably so, but whom are we kidding? I'm pretty sure the majority didn't come here for those. They came for those noodles crusted with the savoury briny sweetness of the millions of unborn offsprings of shrimps.

One Dim Sum (一點心), Playing Field Road, Prince Edward

We were introduced to this dim sum (Shop 1 & 2, G/F, Kenwood Mansion, 15 Playing Field Road, Prince Edward, tel  : +852 2789 2280) joint by a friend. If not for that friend, we wouldn't have known that this place existed or that it actually has a Michelin Star. That being said, don't walk in expecting anything fancy. The food is solid, properly done and is made to fill bellies - not blow minds. These guys just cover the bases of the usual stuff or what's popular for Cantonese dim sum with no frills and an affordable price to match.

This was called Steamed Chicken with Four Combinations on the menu - essentially bean curd skin blanketed over chicken, fish maw, mushroom and what appeared to be sausage or ham; I'm not sure about the last item. I liked this. 

Siew mai was very competent. The flavours of the individual components of the stuffings stood out and the dumplings were tender. One of the more enjoyable siew mai I've had in recent times.

A competent pan fried radish cake, but I thought that the ones from Imperial Treasure actually outshone this one. Those were creamier.

The one item that we felt didn't quite make the cut was the har gow. We've had better even back home and we definitely weren't judging the standards of the food here based on a Michelin Star. The stuffings on the whole didn't taste as savoury as we would have liked and the shrimps didn't quite pack the crunch.

There was an enjoyable steamed rice with pork ribs and chicken claws. The fatty ribs were pretty tasty, generous in portions and the chicken claw was delicious that we ordered a plate of it after this.

There, One Dim Sum has competently done phoenix talons which were tender and easy to slurp off the bone.

And a ma lai gao to wrap up this post flight late lunch. These cakes (kinda like an eggy chiffon cake) were served piping hot in the bamboo steamers. Jiggly and light they were. We couldn't ask for better.