Funky dim sum run

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I'm on a mission to reconfirm the quality of dim sum at Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 (壹玖捌叁), and it was a bit more than a year ago that I found them to be interesting. I haven't had the opportunity to dine with The Great One in a while, and I managed to catch her in town and available. I also managed to rope in the lady with the Tiny Urban Kitchen, as we made plans for a future meal together just downstairs from her apartment.

I wasn't surprised to find that the dim sum menu had been overhauled, and some of the items we liked last year were no longer available today. So it was time to try out the kitchen's other creations!

Steamed Shanghainese pork dumplings, served with homemade young ginger vinegar (一口灌湯小籠包) - these looked reasonably decent...but turned out just OK.

Birthday with old friends

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We are joining a birthday celebration tonight. Ro Ro has organized a seemingly endless series of dinners for DaRC during his birthday month, and tonight it was our turn to join the party. Kiu's Kitchen (嬌姐小廚), an offshoot from the original Hop Sze (合時小廚) in Sai Wan Ho. I never understood the craze over Hop Sze as I always thought it was just a decent place for casual stir-fry (小炒), which was why I haven't bothered trying to book a table here. So it was fortuitous that this provided me a chance to check it out.

We had a big group of 19 people - most of whom were college buddies of DaRC - so we took the private room with the huge round table. This was gonna be fun...

The menu had already been preset, of course, and no surprise there would be a lot of food. In fact, because of the number of people we had, some of the dishes had to have 2 servings presented at opposite ends of the table.

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First up were the live prawns, which were doused in about a bottle and a half of Mei Kuei Lu Chiew (玫瑰露酒) so that they became "drunken". We waited for some time for the prawns to stop struggling and jumping around, and then Kiu Jie came to cook the prawns by first draining the liquid, putting the prawns into the pot, and then dousing them with ANOTHER 1½ bottles of Mei Kuei Lu! Then we have a flame show...

Prawns flambéed with Mei Kuei Lu (玫瑰露火焰蝦) - these prawns weren't gigantic, which is a plus in my book as I prefer them smaller. They also weren't full of poop, unlike this one I got served last year.

Journey to the mansion

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I felt like a lucky boy tonight. I had the privilege of being invited to a dinner where Ta Vie 旅 - one of my favorite restaurants - collaborated with Yong Fu (甬府), another one of my favorite restaurants in town. I know PR8 is constantly pushing his clients to put together these 4-, 6-, and whatever hands events. Often they feel contrived, and all you get is different chefs presenting their own dishes. Then there are some collaborations that truly live up to the name, where the chefs actually spend time creating dishes where each one adds their own input. Tonight ran a little different.

I have been looking forward to this meal ever since I found out about it. While I have had the privilege of attending a few collaborations involving chef Liu Zhen (刘震) of Yong Fu, sadly I can't say the same for Sato-san. I had no doubt, though, that any dish these chefs put together would be totally delicious.

We started with some appetizers, where the chefs chose two main ingredients, and each chef created their own expression with them.

Ningbo-style pickled and cooked winter melon with sea urchin, fermented crab, celtuce (雙味冬瓜咸蟹), by Yong Fu - the first main ingredient was chosen by Sato-san, and it's the "white winter melon (白冬瓜)" from Ningbo (寧波). These get covered with powdery wax that gives them names like "wax gourd" or "ash gourd" in English. Yong Fu's dish came with two squares of the winter melon cooked with different methods. The bottom layer was cooked by slowly feeding chicken stock, while the top layer was the traditional fermented winter melon (醃冬瓜) from Ningbo. Topped with sea urchin from Zhangzi Island (獐子島) off Dalian (大連), and some fennel flowers that came through with their anise-like scent. We were asked to make sure that we taste all the ingredients together, which led some of us to do it all in one bite. Well... if you do everything in one bite, then there will be a couple of flavors dominating and drowning out the others. In this case the winter melon won.

North, South, and something else

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It's been a while since I was last in the Hong Kong Room at the I Hate the Handover Club, since I haven't joined Pineapple for his annual birthday MNSC dinner for the last few years. I would be dining here tonight at the kind invitation of Christies and the Specialist, tasting through a line up of wonderful wines in advance of an upcoming auction. The consignor - an uncle with a colorful past who went from Shantou to Canada via Hong Kong, and eventually settling down in Bangkok - was in attendance.

Tonight the crowd was a little different from the usual, as there was not a single bottle of Burgundy around. The lineup was dominated by wines from the Rhône Valley, which was right up my alley. We started with some bubbly for the pre-dinner drinks:

Jacquesson Cuvée N°748, dégorgée en Mars 2025 - this was actually very floral and elegant, with a nice little yeasty nose.

Executive lunch for busy executives

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It's been a while since My Friendly Neighborhood Prime Broker and I had a catch-up session, and a kind invitation came for lunch at Duddell's (都爹利會館). I haven't been back here in YEARS, so it's always nice when someone gives you an opportunity to revisit a place like this.

Neither of us wanted to make decisions on what to order, so my host decided on the Executive Lunch set. There won't be any upside surprises, since these usually play it pretty safe.

We started with a steamer of the dim sum selection (點心拼盤):

Scallop siu mai (帶子燒賣) - nice to have the scallop on top, which added a nice jolt of seafood flavors.