Celebrity Cuisine with celebrity chef

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The Great One and I try to take Gaggan Anand out whenever he's in town, partly as a way to reciprocate the favor since he's never allowed us to pay for a meal in his restaurant or at his pop-ups.  We know he loves the local food in Hong Kong, so The Great One booked us a table at Celebrity Cuisine (名人坊) for some dim sum.

We have always been fans of Chef Cheng Kam-fu (鄭錦富), although I vaguely remember my last dim sum lunch here years ago as being underwhelming.  I guess that's why I haven't been back for lunch in many years...

Fried rice roll with XO sauce (XO醬炒腸粉) - always happy to have this.

Deep fired spring roll with seafood (長大蝦春卷) - yes, it did say "fired" on the menu.  This was so-so.

Fried turnip paste (香煎蘿蔔糕)

Steamed egg custard bun (金黃流沙包) - not exactly easy to share with the very liquid filling.

Steamed barbecued pork bun (蜜餞叉燒包)

Steamed prawn and bamboo shoot dumpling (水晶鮮蝦餃)

Stewed minced assorted meat with bean curd (琵琶豆腐) - as The Great One likes to remind us, the recipe of this dish is in her book.  It is, of course, a very good and tasty version of the classic dish.

Sautéed string beans with preserved vegetables (欖菜四季豆)

Bird's nest stuffed in chicken wing (燕窩釀鳳翼) - another signature dish.  Gaggan wondered if this is where Zaiyu from DEN got the idea of stuffing chicken wings, and of course... Cantonese chefs have been stuffing chicken wings with glutinous rice or birds' nest for a while now.

Deep-fried crab claw stuffed with minced shrimp (百花釀蟹拑) - this was pretty decent, but I'm usually not a fan of this dish... as the crab claw inside is too tiny and it's mostly the deep-fried shrimp paste - and comes at a premium because the claw.

Sweet and sour pork with diced pineapple (香脆咕嚕肉)

Baked chicken with Shaoxing Wine (花雕焗飛天雞) - this was very good, but I think by this time we no longer had the capacity for so much chicken.

Stir-fried rice noodles with beef (乾炒牛河) - since Gaggan is in town for local food, we just had to order his favorite dish...

The chef sent us a plate of pan-fried bitter gourd to try.  With all the deep-fried food we were having, this would certainly help...

Jisheng cha with red dates and egg (名人蛋紅棗茶) - dessert was also on the house as the chef wanted us to try this.  Besides the "egg without yolk" and lotus seeds from Hunan Province, there were also silverweed roots (人參果) from Tibet.  The brown sugar for the soup came from Xinjiang.

1989 von Schubert Maximin Grünhäuser Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett - nice acidity on the palate.  Nose of white flowers and a little flint.