We hardly ever ate Sichuan at home but the day after we arrived in Hong Kong, a friend took us to Yun Yan, reputedly the best Sichuan food place in Hong Kong. The updated Sichuan style food was indeed very tasty and there were a couple of things that were new to us.
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| This is a famous traditional dish 燈影牛肉 "Light filtering beef" being a rough translation and self-explanatory. The beef was so thin light filtered through. It must have been baked and fried among other things but it was delicious - crisp, crunchy but still retaining the meat texture and flavour, a real treat and a great start to the excellent lunch. |
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We've had pork dumplings before of course but never had them "injected" with soup at the table. A fun novelty dish but also quite "sensational" - I guess the "injection" ensured the meat was swimming in soup and the first bite into the dumpling was an explosion of sensations.
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It was a bonus too that the restaurant is in a glitzy mall in Times Square, Causeway Bay - us country bumpkins were gawking at the longest mall escalator ever and the curved escalator, another first for us. This visit to Hong Kong was partly a nostalgia trip with the accompanying search for nostalgic food. One of my childhood memories was weekend trips to the New Territories, Fanling in particular where one of my dad's friends owned a photo studio. This is where we regularly took our family photos. On the way to Fanling, we always stopped at Luen Wo market and ate at a food stall there that served supposedly the best fish balls. The old Luen Wo Hui market was no longer open but we found this fish ball place which had a name close to the one in the old market - 水上人魚蛋粉 "Boat Dwellers Fish Balls" The fish balls were very good, fluffy but with texture, and the fried fish skin was so crunchy and tasty we couldn't stop at one order - afterall, fish skin is healthy food, discounting the oil it's fried in... It's also surprisingly not greasy! |
After we finished the fish balls, we crossed the street to the famous 群記 Beef Balls and Pork Knuckles Shop. It was jam packed with both locals and non and there was quite a lineup. We were lucky to get a table. I didn't find the pork knuckles particularly flavourful but it's possibly because we were already full with the fish balls and skin.
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| Pork Knuckles |
I believe I'm not the only one chasing nostalgia. The restaurants must be catering to a whole generation of boomers who are at that stage of their lives. Deep-fried shrimp toast, which used to be popular on restaurant menus when we were growing up but disappeared with the healthier food trend, reappeared on some restaurant menus. Twice on this trip, we were invited to try this "unhealthy" but yummy dish. - the challenge was of course in deep-frying the toast without allowing it to get soggy with oil. Dish below was served at the Securities Institute Club House, members only. And like the rest of the food there, well-prepared and tasty.
This brought up another trend I noticed - "club" dining. Different institutions run thriving clubhouse members only restaurants downtown, usually with excellent food and attentive service, which together with their exclusivity made them special for their regular customers. The two we were invited to were both packed on weekday evenings. The other one was the Ning Po Residence Club restaurant, exclusive to members whose ancestors were from Ning Po, China.
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| The pork aspic and the "drunken" chicken were two of my favourite dishes. The pork aspic, in particular, was reminiscent of the ones my mom used to make for Chinese New Year. |
The search for the past continued with a trip to Lamma Island, where I used to hike with my dad always finishing up with a good seafood meal on one side of the island or the other. The memory of poached fresh shrimp remained vivid all these years, including what fresh shrimp should look like (see below). It was also an interesting process, the search for the right restaurant to eat at. They all posted their prices on the tanks of seafood but when you started talking to them, they would offer special deals depending on how busy they were. We had crab, shrimp, abalone and squid - all fresh-tasting as we were eating beside the fishing boats.
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| Fresh shrimp, with the head shell removed should have the skin over the "neck" in tact. It was quite a sensation biting into this almost slightly bitter part of the shrimp when it's fresh. |
We also headed to the south side of Hong Kong island to check out old haunt Stanley and was pleasantly surprised to see the beautiful Blake Pier moved here from old Central. Even more of a surprise was the King Ludwig Beerhall in Murray House where we had lunch. The pork trotters here tasted even better than the ones in Berlin - and they were huge.
One trotter was more than enough for two and tasted great with German Bier.
