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For Dad's bday celebraton #1, we went to Sung Tung Lok 新同樂 in Happy Valley for an extravagant traditional chinese meal. It is not difficult to find a restaurant in Hong Kong that serves those extravagant ingredients such as shark fin, abalone and fish belly, everyone of those says they are the best but obviously not that many can produce decent dishes at reasonable pricing and at the same time satisfy the yang family's exquisite tastebuds.
At first we were concerned about whether the restaurant could accommodate our big group of 15 people + kids. When we arrived, we were guided through a flight of stairs next to the main entrance, and taken to a very big room with private bathroom and a hugh round table. This was indeed a comfortably large room for big group dinner party.
We had some simple dishes to start off our dinner: fried vegetarin bean curd sheet roll, roasted beef, deep fried bak fan yu, deep fried bean curd, scallions and salty fish, beans and minced pork, etc.....
Here comes the main dish - shark fin soup. The soup base had a beautiful golden color and seasoned perfectly. It's amazing that even they used a huge chicken and salty ham to create the soup base, it didn't have a single drop of fat and was as light and clear as vegetable stock. The intense flavor did blow me away, this might be the best shark fin soup that I have ever had. The serving of shark fin was not shabby at all, each of us got a piece of ~3" wide shark fin. Also, instead of vinegar, the server placed a miniature crystal bottle filled with condensed ham stock on the table, is like magic water, to enhance the ham flavor even more.
Another main dish - Abalone and goose feet. What makes a good abalone? Firstly it has to be the dried ones and not from the cans, secondly if the abalone is cooked perfectly it should have what we call "sweet heart 溏心" in the center, thirdly the texture of abalone should be chewy and not too hard or too soft, and also the sauce has to be the thick abalone marinate but not as sugary as oyster sauce. Although the abalones we had were pretty small but they did have the sweet heart in the center and the sauce had slight hint of soy sauce and packed with seafood flavor. Whoever don't eat goose feet would have missed out the most nutritious food of chinese cuisine. Goose feet have more collagen than bird nest but selling as 1/1000 of the price. Along with the abalone sauce, the goose feet were perfect! I felt my skin all rejuvenated again...
Fried scallops stuffed with minced prawns. These are big scallops indeed and the minced prawns gave us the crunchy texture. Although they are deep fried but not oily at all.
No need to explain every single chinese dinner has to involve steamed fish. Of course this is not big enough to feed 15 people.. we had 2 steamed fish.
Smoked chicken. It's difficult to find good lean chicken nowadays, they are usually fat and force fed chicken which are tasteless. This chicken dish again was not fat at all, the skin was crispy and meat was quite juicy.
The longevity noodle for Dad.
Dessert - almond paste soup and sau bao. I needed to note that albeit small in size, the sau bao had an egg yolk inside with lotus paste. Not many places use egg yolk because of cost issue, but this one fully packs with all the neccessary ingredients, and most importantly not too sweet.
What a wonderful meal. Most importantly my dad enjoyed every bit of it albeit his high standard of everything.... good service (we had 3 people dedicated to our table), decent food, generous portion, comfortable setting. We killed 4 bottles of red and white, and a full bottle of wuliangye. We all came out being half drunk and needed a lift back home even it was just a 2 min drive from the restaurant.
Four of us went to Matsubishi @ the marriot hotel to satisfy the birthday boy's craving for teppanyaki.. Actually it is my first time having teppanyaki in HK, I remembered dining at Benihana when I was young, but we didn't have that good of experience there which reverted us back to the traditional sushi and donburi whenever we dined out.
Teppanyaki is all about a guy standing in front of you performing a show of searing food and frying rice... and here is our guy who have been working at the restaurant for over decades.... wouldn't he get bored by performing the same act everyday?
A salad and gyoza to start off our meal.
We all went for a set menu which comprises of scallop/eel, sirloin beef/kurobuta pork, fried rice and sauteed veggies.
First off, our chef went on a full explanation of the origin of scallop while grilling and dicing our lovely shellfish. Our scallops are huge with large gonads...the shell itself is as big as my hand. I guess the chef is way too chatty and didn't notice he has overcooked our scallops.. what a bummer, they would have been so juicy if they are not overcooked....
Next we had our sirloin/pork. Chef placed a piece of toasted bread on our plates to absorb the excess fat of the meat. It looks like a special home made bread with their own seal on it.. but surprisingly it is actually the normal HK garden brand, nothing fancy about it...
We had 3 dipping sauce in front of us - ponzi/soy, tomato with apple, sesame
The sirloin was cooked perfectly, tender and juicy. The meat can go by itself without the dipping sauce.. it was served with fried garlic chips as an extra kick. well.. i have already established that this is not a good place for dating.. with that much of garlic what kind of distance do you want to keep with your dating partner..
The kurobota pork was thinly sliced and wrapped with scallions and fried garlic chips when grilled. The pork definitely is much better than the China fed ones sold at wet market..which are basically tasteless. Instead of thin slices, I would really want to try the pork loin since kurobuta pork is supposedly super tender and fatty.
After the meat course, chef started making the fried rice. The technique is fast moving hands, super hot pan, little oil, cooled rice, fresh ingredients, and lots of scallions. The fried rice was nicely done, seasoned perfectly with slight soy sauce flavor. Comparing the jap fried rice to chinese fried rice... I think I would still prefer the chinese version because of the seafood flavor from dried scallops.
To sum up - decent food, good atmostphere, nice decor, dimmed lighting, clean bathrooms.. one weak point is inexperienced staffs who didn't refill our choya every now and then...other than that a good meal overall.
A few weeks ago, we reconvened at MC's place for our regular cookout after resting for summer. It's been awhile since our last gathering and I have to admit that it was my fault to keep postponing our date. Thanks to MC and EW, after a long chain of emails exchange and my minimal contribution, we pinned down on what we wanted to make the day before. We went for something masculine, homey and satisfying - a recipe of roasted beef and yorkshire pudding by gordon ramsay. To be honest I had no idea of what yorkshire pudding is before I saw the recipe, they are english muffin like creature made with egg and milk and flour that go with meat dishes.. apparently these are traditional english food just like the american mushed potato..I felt so ignorant..
What makes a great steak?? A grill pan!! What a great investment to have a grill pan at home.... it heats up the steak at high temperature to seal in the juices and get you that perfect grill marks.
The making of the gravy sauce. Trust me, this is really delicious. Normally I don't like gravy too much since the sauce tends to be too thick and overpowering, but this gravy sauce is indeed a very good compliment to the steak. The ingredients are simple, comprising of thyme, garlic, onion, tomatoes and port wine, and as GR says: REDUCE.
We also have the tomato soup to go with the meal. A simple hearty vegetable soup that stimulates appetite.
It's our first time making yorkshire pudding..the key is to preheat a greased muffin pan at very high temperature, and then pour the thin batter into the sizzling hot pan and pop that back into the oven. Within 15min we got our delicious and chewy yorkshire pudding.
Our roasted beef was slightly overdone.. but the marinate and gravy made up for a slight misstep.
Probably is the age thing again, I really enjoy home cook dinner party with close friends rather than hanging out at karoke and getting drunk at pubs and clubs.... food is a great bonding factor for people, and I am grateful to have friends who enjoy food as much as I do.
