Hui Lau Shan Healthy Dessert

This is where I get what I call ‘dessert in a cup’ (it didn’t sound too impressive to my friends at first).

This is also a shop that you can find everywhere around Hong Kong city. You might even find 2 shops in the same locale.

They sell a number of different drinks which are all variations of combinations of mango, coconut milk, sago, crystal jelly, aloe, and other things. The main ones would be mango, coconut, and sago.

An example would be this.

Compared to this.

And this.

I liked the mango in mango juice best.

The mangoes very fresh and sweet, and the drinks are extremely refreshing after a good meal, or perhaps on a very hot day.

Highly recommended.

Hong Kong Street Food

This is a compilation of the street food I had in Hong Kong. Usually, most of these can be obtained from the same stall, which is around nearly every corner around the city area, which all nearly sells the same thing. However, there are variations.

This is ‘siew mai’. Not the kind you get in yumcha/dimsum places, but the street food kind. Apparently its made from fish (not pork). They dip it into soy sauce before giving you the skewer. It was very tasty, but I was not impressed (don’t like processed fish meat).

A skewer of ‘ngau zhap’, which basically means ‘a mix and match of pork stuff’. I got this during my first week in Hong Kong, and I think this was during one of my first adventures looking for food alone in the busy city of Hong Kong. Was very pleased with myself.

This is basically flour batter (like waffles). Translated into baby chicken eggs. You eat it just as it is. No toppings. Tasty, yet, plain. Not my kind of thing. Fills you up but leaves you unsatisfied. Still, very popular in HK though.

The above 3 items you can find at any random street stall that sells these kinds of things. An example of variations that I mentioned would be here, where they only sell the innards, but don’t sell gai dan zhai and other stuff.

Another variation would be at this other stall in Jordan.

The popular dish at this stall seems to be the chee cheong fun. Its basically the same thing as this, except without the filling (although, in that picture, the quality of that dish is way above the average version of that same dish elsewhere). This version of the dish is eaten with peanut sauce, sweet sauce, and soy sauce, with a sprinkle of sesame seeds on top. In KL, we have a very similar version as well, except in KL they don’t give the peanut sauce and the soy sauce. This was very good (I came back later at 9.30pm and they were sold out on this). I normally don’t (never) order this in KL, but being in HK, this was very very satisfying and yummy.

The chee cheong fun above can be eaten alone, or with accompaniments such as deep fried tofu, brinjal (aka eggplant and aubergine) , and other things as well. Supposedly, the deep fried vegetables should be stuffed with processed fish (what we call Yong Tau Fu in KL), but this shop sells it as it is (without the fish). It was still very good though.

They also had deep fried dumplings.

I came back the next day looking for more chee cheong fun, but they were sold out as well. I then left HK the day after that. If there is one regret that I had in HK, it’s that I didn’t get my second serving of chee cheong fun.

Da Bin Lou (Steamboat)

I had a steamboat dinner with my relatives one night in Causeway Bay.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the name of the restaurant as I took this picture in a haste (there was a lift full of people waiting for me to get on).

Steamboat in Hong Kong is really different from that you get in KL. For one, its held indoors in an air-conditioned restaurant (there could be air-conditioned ones in KL that I don’t know about, but I don’t eat steamboat much).

Before you start, you have to choose from an array of sauces.

This is placed on the table, and you have to scoop up whatever you want into your own bowl before they bring the hot pot to you.

So I grabbed whatever I could recognise and scooped them into my bowl.

And because it’s my first time having a HK style da bin lou, I also opted to have the soy sauce separate (people just mix everything together into the bowl) because I thought I’d like to enjoy some of the food without having too many sauces interfering with the flavour.

I eventually mixed them up anyway.

Self-explanatory soup base (this particular one cost HKD30 more than the others I think).

Fish skin to be eaten on its own, or to be dipped into the soup before eating. Didn’t sound like it would work, but surprisingly it does. I preferred it dipped into the soup.

Chicken in wine. Served cold, but can be dumped into the soup to warm it up/cook it more.

Make small scoops of this and drop it into the soup, and you’ll get squid balls.

“What happens if I put the whole thing into the soup?” I asked.

One of my favourites.

Very nearly my favourite.

Needs more colour.

Fish head was good.

To be put into the soup to enhance the flavour of the soup, and can also be eaten afterwards.

 

Not a fan of liver.

Also needs more colour.

Self explanatory.

Ah. Fish paste on a plate. You squeeze it out into the soup and you’ll get noodles.

Ah. Tongue. My favourite. Had 2 plates of this when I eventually discovered that the entire meal was a buffet.

Quite enjoyed this, especially when dipped into the sauce (the one at the beginning).

Would like to have actually tasted this, but it takes a while to cook even in the hot soup, and it shrinks, so by the time you want to (and can) eat it you can’t find it anymore.

Char siew pao! Now this is different. They actually have char siew inside those mini buns (not really buns) which have to be cooked in the soup as well. Not too nice though, didn’t think there was enough char siew.

Self explanatory.

 

I like fish.

I think that’s about all we had. We had multiple of some dishes though.

A very good experience.

Mak Mun Kee

This is my vote for the best meal I’ve had in Hong Kong (Australian Dairy Co. would be a close second). It also happens to be right beside Australian Dairy Co. as well. Which means you can get 2 spectacular meals with only 1 bus ride without the need to walk at all.

Mak Mun Kee is a similar shop to Mak’s Noodle Ltd (but they are not the same shop), i.e. they are famous for their wonton noodles. Both places also have other things such as beef brisket noodles and the like. What’s different is Mak Mun Kee is also famous for their pork trotters.

I actually read about this place about 2 weeks ago, when I was looking up Australian Dairy Co., and although it had good reviews as well, I dismissed it because it was ‘just another noodle place’. The decision to come to this place came about when I was rewatching that episode of Anthony Bourdain (and discovering all the things about Wong Chi Kee and Lin Heung (post yet to come) after I went to those places) and one of the places he went was to have beef brisket noodles (Long Kee in Mongkok). So I was trying to look up that place on the net and I read one comment that said that the best beef brisket noodle that that person had ever had was in Mak Mun Kee.

(Anthony Bourdain actually came to Hong Kong twice. He went to Mak’s Noodle Ltd on his first trip here (as I mentioned in that post), but on his second trip here, he went to Long Kee.)

And since I still haven’t actually had proper beef brisket noodles in Hong Kong yet (the one from Mak’s Noodle Ltd was unspectacular), I decided that I had to try out both Mak Mun Kee and Lung Kee.

I asked for their english menu just to be safe, but I already knew what I wanted. Beef brisket noodles and pork trotters.

I read somewhere else that they use nam yue sauce to make this (something grandmother also uses), so the taste wasn’t unfamiliar to me, but it was just damn good! It was not too tender yet not too tough or tendony (I’ve had those where the tendons get stuck in between your teeth). There were 4 fairly large pieces in the bowl, and I shared it with the guy who’s jumper you can see peeking out above the trotters.

And their beef brisket noodles (we each had one bowl). Wah. So good! And they even have some tendon in it as well.

SO GOOD! The tendons were so tender, and the beef was very good as well. “This made my day,” my friend declared.

Mak’s Noodle Ltd can’t hold a candle to this. And neither can Long Kee, for that matter. No fight. I take back my statement that the sauce from the beef brisket interferes with the clear soup of the noodles.

The noodles need the beef brisket in them to make them spectacular.

Being the greedy guy that I am, I came back another day, and polished off the same whole bowl of pork trotters by myself, had a bowl of beef brisket noodles (damn good!), and because I liked the tendon so much, I ordered another bowl of beef tendon noodle.

This time, its all tendon and noodles. You can also see the other (finished) bowl of noodles at the top corner.

Absolutely amazing.

Worth flying all the way to Hong Kong for.

Long Kee

This is the shop in which Anthony Bourdain had his beef brisket and tendon noodles in his programme. My friend and I did the long trek from Jordan (after Mak Mun Kee, which you’ll hear about next) all the way to Mongkok looking for this shop.

It’s run by the 3 bodybuilder brothers, one of whom you can see walking towards the front of the shop in the picture there.

I looked through the menu looking to order what Anthony Bourdain did (I think he had some spicy beef brisket and tendon noodles), but the only spicy thing on their menu was the spicy beef tendon noodle (no brisket), and there wasn’t a brisket and tendon option (well, at least not on their english menu).

I ordered the spicy beef tendon noodle in the end while my friend had the beef brisket noodle (no picture of that).

Maybe we were just too full, but this wasn’t spectacular like Mak Mun Kee at all. Oh granted, the tendon was good, firmer than Mak Mun Kee, but I prefer the less firm version. The soup was also a tad spicy (the kind that doesn’t actually taste spicy at the beginning but you are very likely to choke on it) for my liking.

A celebration of muscle and tendon?

Maybe not.