The double-header

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I can't believe it's been almost exactly a year since I was last here, but I finally found time to return to my favorite private dining space. It is, once again, snake season... and that's what we've come for. Of course, the rest of the chef's classic repertoire are also reasons for us to return at any time of the year, but I must admit that the winter reptile season gets us extra excited.

Barbecued kurobuta pork and (黑毛豬叉燒) - I've always liked the way char siu (叉燒) is done here, and for those who are here for the first time, they tend to get a little surprised by this.

A day with KOLs: Neighborhood x JL Studio

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So... a few hours after we finished stuffing our faces, a bunch of us are back at it again. As this was an invitation-only event, and on account of me being a nobody and all - at least compared to the others who were invited - I didn't actually know that they had a seat for me until the wee hours this morning. I had resigned myself to the prospect of dining at home and convinced myself that one big meal would be enough for the day, but happy to find out an invitation did materialize at the last minute. This was especially precious because Neighborhood seats far fewer people than the Chairman.

Everyone knows I'm a long-time fan of the Kitchen Nazi Man in White T-shirt, and I really enjoyed taking mom to JL Studio last year. Therefore I was particularly looking forward to this collaboration. Gastronaut was also looking forward to seeing how these two put a menu together, as he noted that he could not imagine two chefs whose cooking styles are more different.

Due to the size of the kitchen, every table waits its turn to receive each dish, and the two chefs would then come and do the introductions. I was seated at Table 3, and when it was our turn to find out what we were being served, the boss simply came and said "bon appetit"... W-T-F?! OK, so I guess we could kinda figure out what the first dish was...

Persimmon / culatello / burrata / Alba truffle - this was a good combo. The creamy burrata balanced out the salt in the culatello nicely, and the really ripe and soft persimmon brought a delicious amount of sugary sweetness to also soften the savory ham. The greens, the balsamico, and the white truffle shavings all played their part to complete the dish.

A day with KOLs: Chairman x le beaujour

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I'm spending a day with a select group of KOLs today, most of whom have been invited on a junket - sponsored by the Hong Kong Tourism Board - to come to Hong Kong during the Wine and Dine Festival. There was a series of meals around the end of last month where selective chefs from Hong Kong traveled to Taiwan to collaborate with counterparts in Taiwan, and now the same chefs from Taiwan have come to Hong Kong to return the favor. The attendance at these events is by invitation, and the guests are chefs, journalists, and other influencers from the region.

Which makes it strange that I had been invited to join the lunch today. Granted, it's a real privilege to be at The Chairman (大班樓) today for their collaboration with the team from le beaujour in Taipei. But Danny from The Chairman did extend an invitation to me for the festivities in Taiwan last month - which I turned down due to my previous commitments with Geruhage - so I guess I have been deemed worthy...

When I first received the invitation from Danny, I had mentioned that I may be eating too much today as there is another collaboration dinner tonight that I planned to attend. Danny then told me that they "serve small portions", which would imply that there isn't going to be too much food at lunch. Well, what we did not expect was the number of courses we would be getting! I had initially taken a mental note of the approximate number of items listed on the menu that was placed on the table, but what I didn't realize was that it only listed the small plates... and that the menu came double-sided!

Chilled goji berry soup (杞子凍湯) - nice and refreshing start.

Friday noodles

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Foursheets is back from spending a few weeks in the boonies in Thailand and Vietnam, and she's dying for some Cantonese food. An easy option is always to hit Ho Hung Kee (何洪記) for some quick and simple eats.

Fried Chinese lettuce with pickled tofu and chili (椒絲腐乳唐生菜) - the wife wanted veg and this is definitely a Cantonese thing.

De arroz y cochinillo

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Foursheets is away for a few weeks and I'm feeling a little lonely at home, so I decided to join a group of friends for their "Spanish night" dinner at the I Hate the Handover Club. I've tried this menu a few months ago and wasn't very impressed, but I figured I'd go along and enjoy the company. There was a big crowd tonight so we were seated around one long table, and our host even brought along a portable speaker to put on a playlist to suit the occasion.

Cecina de León con pan de cristal - always happy to start with some cured meat, and of course pan con tomate with pan de cristal is just quintessentially Spanish for those of us in Asia...

Italian Japanese fun

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We've been talking about this for a pretty long time, and it finally happened today. I'd been wanting to take Juve Fan to experience the joys of eating "Japanese Italian food", accompanied by Goldfinger - who has already come to know the magical combination of these two cuisines. I had originally wanted to try out Trattoria Kagawa by Mihara, but given the tight schedules of my two companions, we defaulted back to Sagrantino - an old favorite of mine that just happens to be across the street from where Goldfinger needs to be.

And then Fergie wanted to join... as he is also familiar with what Sagrantino offers. Now that I no longer work in the 'hood, I must admit I haven't been there in a while!

I made a couple of suggestions to order items which I thought would have flavor profiles that are very Japanese so that we could get the full "fusion" experience. If we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this right!

Avocadonara pasta - this was, surprisingly, the choice of one of the two chefs... or both. As a guy who isn't usually a big fan of avocados, this was actually pretty decent. In fact, as it was the least "Japanese" of the dishes we ordered, it turned out to be Juve Fan's favorite.

Stayin' alive for a third year

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It's official! I made it through a third year of marriage, and still alive and (somewhat) kicking! To celebrate the occasion, Foursheets and I were happy to return to Caprice - where our marriage ceremony took place. We could not celebrate here last year as the restaurant was not open on the day, but we are back.

Hairy Legs knows the significance of the date to us, and rose to the challenge to ensure a memorable evening for us. As it turned out, a couple of dishes were kinda repeated from our wedding day, with some upgrades.

We started with the usual trio of amuses bouches:

Tomato concassé tart - that basil on top is always so fragrant.

Obsiblue prawn tart - they've prepared this for Foursheets because they forgot that, like me, she doesn't like beetroot. I didn't mind to have the tasty prawns and the beetroot flavors aren't heavy here, anyway... so I took this. Loved the sweet and fruity flavors of the pickles on top.

Bday in Macau 2023 day 2: long-awaited birthday dinner

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After more than 4 years, Foursheets is finally back at The 8 (8餐廳), her favorite Chinese restaurant in Macau. Due to the need to make special arrangements on wine for tonight, I made the reservation through our friend at the group, who told me in advance that Paul Lo, the Director of Food and Beverage at the Grand Lisboa, would be greeting us there. While I am certain that I am undeserving of Paul's time, it nevertheless gave me an opportunity to catch up with him and get a few important (to me, at least) questions answered.

Restaurant Manager Andrew Lo remembered me as the pain-in-the-ass who asked for a bunch of old German rieslings on my last visit - none of which could be retrieved from the cellars at the time - and who rebuffed his kind efforts to offer me alternatives from more recent vintages, because even 1993 isn't good enough "as I have stuff like that lying around at home"... Well, we didn't have any problems with getting the wine I wanted tonight as it had been very kindly retrieved by Paul and decanted by Andrew before our arrival.

I had expected to just order a few things off the menu for tonight, but Chef Albert Au (歐國強) - who still runs the kitchen despite someone telling me he has retired - had put together a menu for us. He was also on hand to greet us, and it's been quite some time since I last saw him.

Radish with Cristal blue prawn and mushroom (鮮蝦野菌白玉盞) - nice crunch in the radish, with good mushroom flavors and very tasty flavors from the New Caledonia blue prawns.

Abalone with celtuce stem (鮑魚萵筍)

Bday in Macau 2023 day 2: wandering in Taipa

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Foursheets woke up this morning and decided that she would like to take the breakfast at Mesa by José Aviliez. We are normally not the type of people who go for hotel breakfasts, especially when we know where to get tasty alternatives. But this is her birthday and I am happy to do as she wishes.

It's a semi-buffet style breakfast, where we are offered a "main course" we can order. I take an omelet that comes with a pre-set number of fillings, plus a hashbrown and some almost-burnt bacon on the side.

Bday in Macau 2023 day 1: living the suite life

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It's Foursheets' birthday this weekend, and she has decided that she wants to spend it in Macau this year. While I have already made 3, albeit short, trips across, it has been 4 years since her last trip. So I contacted our friend to make some special arrangements, only to have her insist on arranging the accommodation for us. We're so grateful for her kindness, because it is really going to make this a special weekend.

I was already getting excited on our way to catch the ferry. A friend had very kindly helped me buy the very special Nissin Cup Noodle laundry bag and carried it back for me, in time for me to use it as our weekender bag. I was getting some looks at the terminal, and eventually the bag got its own seat on the ferry.

Mooncakes 2023

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Foursheets has been on a long business trip and I'm not spending Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節) with family in either Hong Kong or Taipei. This meant that my motivation for buying mooncakes was particularly low this year. I'm also no longer working in an office where we receive mooncakes as gifts, so... yeah, fewer calories from mooncakes this year. I did, by chance, receive a few gifts this year, and I was pretty happy that they were all exactly what I would have wanted to buy for myself.

Musang King durian snowy mooncake (貓山王榴槤冰皮月餅), from Dking (帝一榴) - for the third year in a row, our friend decided to give me a couple of these over Foursheets' objections.

Siamaya chocolates

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While shopping for goodies at Gourmet Market at EmQuartier in Bangkok last month, I came across a range of chocolates made by Siamaya Chocolate. The flavors looked pretty interesting as they featured some very local combinations probably found nowhere else, so I decided to grab a whole bunch to bring back. I ended up giving some away to friends, but made sure I kept one bar of each flavor I bought. I had fun tasting them over a number of days:

Durian Milk Chocolate - very nice. The durian flavors are here but it's not too strong, and I think using milk chocolate is better than dark chocolate.

Geruhage HK tour day 5: nothin' but the pig

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When my friend Geruhage decided to come to Hong Kong for the first time in 4 years, I knew that one of the places I wanted to take him to was Sun Tung Lok Chinese Cuisine (新同樂). Ever since I got to taste the iconic stuffed roast suckling pig for the first time in many years, I knew I had to go back and have it again. And having introduce my friend to Chef Tam Kwok Fung (譚國鋒)'s "sucking pig maki" version a few years ago, I feel obliged to give him a chance to taste the OG.

I was trying to get a large enough group to take down the pig, and DaRC offered to help. When he ended up roping in Dashijie (大師姐) and her husband, I knew I couldn't just take the meal lightly and order à la carte on the day of. I had come up with a list of dishes myself, composed in a way to make sure we met the minimum required for the private dining room. I had asked DaRC for his thoughts, and then sent it along with Chef Joe Chan (陳勇) to see what he could do. I did mention that Dashijie was coming, and that we had flexibility on the cost - meaning we could pay more if we needed.

The menu came back a little different from what I had planned, but one does not question the chef.

We started with the chef's appetizer (風味拼盤薈萃):

Ox tongue in XO chilli sauce (XO 醬鹵牛脷) - I've always liked this as the flavors from the spices are pretty nice, not just the chili kick but also five spice (五香). The tongue is tender but still got a certain degree of firmness and springy texture.

Geruhage HK tour day 5: same same but different

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We're counting down to the end of Geruhage's tour as we are now on the final day, and it's yet another all-Chinese day. For lunch, though, it would not be Cantonese cuisine... I have chosen to take him to the Hong Kong outpost of Xin Rong Ji (新榮記), the formidable restaurant group from Taizhou (台州) in Zhejiang Province (浙江省) which now boasts six restaurants in China with Michelin stars, including one with three stars in Beijing. Taizhou is less than 150 km from Ningbo, and while it's still broadly speaking Zhejiang cuisine, in recent years more people have been referring to this specifically as Taizhou cuisine (台州菜) - separately from other sub-categories.

I'm not exactly sure why a restaurant serving Zhejiang cuisine became famous for their Peking duck, but apparently everyone raves about it. I myself have never had the pleasure, as there are only a very limited number of ducks served per day so it must be reserved far in advance. Alas, even though I had booked this table quite a few weeks ago, the allotted number of ducks for the day have already been reserved by others. So... no cigar.

I don't know anyone at the restaurant and didn't pre-book any dishes, so I thought I'd just see what's on the menu today and pick out a few items. With just the three of us at the table, ordering at a Chinese restaurant is always a challenge.

A meal here often starts with some almond cookies (杏仁餅)...

Geruhage HK tour day 4: spring roll two

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When it comes to where overseas visitors would like to dine when they come to Hong Kong, 永 WING is probably the second-most requested restaurant after The Chairman (大班樓). For a long time since their opening, the restaurant was neigh impossible to reserve through their website, and only slightly easier when one contacted the restaurant to book one of the private dining rooms. I've been lucky enough to dine there on a few occasions, and I do find it interesting that Chef Vicky Cheng (鄭永麒) has flipped things around to cook Chinese cuisine by applying what he has learned through years of cooking French cuisine.

I found out a few weeks after booking the restaurant that Vicky would not be in town tonight, as he is in Taipei along with a few other chefs from Hong Kong for a series of 4-hands events there. I had thought about cancelling the booking and switch to another venue, but eventually I realized there were not going to be many other appealing alternatives. So despite the headcount dropping to just 3 people, I kept our table and apologized to Vicky.

We stepped into the restaurant to find that we have been provided one of the private dining rooms with a balcony. The evening was getting a tad cooler, and it was actually pretty nice to step out and enjoy a little breeze. We were also left in the care of the very capable Swiss Sung.

Our seasonal welcome drink was chuan bei, lily bulb, and pear tea (川貝百合雪梨茶).

Geoduck • Yunnan chili • bull kelp (象拔蚌配雲南皺皮椒及海茸) - I realized later than I translated geoduck wrong... The one being used is likely 浪貝 (as Geruhage correctly identified) or 白ミル instead of 海松貝. Regardless, this was pretty good.

Geruhage HK tour day 4: spring roll one

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While it seems like having Cantonese food would be de rigueur when visiting Hong Kong, I generally make sure that I take visitors to experience other types of cuisine when they're in town - time permitting. The last few years have seen two of China's high-end restaurant groups plant the flag in Hong Kong, and they're interesting enough to warrant taking Geruhage for a taste. The first stop would be Yong Fu (甬府) for lunch today.

By way of unfortunate circumstances, we did not manage to pre-arrange the menu, so we made do by trying to order up a few old favorites, and took some of the recommendations coming from the restaurant manager. I had to put my foot on the brakes during the ordering process so that DaRC does not do his usual thing of ordering half the menu. In the end, though, we had just a liiiittle bit too much.

Stir-fried baby broccoli balls (熗炒芥蘭球) - DaRC and I absolutely wanted to have this again. It's amazing how much care is taken by this restaurant on humble ingredients like vegetables. The stem of local kailan (芥蘭) is peeled, fermented in brine, tenderizes by cutting to break the fibers. The end result is a aesthetically pleasing presentation of a common ingredient, where the slightly acidic and spicy flavors and the tender texture are incongruous with what we normally associate with this green vegetable - thereby delivering a whole new experience for something we normally take for granted.

Geruhage HK tour day 3: a golden journey

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Many of my friends know that I am a big, big fan of Chef Sato Hideaki (佐藤秀明). I was only introduced to his cuisine when he first helmed the kitchen at the now-shuttered Tenku Ryugin (天空龍吟), and I got more excited when he opened Ta Vie 旅 in 2015. In its eighth appearance in the Michelin Guide, the restaurant was promoted to the coveted three-star status, which necessitated a visit by Geruhage on this trip.

On his last trip to Hong Kong, Geruhage had paid a visit to the restaurant on his own. He said that he was "more or less forced" to go by yours truly, but reported that he was happily surprised to have had good, "maybe even great" food. He rated the experience highly, so when the promotion happened a few months ago, it became the impetus of making this journey. I was only too happy to come back with my friend this time so he wouldn't have to dine alone.

It's China's National Day today, but we are having dinner in a restaurant with absolutely no view whatsoever, so we were not able to take in the first fireworks display in quite a few years. Oh well... it's the food that matters.

30 months aged Parma ham, and "aori" lardo squid, on deep-fried focaccia - a really interesting dish, as the fried focaccia came with chunks of radish as well as butter and rosemary. The real surprise, though, were the thin strips of bigfin reef squid (アオリイカ) placed on the two edges of the Parma ham. If one closes one's eyes, one could easily be fooled into thinking there were two strips of fat attached to the pork, because the texture was really, really similar to lardo di Colonnata. A really nice way to kick off our meal.

Geruhage HK tour day 3: 3-star dim sum

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A tour of Hong Kong and of Cantonese cuisine mandates at least one meal where dim sum is served up, and I figured we could fulfill this requirement over lunch at Forum Restaurant (富臨飯店). I have always enjoyed having dim sum here, and although we had to include this place on our itinerary, it was also a good opportunity to take a break from heavy eating and have something a little more casual. That's the great thing about dining at a Chinese restaurant with 3 Michelin stars - it's totally possible to come and just have a simple meal.

Not surprisingly, I was tasked with ordering for us, although I did get some input from Tomo-chan.

Steamed curry chicken bun (咖哩雞包仔) - I had never had this before, and in fact had probably never seen it. Quite an interesting first experience, actually.