Lok Yuen (樂園), Kowloon City Municipal Services Building, Kowloon City

Breakfast at Lok Yuen (3/F Kowloon City Municipal Services Building, Kowloon City, Hong Kong, tel : +65 +852 2382 3367). Their menu at this shop has a bit of variety which consists of ingredients that are put together in various permutations. Just like many of the bing sutt or char chaan teng.

While they've caught up with a QR menu for ordering, payment here appears to be cash only still.

Red bean with bottled milk. Kinda nice.

I was curious about this one.

Satay beef stuffed in French toast with butter and condensed milk drizzled over. Not so different from eating a fried bao with the sweet meat fillings. It's not bad.

Lok Yuen's special stir fried noodles feature bits of chopped up luncheon meat, pickled mustard, fried egg, spring onions and cabbage. A little pricey but portions were good and I enjoyed this.

Milk tea with almond. I saw them adding the almond powder into their brewed tea. The beverage turned out to be pretty viscous with both the flavour of the almond powder and the tea coming through. For the benefit of those that may not be aware, the almond referred to here is Chinese almond which are actually apricot kernels.

Lemon tea's pretty astringent. But that's how we usually like it.

Vission, Staunton Street, Hong Kong Central

Came across Vission (LG/F, Chui Man House, 7 Staunton Street, Soho, Central, Hong Kong, tel : +852 5545 6787) while trudging uphill at Central.

Left the bakery with loot.

It happened that we forgot to refrigerate the banoffee pie. So the cream layer over the top collapsed as we unboxed. 😂 Turned out to be a fortunate accident because this tasted great at room temperature. The flavour from the cream, the banana and the coffee were all more pronounced. Fuck me this was good. 

Pistachio custard danish - this tasted like it had a layer of pistachio butter over pistachio custard in that buttery danish cup/crust. Very nice. 👍🏼

Their lemon pound cake was totally overshadowed by how impressive the other earlier two were. Just a lemony sweet glaze over pound cake. But I'm sufficiently impressed to try other things from them.

Fini's, Elgin Street, Hong Kong Central

We waited about 45 minutes for an order of pizza and the place was barely a quarter filled up. Now that that's out of the way, we were in Fini's (49 Elgin Street, Central, Hong Kong, tel : +852 9143 2402) to try their New Haven styled pizza. Allegedly the first in Hong Kong to do so.

Meatballs were tender, quite loosely packed and pretty delicious. The sauce though tasted like a blend of fresh and concentrate tomatoes. Pretty tart. Not impressive.

This was their Bronx that came with a few meat toppings like sausage, meatballs and salami over their thin, almost biscuit New Haven crust. Didn't taste bad but I didn't find it particularly memorable. I think what bothered me was the tartness in the tomato sauce that felt invasive for every flavour nugget on the pizza. For a 318HKD pie, it was expensive and not half impressive methinks.

The chilli sauce that came with it thanks to Uncle K.

Another deluxe meal ticket at Po Lin Monastery

Made our way up to the metal Buddha again this year and got a deluxe meal ticket at the monastery's food hall..

Today's soup was filled with different beans and sweetened by figs.

I don't recall how I felt about this mixed vegetable stir fry from the last time but I enjoyed it today. Bell peppers and all. Those toasted cashews were great.

Love their fried spring rolls. That's coming from someone who normally doesn't bother with fried spring rolls.

Those mushroom caps look reptilian methinks. Don't you?

Love the lemon sauce tau kee.

These Chinese vegetarian meals at Po Lin Monastery are possibly one of the more memorable ones we've had.

More breakfast at Sai Kee Congee (西記粥店)

Because we missed what we had here from our previous trips. No kidding. Don't expect the skies here because what they do is simple and comforting food.

Stuff like the blood curd and century egg congee.

Cheong fun with dried shrimp.

And their straightforward soya sauce stir fried noodles with superb wiry texture. 👍🏼

Pity that they don't do the steamed radish cake anymore.

A few days later......

One more. 😬

Bowl of sweet intestines and blood curd in a pepper broth.

Minced beef congee. We couldn't tell that the minced bits were beef. Now we know.

Alice Pizza, Cochrane Street, Hong Kong Central

Interesting. This relatively new looking Alice Pizza (G/F, 18 Cochrane Street, Central, Hong Kong, tel : +852 6685 9642) does Roman styled pizza al taglio.

One basically picks a pizza with the topping of choice and indicate a preferred portion. The pizza is weighed and then charged. Just like in Rome. We picked one with Mortadella, stracciatella and pistachio. Greasy in a good way with a crunchy crust and not bad tasting with chilli flakes.