Summer Palace @ Shangri-La

I had a business dinner at the summer palace 夏宮 at shangri-la hotel tonight.. and pardon my ignorance.. I had no idea that it's a michelin star restaurant.. not that I care about the michelin ratings for chinese restaurants... is the fact that it's been rated as 2 stars made me pay more attention to the quality of food and services they got to offer.

Actually other than mandarin oriental I would say I visited the shangri-la hotel most often.. either for business luncheons.. for conferences... for coffee breaks. But I normally spent most of my time at Nadaman, and have only been to the summer palace for just a few times.

We were being placed in a small function room with a handful of people. A waitress was assigned to our dinner table. I was impressed by her swift and mechanical movement.. it seemed like she has been trained for doing the exact same thing for thousands times. With no mistakes, pouring tea and drinks at the same angles, placing plates in the exact order.

What we had for the night:

Barbecue pork and suckling pig

Winter-melon soup - this is my favorite item throughout the night, and it was just "lovely". the soup base was clear and light to taste, the ingredients are placed in tiers and filled up more than half of the bowl, including bamboo fungus, duck meat, winter melon, etc..

Scallops with spring onions - scallops are pan-fried to perfection.

Fillet of grouper with broccoli - big pieces of grouper fillets, floured and deep fried with a crystal sauce.

Mushroom and cabbage - to my surprise, mushrooms were crunchy in texture.

Crispy chicken - skin was thin and crispy. chicken was lean and tasty... I was really full at this point of the dinner...

Egg white fried rice - I actually like the fried rice a lot.. but I was too full to finish the whole thing.

Sago cream with mango juice and pomelo - I like they mixed in pieces of pomelo into the sago cream to add another layer of texture.

When you visit a western restaurant which has earned the prestigious michelin stars, you would look for innovation and surprise for your palette, something different about the chef's execution that make it worthwhile to wait for months and pay the big bucks. I don't really know if the chinese restaurants are that much defined by chef (considering chinese chefs tend to be very mobile), and not especially innovative with flavors. So... is summer palace michelin star worthy? I really doubted it, other than it is situated in a hotel and offers above average service, I can easily name multiple places that churn out the same quality of food with a lower price tag.

Fook Lam Moon

LT has gone back to US for good. We had our farewell dinner at Fook Lam Moon 福臨門.

I would have never imagined myself dining at FLM since it's one of the tycoon's restaurant and I would have assumed the waiters are stuck up and it would be cheap and awkward to order non-abalone dishes in the restaurant.

I was wrong about the service. The staff there were very professional and didn't give us lousy service even we didn't order the expensive items on the menu.. although they did push for their shark fin soup when we asked for recommendation.

The food was good and delicious... but whether it deserved a rave review I really doubted it. I mean.. other than the more delicate items and extravagent ingredients which we didn't order, other dishes were normal cantonese food which was in par with a normal chinese restaurant. and a lot of the items we ordered I found inferior to many places I have tried before.

Cha siu - bbq pork - I think the one I had at Fu SIng tasted better, the meat was more tender and juicy at Fu Sing. But again, I am not a huge fan of bbq pork, the quality was good enough.

Fried frog legs - I haven't had frog legs in ages.. Chinese don't make good frog legs dishes.. but Thai does. I need this dish to be more spicy.

Sweet and sour pork - it was tasty, no surprise, but I wouldn't rate it high if comparing to the seafood place on lamma island, that one was awesome the pork was juicy and fried perfectly with the perfect sauce. This one was too average.

Vegetable dish - it tasted as normal as it looked.

Chicken - The skin was thin and crispy and the meat was tender and juicy and not fatty at all. interestingly the dipping sauce was lemon juice mixture unlike others which use white pepper and salt.

"Hong Siu" Tofu - The sauce was light and tasty, and the tofu was soft and silky.

Crab shell with crab meat - This is the most surprising item for the dinner. They stuffed the shell with lots of crab meat and covered with a thin batter that's not too oily to taste. It retained the light crab flavor every bite of it was crab meat. It was very nicey done although the presentation was just so-so.

Pan-fried sword fish - I found what my mom made would be better than this. The sword fish didn't come in one piece but in broken pieces. You would have thought the chef was experienced enough to not mess around the fish when it wasn't done yet. I was disappointed.

Fried rice wrapped with lotus leaves. This was the best executed dish for the dinner. The rice was chewy and not mushy, had very heavy taste of soy-sauce with bits of fried eggs inside. There weren't traces of many ingredients inside but the rice was packed with flavor.

Almond soup with egg white - Lots of egg white inside, above average quality.

Well.. I probably shouldn't set a high expectation for my first visit since the press commented it as a tycoon restaurant.. they should have very picky taste buds right?! I still felt the pressure of ordering the more expensive items on the menu, and I thought the pressure was not justified for the quality of food they offered.

Sai Kung Seafood

The thing about having a car in Hong Kong is that you always want to find every opportunity to use it. Since everywhere in hk is in proximity and accessible by public transportation, theoretically speaking, unless you are living really far away in NT, riding a cab or other means of transportation can take you anywhere you want without the hassle of finding parking and developing road rage.

What a weekend rider would normally do is to propose having dinner in places where convenience and accessibility are not the priority. One day my whole family decided to make a road trip to Sai Kung for the renowned seafood cuisine. I don't even remember why Sai Kung is famous for seafood.... I bet the freshest seafood wouldn't stay in Sai Kung anyway and the fishermen would rather supply to other restaurants to earn that extra premium.

We chose Chuen Kee (全記海鮮菜館) which operates several shops in different corners of Sai Kung. It was raining quite hard that day and we had to hide under the umbrellas standing next to the diners on the ground floor. It was so not pleasant to wait for half an hour in the rain.. and I was amazed by the fact that there're still that many people having the spirit to dine out in the wet and gloomy weather.


Our dinner came in the order of:

Steamed shrimps - the shrimps indeed are slightly bigger than what other restaurants offer.. flavor-wise they are the same.

Razor clams with black bean sauce - for the record I love razor clams, mainly because they are very meaty, fresh and chewy. These are very flavorful although they might have too much sauce in there.

Steamed abalone - We shouldn't have ordered this, basically the abalones were a bit overdone and too hard in texture, and the seasoning only touched on the surface while the meat was bland as hell.

Signature fried rice - add a few shrimps there and calling it the signature fried rice? I don't really see much difference.. ok this is quite tasty but still this is a regular fried rice.

Steamed scallops with vermicelli and garlic sauce - have to give them the credit that the scallops were quite big indeed. This is very tasty but a bit oily for my liking, it seemed like they splashed too much cooked oil as the finish touches.

Spicy mantis shrimp - I love mantis shrimp to the level that I enjoy licking the shell for the spicy and seafood flavor.. The shrimps were meaty and cooked perfectly and the seasoning was not too overpowering.

Steamed fish - I know it is a big grouper but we didn't enjoy the best of it since we needed to send back because it was still raw inside.

I probably will only go back if it's less crowded...the restaurant was a full house and all the waiters were so busy running around banging into back of the chairs, and drunken diners cheering for more alcohol and playing drinking games.

I haven't been to Lei Yue Moon for the longest time I wonder whether the seafood would come close to that of Sai King... at least at LYM I am surly be able to get a private room for a more peaceful setting

Fu Sing 富聲

I felt like i have been going out for chinese dinner a lot lately... going after JF's recommendation, four of us paid a visit to the one of the most talked about restaurant Fu Sing 富聲 a couple of days ago. The restaurant itself is just a miniature of what's happening in the surrounding wan chai area - tables were small and tightly setup, the noise level coould be comparable to a concert hall, the place was jam-packed with people, there's really not enough space for one to maneuver around.

Anyway it was just expected that chinese restaurants don't usually have as comfortable setting as western restaurant, at the end of the day we came here for the food not for the ambiance. We left it to JF to make our menu.

One of the most renowned dish at the restaurant - BBQ pork and roast suckling pig. The BBQ pork was indeed very good. The fat content was just right and meat was soft and juicy but not mushy, the honey caramel was slightly excessive but not too sweet. I still remembered the yummy bbq pork I had at yik sun and this one probably fall in the same league. Roasted pork has this thick crunchy skin to die for, if you don't mind the 50% fat content, surely should go for it!

Mantis shrimp with egg yolk. JF commented that the they were a bit soggy.. I thought they were fine, favor-wise the dish was very rich and a bit too salty, not what I would normally order from the menu.

Abalone and goose feet - this was super disappointing. I thought consider the price tag at least they would give us a smaller size dried abalone, unfortunately this was canned abalone. I am a big abalone eater and this was just not worth the price at all. The goose feet was fine, but the abalone just blew off my apetite at that moment.

Chinese lettuce with shrimp paste in clay pot. I love clay pot greens and this one tasted favorably. They probably had added too much shrimp paste so a bit too salty.

Fried crystal noodles. Another great clay pot dish. It's difficult to pan fry crystal noodles because if using too little oil they would stick to the pan, and too much oil would become too greasy. This one was cooked perfectly and noodles were not too moist or too dry.

Lam yu pork. Not really that impressive but great pairing with alcohol.

What the waitress recommended us was this crispy ma fa. It was okay nothing special since I grew up with shanghainess crispy ma fa anyway, it was too sweet for my tasting. I rather to go with something lighter considering we had so much food already.

A new creation from the kitchen was tart with milk pudding. I like the top part but not the bottom, interesting combination but the two didn't go well together. I would say they are friends but not buddies...

They ran out of what I originally wanted - the egg white almond tea dessert (something I order whenever I dine at chinese restaurant), and replaced with mango and grapefruit soup.

The others got the sweet dumplings.

Tasting was fine I probably would go again if it wasn't that expensive. I was surprised by how much it costed for those supposedly inexpensive dishes. The cost of execution and fame weighed more than the raw materials here. Considering what I had at sun tong luk which came with cheaper price tag and much better seating and service quality, I found food at fu sing not as delicate and exquisite.

Sun Tung Lok 新同樂

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.

Hot pot

Can't believe I've actually done this.....3 hotpot dinners within a week, no wonder I am starting to get a sore throat.

1st - lamb hotpot at TST, using charcoal fire which is very rare in HK now..

the lamb was excellent.. there's not much worth eating except lamb, whether you like it or not,this place is exclusive for lamb lovers.. 

2nd - homemade hotpot with lots of meat balls and seafood... 

3rd - sichuan hotpot at 滿江紅 .. sichuan people said the soup is not spicy enough..i actually witnessed the showdown of spicy lovers drowning every piece of edible food into red hot chilly soup.. I can tolerate moderate spiciness but this is quite spicy for me and I need to switch to the regular side half way through the dinner...

Sichuan girls are well-known for good skin...I am already feeling the effect of the sichuan hotpot from last night..hohoho...

Sham Tseng roasted goose

Sham Tseng shocked me by surprise that it became such a developed district comparing to 10 years ago when people still lived in primitive housing next to mom and pop stores. Now people lives in "bellagio" the estate with 7-eleven around the corner. The traditional roasted goose restaurants are hidden behind the developed high rise and rested on a no name street.

There're a few roasted goose restaurants in ST but Yue Kee probably is the most well-known. The place is still crowded with people and as run-down as it is 10 yrs ago. Their roasted goose is pretty good, roasted perfectly with very crispy skin and tender meat, although a bit too greasy for me. I also like their special preserved eggs..the yolks are extremely soft and creamy and goes well with ginger. But I still think Yung Kee is better....the food and brand deserves the premium.. at least it is in proximity.

I feel like I am hitting a road block again..Today is my first time riding Rock n' Reel...sing and raymond both said I could handle him easily, but so happened I didn't ride as seamlessly as expected. I wasn't used to his short strides and he didn't respond to my leg aids very well..all trot circle became trot oval, poor transition from canter to trot, and at the end he didn't even picked up canter for me.. so frustrating. Raymond made fun of me by saying how come I could ride a difficult horse but not a beginner horse. Is it because I ride too much and too frequently and that push me backward instead of forward.

That makes me wonder: No matter how hard we try, there's always limitation on how far we can excel, whether it is physical or mental block, that's something not within our control. How come we are always upset about not able to surpass our limitation, why not take a break and stay chill.

I missed my Yummy Yummy and Chippie, with which I can ride with ease.

Scrumptious long weekend

I found this long weekend has been exceptionally quiet. Mainland chinese tourists decided to pass up HK this year, all flocked to Macau following the opening of new casinos. Locals also joined the crowd, were being afraid of not seeing enough people in their lives. The only ones left in the city are bun bun and people like me who are too lazy to get out of the city.

I enjoyed a weekend of healthy escape, going to yoga classes early in the morning, hanging out with close friends, getting a deep tissue massage which made me scream and tear, working in an empty office, seeing an artistic movie, wining and dining every night..

A group of us went to Hei Kee in Wanchai for fried crab. It was famous for bay phoon town seafood especially spicy fried crab and was originally running the restaurant on a boat. Of course civilization brought it to the land and due to snowball effect many similar restaurants soon opened in that neighborhood.

The owner was very cute and funny and fond of us pretty ladies. He even sat next to us to place order and gave us some freebies. We ordered two signature spicy fried crab, one little spicy and one medium, kau fish fillets, clams with vermicelli, mantis shrimp, etc. Everything is flavorful and spicy, I like the fish fillet dish the best, it was extremely meaty and fatty and the batter was thin and crunchy. The crabs were peppery, the spiciness almost burnt my lips while trying to get the meat out of the shell.





Thanks to G, we got some JB dessert to compliment another hairy crab meal. We had Fleur de orange dome, cappuccino chocolate dome, lemon tart, salted caramel tart, passion fruit with dark chocolate tart. Everything's in perfection..I don't remember when was the last time I had the traditional mei sum cake.. probably more than 10 yrs ago...


My stomach does need to take a break after a marathon of feasts...