A couple of hit-and-runs

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Today I got the chance to go to two places I've been wanting to hit for a long time.  Both were pretty short and simple meals, but very satisfying.

I went to Bo-Lo'Gne for lunch today.  My partner and I were pondering about our lunch plans when the idea hit me, and I dragged him on foot up the hill to the small little place beyond the edge of SoHo.  Enough people have told me about the "Japanese-style" bread here and I was curious to try.

I ordered the deep-fried pork cutlet sandwich.  The bread used here is Danish bread, which is on the sweet side and also buttery.  Fortunately for my friend, they don't use as much butter as Robuchon so it wasn't completely greasy.  Very yummy, though.  As for what's between the slices of bread... the pork cutlet was freshly fried and very hot - in fact I burned the roof of my mouth.  Served with the usual accompaniment of lettuce and katsu sauce.  Very nice indeed.  I took a cup of coffee as my drink, and as I would expect of any Japanese coffee, it was kinda like dishwater...

Late in the afternoon my partner and I took the ferry to Macau on the first of many trips to come in the next few months.  We needed to go "offshore" to execute a number of legal documents for our fund, and Macau is clearly the easiest destination for such a purpose.

We hopped into a cab outside the ferry terminal and headed to Lok Kei (六記粥麵), another shop famous for their bamboo noodles (竹昇麵). These days very few places still serve authentic bamboo noodles as it's just too labor-intensive, and the good thing about it the shops in Macau is that they rinse away the alkali.

We held our board meeting at our table inside the noodle shop, and signed a few board resolutions and powers of attorney before the food arrived.

I, of course, took the tossed noodles with shrimp roe (蝦籽撈麵).  I'm still puzzled by the Macanese penchant for adding soy sauce here, but tonight's plate was clearly far superior to the one I had at Cheong Kei (祥記麵家).  The shrimp roe was very nicely toasted and fragrant, while the texture of the noodles was a little more soft and silky while retaining some of the bite.  The soy sauce was nice and did not overpower the shrimp roe. Very good stuff.

My friend doesn't partake in the two items on this platter - braised chicken feet and pig intestines (鳳爪大腸) - so I ended up eating the whole plate by myself.  The chicken feet were very, very good...so much so that my friend made remarks about how much I enjoyed the "toe-sucking."  The pig intestines paled a little in comparison, although they were very soft and pretty good.

I also had a couple of deep-fried mud carp balls (米通炸鯪魚球), which were covered with  short segments of rice vermicelli.  I normally stay away from mud carp, but these were very good and had almost zero bone fragments inside.  Lots of Chinese parsley inside.

Having finished dinner pretty quickly, we took a cab back to the ferry terminal.  Our total stay in Macau was less than two hours, but it allowed me to achieve two objectives.  Now if only we hadn't come on a Wednesday and Margaret's Café e Nata were open...  Oh well...next time!