A somewhat unsatisfying lunch

I flew back to Hong Kong last evening for a few days, just in the nick of time to solidify my reputation as the "typhoon magnet".  I have now run into 3 typhoons in 3 different cities for 3 consecutive weeks, including flying into Shanghai for a date with Typhoon Haikui last week.  Let's hope I don't run into any more of them next week…

I had arranged to meet up with a few of my close friends for lunch today, and was kinda looking forward trying out something special at Yung Kee (鏞記酒家), a restaurant I've been to many times.  Unfortunately, I was on the receiving end of some extremely efficient service from China Travel Service, and ended up being 40 mins late.  I was feeling pretty bad at this point…

I sat down to catch my breath, while Legolas Jr. went about confirming the dishes with one of the captains.  We had pre-ordered two dishes, but the captain came back to tell us that only one had been reserved - and the missing dish was actually the one we really wanted to try.  For me, it was the main reason why we even chose to come to Yung Kee today.

Oh well.  Nothing to be done at this point.  The kitchen couldn't accommodate our "last minute" order, so we would have to do without it.  I was definitely not a happy camper by this point.

I quickly dispatched my half of century egg and ginger (皮蛋酸薑), and deep-fried wontons (鮮蝦錦鹵炸雲吞).  The wontons were a little dainty, and reasonably tasty.

Whole winter melon soup with assorted meat and lotus seeds (原燉鮮蓮冬瓜盅) - I ended up having two bowls of this, since my friends suggested I should use this to "cool down"…

In addition to the delicious and soothing winter melon, there was naturally plenty of goodies inside like shrimp, crab meat, pork, duck and lotus seeds.

Smoked marinated layer pork (松子雲霧燒肉) - this was the lone dish that had been reserved for us, although I've had this a couple of times before.  The smoky flavors were just as I remembered, and the fat and skin were absolutely heavenly.

There's only one way to eat something like this - put the whole piece into your mouth and just bite down.  Feel the liquefied fat ooze out onto your tongue.  Close your eyes and soak in the moment.

Believe it or not, I was getting a little full thanks to the soup.   I didn't  sample the wontons in soup (淨雲吞), but did get a little bit of the braised noodles with goose oil (太子撈麵) which our compulsive quenelle-r had served us.  I wish they had given us more goose fat to make it a little bit more special…

It was getting late, and the restaurant had run out of the desserts that we wished to order from the new menu featuring dishes from the 60s and 70s… So one of the other captains decided to comp us two desserts to apologize.

Mini egg tarts (蛋撻仔)

Deep-fried balls with sesame paste (炸煎堆)

Well, I think the food was pretty decent, but I was still sore about not being able to try out that new dish.  Next time, I guess… if there is a next time...