eG Foodblog: melkor - The blog that almost wasn't - se asia with t

[little ms foodie]

English breakfast tea, raspberries, blueberries, whipped cream, a couple of tarts - all very good and a welcome improvement over the no-guns/no-whores check-in booth in Siem Reap.

That has got to be the best thing I have read all day!! LOL!

This is all so interesting to me, thanks again for all your time in doing it.

Wendy

[melkor]

We've been running around more or less non-stop since we landed here in Hong Kong. Internet access is extremely easy to find as there is wifi available everywhere in this hotel - not that it has made our posts more frequent as you must be in the hotel to use the service available there.

Our first few food experiences here were less than earth-shattering, primarily due to our laziness. We're staying at the six-month old Langham Place hotel while we're here in HK. As we are on a club floor, they include breakfast and an afternoon tea, and an evening cocktail hour in the lounge each day.

Snacks in the hotel lounge, served with glasses of completely uninspired Veuve Cliquot yellow label.

More lounge snacks - all three were well made but were quite strange together. Grilled veg, tandoori chicken, and thai beef salad. Granted, I'm the idiot that put them together on a plate....

Creme brulees (the custard was too firm) on top, tiramisu (unremarkable) in the middle, and banana fritters (not a good choice to serve buffet-style since they were soggy) at the bottom of the plate.

We were exhausted last night so we made a somewhat poor decision to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant. This hotel is in the middle of Mongkok, a train ride away from the restaurant-oriented parts of town - the easy answer clearly isn't always the best one.

Sesame walnuts with a slightly sweet glaze - we had heard that it's common for restaurants in HK to serve you appetizers you haven't ordered then charge you for it - this is an example of that. They were a good start to a mediocre meal, but I don't think we would have ordered them if given the choice.

Veggie egg rolls on the left, sauteed bamboo shoots on the right. The egg rolls were the highlight of the meal, with fresh tasting filling, crisp skins, and an excellent sauce.

Half-chicken baked in salt - extremely moist, though the chicken was a bit bland. It was served with two sauces, one described as 'special sauce' and the other was a puree of garlic/ginger/green onions/sugar in vinegar. The skin was very rubbery, which we neither expected nor ate.

Shortribs with a dark and spicy sauce, onions, and peppers. A complete pain in the ass for us to eat with the chopsticks, the dish tasted good but strangely the beef shortribs on the Singapore flight from SFO to Seoul used better quality beef and overall tasted better.

So our waiter drops off the previous two dishes then asks 'Do you want rice?'. We say 'Sure'. He asks what kind. I stupidly say, 'Whatever you think would be best with this'. He delivers a small bucket full of this - fried rice with sea cucumber, duck (we think), prawns, and assorted veggies. An inoffensive dish, but also a worthless contribution to the meal overall.

Breakfast....It's hard to get motivated to go down 38 floors to then hunt down breakfast when you can just ride down two floors on the elevator and have a decent bite to eat. This morning MsMelkor was the only one who remembered to photograph her breakfast.

Egg custard with crabmeat at the bottom, apple turnover, fresh fruit. The egg dish had very little flavor aside from the crabmeat at the bottom. It's hard to go wrong with an apple turnover, though, and fresh fruit is definitely a good thing.

I had french toast - tasted as you would expect french toast that's been sitting in a steam tray long enough to still be there when we dragged ourselves out of bed at 9:30am. Smoked salmon on toast - surprisingly good, the fish was clearly cured in citrus before being lightly smoked, it was as good or better than the smoked salmon we buy from Dean and Deluca at home.

Fortunately for us, we fared much better at lunch, which we'll write up in a separate post.

[MsMelkor]

The first thing we did today once we left the hotel was find a tailor for Melkor, since custom tailoring takes a couple of days to turn around. After picking out fabrics and deciding on specifics, we spent the rest of the afternoon in the area (Tsim Sha Tsui) walking around the many interconnected malls. Of course, all that shopping makes you hungry, so we had a late and fairly large lunch at Hutong. We'd seen recommendations for this restaurant on the Shanghai & HK thread here on eG, and the tailor said it's one of his favorite places to eat, so we figured this would be a good choice.

Again, we started with something we didn't order, but in this case we don't think we were charged for it (the bill is itemized in Cantonese, so we're at a bit of a disadvantage in trying to audit). This was raw (unroasted) peanuts and "Chinese pickles" - pickled daikon. I would have preferred a slightly spicier version, but this was OK.

Asparagus with white sesame - Melkor wanted to get this but I thought it would be steamed asparagus with a few sesame seeds sprinkled on top. He was totally right - these were amazing. The asparagus was perfectly cooked (crisp-tender) with the bottoms dipped in a thick sauce and covered in toasted sesame seeds.

Crispy and drunken pigeons - we thought this would be one pigeon that was both crispy and drunken, but as it turns out, these adjectives describe different pigeons. The drunken one definitely tasted like alcohol (not sure if it was wine or sherry) and was served with a bowl of sherry (superfluous). Like last night's chicken, this had soggy skin but was moist. The crispy pigeon, thankfully, was much better. It was crispy as advertised, with wonderful spicy skin and the same moist meat. This one was served with a dish of salt that had a pinch of dried spices (unidentifiable) in it. So crispy pigeon wins over drunken pigeon.

Veggie dumplings - we could have eaten about a hundred of these. They were steamed, and had mushrooms, spinach, tofu, glass noodles, and probably a bunch of other stuff too. There were two sauces served with this - soy/garlic (not bad) and a distant cousin of hoisin with chili paste added (phenomenal). Wonderful harmony of flavors and textures.

I did not want to over-order (when we eat out by ourselves we often do, since there are so many dishes to try), and I was still smarting from the fried-rice incident from the night before, but the waiter was convinced that we would not have enough food without another dish, and Melkor insisted that he would eat more, so we ordered the braised veal dish with some sort of flower sauce. I will try to find out what the flower was, but it was not one I had heard of, and the waitstaff had already scolded us for taking photos of the dishes (apparently we should only take pictures of our individual plates, not of the serving dishes) and I didn't want to press our waiter for details after that. For some reason I was expecting a heavy, tomato-based braised dish, since that's how we make braised veal/beef/lamb. This, however, was delicate and ethereal. The meat was tender, falling off the bone (which greatly improved the chances of making it to our mouths via chopsticks), and very flavorful. If I hadn't been so full I think I would have eaten the rest of the sauce as a soup.

Fried apple rolls (sorry for the blurry picture) - too much skin and not enough apple. The oil taste overwhelmed the apples. We liked that they weren't very sweet, but they needed more filling.

Despite the so-so dessert, this meal was fabulous. The view was great too, although it's really hazy outside and hard to make out the details.

A brief word on our restaurant experience here so far: We both have used chopsticks for countless meals, but have never before been expected to de-bone a chicken or consume a giant cube of meat with them. The entire table setting is somewhat foreign and a bit confusing - neither of us have been presented with multiple sets of chopsticks in a place-setting before (as we learned, the outside set is for putting food on your plate, and the inner set for putting it in your mouth). Not wanting to offend, we've both asked our share of absurd questions to the poor waitstaff. We'll get the hang of this by the time we leave, and we might even figure out the appropriate time in our meal to use the endless stream of airplane wet-napkins we're presented with.

Off to the night market for more shopping and street food.

Edited January 4, 2005 by MsMelkor (log)

[johnnyd]

This blog underscores why the weekly food thread makes eGullet so amazing. Among all the interesting threads about all-things edible, a visit with a society member for a week is always illuminating. I realized that for the first time in a while, we have a week where not a thing is made at home and instead we are treated to a gastronomic tour of Asia. Wow!

The variety of these blogs is limited only by the number of kitchens on the planet's surface it seems, affording those who are of limited means to experience distant cultures and cuisine.

Fascinating blog, Famille Melkor! Your pictures are terrific. Is a ferry ride to Macau on the menu? I hear the portuguese/chinese fusion is pretty interesting.

Edited January 4, 2005 by johnnyd (log)

[melkor]

We unfortunately have neither time nor the required visas for a trip to Macau. We spent a few hours walking around the Mongkok night markets, which had surprisingly few options for street food - all of which looked or smelled bad. Having been smelling donuts for some reason all day we decided to skip dinner and have coffee and donuts in bed while watching a DVD.

[Yuki]

The entire table setting is somewhat foreign and a bit confusing - neither of us have been presented with multiple sets of chopsticks in a place-setting before (as we learned, the outside set is for putting food on your plate, and the inner set for putting it in your mouth). 

It is common practice for some people to ask for extra pair of chopsticks for serving if they are not provided during meal to avoid germs. It annoys some people at the table but it just makes others feel much safer. The strange thing is that we do it during family meals at home too.......

Hope that you will have a great trip!

[bleudauvergne]

Wow it looks wonderful.

[melkor]

Breakfast, Lunch, and Snacks:

We started our day with the standard hotel club breakfast - nothing amazing, but better than yesterday. Neither dish really merits much description, but here are the pictures and what's on each plate.

Smoked salmon on crackers, chocolate muffin, croissant with blackberry/elderberry/ginger jam.

Yoghurt with dried fruits and nuts, croissant with the same jam as above.

Lunch was another story altogether. We spent the morning around Hollywood road, checking out the antique shops. The Yellow Door Kitchen can be found in the middle of a busy market in the area:

The contrast between the ultra-modern archectecture and the street vendors is amazing. It's also interesting to see that most of the street vendors and all of the grocery stores list country of origin on all the produce/meat displays.

That small yellow sign, above the green beer sign lets you know you're in the right place.

It's only six flights of stairs to climb to get to the restaurant.

Finally. The restaurant lists its address as 6th floor 37 Cochrane Street, Central. It's worth finding, it's worth the hike up the stairs, and it's amazing that you can eat there for a quarter of the price of Hutong. Not that Hutong is overpriced, this place is just an amazing deal. There are set menus for 2 and 4 at lunch, and probably something similar for dinner.

Glass noodles with shredded chicken in chili sauce - the noodles were thick and roughly cut, the ideal texture for holding the spicy sauce. A wonderful start to the meal.

Szechuan dan-dan noodles - thin noodles with minced beef (it's often made with pork, but luckily for us, it was beef today), toasted sesame seeds, peanuts, green onions, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, chilies, and I'm sure several other mystery ingredients. This was waaay too much food but was at least as good as the previous dish. It had great spice, but the heat did not overwhelm the other flavors.

Deep-fried fish in chili sauce - as you can see, this was served whole and was drenched in a delicious chili sauce with garlic, ginger, green onions, minced chilis, cilantro....The fish itself was perfectly cooked (most of the fish we've had on this trip has been somewhat overcooked, which is probably for the best when we're eating on the side of the road). The chili sauce was moderately spicy and thick.

Braised chicken - this tasted surprisingly similar to something you'd have in the south of France, and was very well-prepared. The sauce was white-wine based, and the dish included whole cloves of garlic, whole shallots, and celery. There was a bit of minced chilis, and the chicken was hacked, which makes it a bit more interesting to eat. It was strange to have something that reminded us of the food we make at home.

Carnage - we did our best but there was just too much food!

While we shopped after lunch, Melkor needed fuel: Le Gouter Bernardaud chocolates (caramel on the left, cashew on top, pistachio on right)

POCKY!!

We're off to dinner at Felix at the Peninsula. Supposed to have great decor, which is always a bit suspicious, but we hear the food is good too. Hopefully we'll enjoy it as much as Lucy did.

[SobaAddict70]

I was wondering if eating patterns in Hong Kong are the same as mainland China or if they're mostly Westernized. Or if they're a weird fusion of the two cultures.

Soba

[hathor]

Many thanks for sharing!! I am sooo missing Hong Kong food now! It is without a doubt one of the finest eating cities in the world.

[Pan]

How did you know about Yellow Door Kitchen? Was it mentioned in that Hong Kong and Shanghai thread, perhaps?

Have you taken the Star Ferry? Are they still selling curried fishballs on both the Hong Kong and Kowloon sides? Tried any? That was something I really liked on my trip to Hong Kong over 17 1/2 years ago.

[hathor]

OH,Pan...things have changed dramatically in 17 1/2 years. You wouldn't recognize the Star Ferry if you saw it now. There's a Starbucks.....

[MsMelkor]

I was wondering if eating patterns in Hong Kong are the same as mainland China or if they're mostly Westernized.  Or if they're a weird fusion of the two cultures.

Soba

←

As far as we can tell, middle-class people eat Western-style with three meals a day. Lunchtime is particularly busy, with hordes of office workers eating lunch out. Hard to say if people eat breakfast, as we've been eating at the hotel in the morning, but most restaurants seem quite crowded at dinner. There do seem to be more large groups dining out than we see in the States, especially in the evenings.

[melkor]

How did you know about Yellow Door Kitchen? Was it mentioned in that Hong Kong and Shanghai thread, perhaps?

Have you taken the Star Ferry? Are they still selling curried fishballs on both the Hong Kong and Kowloon sides? Tried any? That was something I really liked on my trip to Hong Kong over 17 1/2 years ago.

←

MsMelkor read about Yellow Door kitchen in a few places - there are a few sites I found on Google that list a handful of home-style restaurants, including Yellow Door. It was also mentioned on eG here. We weren't seeking it out, but as we were wandering through the area, we recognized the sign, so we thought we'd give it a try.

It's a bit chilly here (15-19C) so we skipped the ferry and took MTR across the water. We hear it's got a great view, but I'm not sure we're going to get to it this trip.

[patti]

I appreciate y'all taking the time to share your fascinating trip. You seem to be having a wide variety of eating experiences. For some reason, I'm really taken by that picture of the asparagus and sesame seeds. Looks wonderful.

Thanks, great blog!

[melkor]

Dinner at Felix (sorry the pictures are so dark - the lighting by our table was minimal):

This is what you see when you enter the restaurant from the elevator. Very sleek and modern, the place feels more like a club (even has a dance floor) than a restaurant.

We settled on Felix as our dinner choice pretty late last night (close to 7pm), so we were fortunate that our hotel concierge was able to secure a reservation for us that night at 9, and a table with a view of Hong Kong Island at that:

The bread basket included herb crispy flatbread (advertised as spicy but not very), focaccia rolls, and soft dinner rolls.

Seared ahi tuna - the tuna itself was very fresh, and was sprinkled with salt, pepper, white and black sesame seeds, and minced chives. This was accompanied by a sauce (wasabi and what tasted like creme fraiche, swirled with hot mustard) and a salad of greens, radicchio, cucumbers, fennel, and pickled ginger. All of the components contributed to the overall harmony of the dish.

Seared foie gras - very good quality foie gras with a nicely crisped outside and creamy interior. The berry sauce, slightly sweet, was a great contrast for the rich foie. Caramelized onions provided a welcome depth.

Herb coated trout - the fish wasn't dry, but it was oddly firm, and the sauce, while silky in texture, was overpowered by the dill. This was served with a handful of vegetables and mashed potatoes with the same herbs as the sauce.

Grilled lamb medallions - really really freaking good. The lamb was very flavorful without tasting gamy, and was served with an excellent red wine reduction sauce, along with a few bits of blue cheese, which I normally don't like, but in this case worked well.

Spinach - sauteed with garlic, this tasted pretty much like what we make at home.

"Felix 5" - 5 of their 6 desserts (all but the cheesecake). On top was the chocolate fondant - MsMelkor's favorite, even though she usually finds chocolate desserts tasty but uninteresting. This version had a great smooth, fudgy texture and rich flavor. In the middle were the pineapple financier (very enjoyable, simple pineapple flavor), tiramisu (my favorite even though I generally don't care for tiramisu, but this was an excellent example of the dish, with the perfect ratio of ladyfingers to mascarpone), and "apple pie" (the only real failure of the evening - the apples had been soaked in liqueur, which seemed to replace the apple flavor with alcohol). On bottom was mango pavlova - this dish had too many components (meringue, egg white cookie, some strange creamy substance, mango slices formed into a flower, blueberries, and odd cubes of mintiness), which made it difficult to eat.

Chocolates - chocolate covered ginger, which was waaay too much ginger for the amount of chocolate. Eating the chocolate off the ginger stick worked better, as this provided a hint of ginger rather than a walloping. The other item was a tasty, but standard, chocolate-covered pretzel.

The service was strange - almost nonexistent, and somewhat awkward, but overall we both hugely enjoyed the meal. It was quite different from what we've been eating for the past three weeks, and was a good example of what "fusion" cuisine can be.

[little ms foodie]

So are restaurant menus like Felix in English or does someone just translate for you??

What I find really interesting is that some of the pictures of food in restaurants looks like what we would order/get in Seattle/San Fran/ NYC/etc. makes a big world seem more managable if you understand??

Thanks for sharing!!!

[melkor]

I appreciate y'all taking the time to share your  fascinating trip. You seem to be having a wide variety of eating experiences. For some reason, I'm really taken by that picture of the asparagus and sesame seeds. Looks wonderful.

Thanks, great blog!

←

Glad you're enjoying our trip. That picture hardly does the dish justice - it's one of the best asparagus preparations either of us have ever had.

This trip has further confirmed my belief that the only food worth going out for is either very low end or very high end. Our best experiences have been at the extremes and our worst failures culinarily speaking have been at the mid-range restaurants.

We've got a flight home in 9 hours, so we'll wrap up the blog from the airport lounge.

[Pan]

Have a safe trip home!

A Starbucks at the Star Ferry? Ugh! But then, Starbucks didn't exist in 1987.

[MsMelkor]

So are restaurant menus like Felix in English or does someone just translate for you??

What I find really interesting is that some of the pictures of food in restaurants looks like what we would order/get in Seattle/San Fran/ NYC/etc. makes a big world seem more managable if you understand??

Thanks for sharing!!!

←

The menu at Felix was only in English, but at most other restaurants we've been to in Hong Kong, the menus have been in both English and Cantonese. At lunch today (to be written up momentarily), there was an English/Cantonese menu but also a set menu only in Cantonese. Luckily I knew that there is often a set menu at lunch so we asked, and the waiter helped us order off of that.

In Thailand and Cambodia the menus were generally in both English and Thai/Khmer, although in a few places there were pictures instead of English and on the street we mostly pointed. I know a handful of words in Thai (pretty much all food-related), which helped with street food.

The food at Felix was very similar to what you might find in other cities around the world. Eating there, and having Western food on occasion during our trip, was definitely a "comfort food" experience.

[bleudauvergne]

I like the idea of incorporating wasabi into the seared tuna cream sauce.

[MsMelkor]

Last meal in HK - lunch today.

We decided on Man Jiang Hong, based on HKDave's recommendation. Boy, is that place hard to find!

The address is 482 Hennessy Rd and HKDave rightly points out that the entrance is on Percival. But the stairs we saw led only to a driving school, and the people at the bank downstairs helpfully pointed out the Man Jiang Hong sign in Cantonese but didn't know how to get upstairs. We were about to give up when we noticed what looked like those same characters in a Japanese restaurant ("Mytokyo") on the ground floor The staff there told us that they have two restaurants - the Japanese one downstairs, and Man Jiang Hong upstairs (the stairs are inside the restaurant, out of view from the street). So if you are trying to find this place...go about 5 shops in from Hennessy on Percival and go through Mytokyo up the stairs.

It took about 10 minutes, once we sat down, to get a waiter's attention. You could tell that the entire staff was totally in the weeds (this was at about 1:30, as lunch was just starting to wind down). The set menu was very reasonably priced, and included one cold dish, two mains, tea, and another beverage. As neither of us drink soda, we asked for water, but the waiter was insistent that we get soy milk, pictured above. It was much better than what I've had out of those aseptic containers we get in the US, and turned out to quench the fires in our mouths quite well.

The first dish served was braised beef brisket with potatoes. I was surprised to see potatoes, but I am no Szechuan expert, so for all I know that could be very standard practice. The beef was very tender, falling into shreds easily. I would have preferred that it was better trimmed, but I'm a total wimp about that (hate eating globs of fat) and at home Melkor enables my irrationality. The sauce was very thin, with a soup-like consistency, and a very even, assertive heat.

The second dish to arrive was the "green noodles" with shredded chicken, very similar to the glass noodles we ordered at the Yellow Door yesterday. These noodles were much thicker with a more gelatinous consistency, and the dish was much spicier than yesterday's. I really enjoyed this dish, more than Melkor did.

The final dish was chicken with green onions and peanuts. While it wasn't spicy overall, there were whole spices, including Szechuan peppercorns, that were quite pungent. Unlike the chicken we've been eating for the past few days, this was both boneless and skinless, which made it a joy to eat. The bold flavors and contrasting textures made this Melkor's favorite.

This food was definitely spicier than yesterday's lunch at Yellow Door, but I'm not sure which I liked better. We both loved each meal - definitely highlights of the week.

Melkor had a couple of post-lunch snacks for our trip to Victoria Peak - more Pocky (actually, it was a Pocky ripoff called Meiji Lucky Mini - as you might imagine, these were smaller than Pockys and were covered with almonds - yummy!) and an "ice cream pancake" which is fruit (bananas), ice cream (mango), whipped cream, powdered sugar, and chocolate sauce piled into a crepe shaped into a cone. Very odd.

And that about wraps up our food blog for the week. Thanks to everyone for following us around this part of the world - it's been quite a trip!

[johnnyd]

The good news: This tour was remarkable. I can't believe I've just "dined" in the parts of asia I've longed to visit.

The bad news: My list of tasty asian dishes that I need to figure out and reproduce has grown much longer!

Thanks again to you both for a wonderful blog!

[judiu]

Wow! Eating my way across Hong Kong has always been a dream of mine; thanks for helping me plan for a fantasy trip! Glad all is well for you guys, and that you were well away from all the problems of the tsunami!

[Jake]

Great blog, Melkors! Thank you for sharing your fabulous trip with us all.

edited for lousy typing.

Edited January 6, 2005 by Jake (log)