I have seen the light, and it is glorious

Having never lived anywhere in Singapore but the East side of town, I naturally maintain an irrational allegiance to the foods that can be found here. For the longest time I thought myself backed up by fact, for it’s hard to argue with the assorted wonders of Geylang, Katong, Joo Chiat, East Coast, Eunos – I could go on. But this past week my eyes were opened to some of the hawker foods found in other parts of town, and I humbly stand corrected. It is not just the East – you can find good food in any neighbourhood.


Foong Kee
6 Keong Saik Road

I had heard about this famous wanton mee and roast meats stall for the longest time but never had the opportunity to try it, for my allegiance to all things East resulted in a rather insular pattern of eating. But since I found myself in the neighbourhood of this institution, I decided to give it a go. I arrived as the lunch hour was winding down, so street parking was easy to find, and a seat miraculously opened up exactly as I stepped into the store.

It’s become cliché by now to refer to hawker stalls as “no-frills”, but there is really no better descriptor. The lack of frills is evident not just in the décor, but also in the whole setup of the establishment. This is eating at its most efficient: you come in, you place your order, take a drink from the cooler if you fancy one, then find your own seat and wait. Sometimes you share a table with complete strangers. Communal mugs of chopsticks and other utensils are whisked from table to table and you take what you need. Unless you’re a fan of peeling wallpaper, there is nothing about your surroundings to inspire aesthetic appreciation. If you’re lucky, your food arrives in five to ten minutes, and you scarf it down wordlessly. There is no room for sentimentality, no need for conversation or pause. It feels almost wrong to dally or take a photo of the food. For someone that enjoys dinner table conversation and post-dessert lingering almost as much as the food itself, it’s strange that I enjoy this mode of dining so much.

And boy have I been missing out. The noodles here are springy and alive, coated generously in a black sauce more savoury than sweet. The char siew is the piece de resistance – marbled with fat and charred to a crisp on the edges. The other components leave much to be desired – wantons are nothing to write home about, and the soup is purely utilitarian – but it all makes for a rather satisfying meal nonetheless.


Siang Hee
Blk 89 Zion Road, #01-137

It is imperative to find and maintain a group of people – amongst your network of serious foodies – with whom you can eat tze char. This mode of dining is best with more people – 5 or 6, or more – since you can order many dishes. Unfortunately, a bigger group means more scheduling difficulties, more individual dietary restrictions or preferences to cater to. It’s hard to find a group of people who you can count on to always be there for good tze char, and are always game to try anything.

I met up with my tze char buddies the other night at Siang Hee after discovering that Bernard had never tried it. It had been a while since I’d been there too, so I was curious to see if it had changed. It had not. It was the same dingy corner in the same block of flats along Zion Road. The clientele was exactly the same – a group of taxi drivers meeting for dinner, either at the end of their day shift or the start of their night one; assorted couples and families. The menu was still the same, and the famous dishes – I am glad to report – have not lost their lustre.

Siang Hee is famous mainly for two things – their roasted pork knuckle (or ter kah) and the deep fried prawns in pumpkin sauce. Both had not changed a lick, although the pork knuckle was a little dry on this occasion. We also had the French beans and a dish of their house-made toufu, but while passable they were not as transcendent as the two star dishes. We also ordered a plate of hor fun with fish slices, which was a little disappointing.

In any case, as long as they keep making their two specialties, I will continue to come here. Parking is cheap and easy, the breeze makes outdoor dining bearable, the auntie who runs the place is friendly and the food is cheap. That last factor is the true winner, I think.


Sungei Road Laksa
27 Jalan Berseh (Top 33 Kopitiam)

For someone who has grown up in the East, I guess it was complacent to think that versions other than Katong laksa could never compare. I had heard of the famous Sungei Road laksa, but I must have sampled an inferior knock-off once and written it off since. So when two of my colleagues, whose love of laksa and appreciation of quality are beyond reproach, both chose this as their favourite laksa, it was time for a re-evaluation. After ascertaining the location of the true Sungei Road laksa, I was off.

I was told that two things would guide me to the true Sungei Road laksa – the long queue, and the huge pots of gravy warmed by charcoal fires. I reached the place mid-afternoon, so there was no queue, but the sight of the huge pots and the smell of the coal fire were unmistakable.

The Sungei Road laksa has adopted a different business model – to sell cheaply to many – from the Katong laksa franchises – which practice product-price differentiation. The Katong stalls, whichever the original one may be, price their product higher and in fairness, do give you more quantity and better quality ingredients like prawns and thicker, better slices of fishcake. The Sungei Road version comes in small bowls and is priced at a ridiculous $2, but has no prawns, and only a few measly thin slices of fishcake. That is no matter, though, because the true star here is the gravy. Less lemak, and more oily than Katong, it is nevertheless better balanced and delivers a more powerful kick of umami. The noodles here, too, edge it slightly – the ones used here retain flavour better and are cooked to the perfect texture.


As a lifelong Eastie it pains me to say this, but I think I might prefer this version to the Katong laksa.

The fabric of community

Restoran Oversea
No. 100 Beach Road, #01-27 to #01-37,
Shaw Leisure Gallery, Shaw Tower
Singapore 189702
Tel: +65 6294 2638

I have begun to feel more and more that doing business, as it were, is about so much more than just dollars and cents. It’s about, among other things, making an imprint on the fabric of society – about bettering the lives of others through your product or service. The best business ideas come out of making someone’s life just that bit easier, efficient or enjoyable. It sounds trite, but it is, I think, rather apt especially in the restaurant world, or small business in general. You don't just go to a restaurant because you want to take it easy and not have to cook or wash up; you go because you want to enjoy yourself and have a good time eating out. The best restaurants, in my view, are the ones that transform their local community and become an indelible part of it. They become – slowly, bit by bit – part of the lives of their customers, until a community coalesces around them. Families trooping to a particular restaurant for regular Sunday dinners, or couples going back to a place because it’s the restaurant they went to on their first date – a restaurant is often so much more than just a place to eat.

So when restaurants close, the loss is not just the loss of a place to eat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much a fan of regeneration as anyone else, because it also means that a new set of folks are pursuing their dreams, making their own imprint on the landscape and community. I can only hope that the ones who were there before have moved on to bigger, better dreams. In any case, the ground floor restaurant space at Shaw Leisure Gallery – for so long Ah Yat Seafood Palace – was recently opened again as the first Singapore branch of Restoran Oversea (海外天), the famous Jalan Imbi restaurant in KL renowned for its char siew.

I met Winnie for dinner there last night, and the new owners had definitely spruced it up a little bit. A sleek if somewhat overwrought bar counter defined the room, and the fish tanks that had housed Ah Yat’s live seafood were replaced by booths. A ceiling to floor screen marked out what was for all intents and purposes a private room. There was a reasonable crowd for a restaurant that had only been open for a month, but it was by no means packed.

You have to pre-order the char siew, as you do with their 功夫汤 – a soup specialty of theirs, which Winnie had done. When the char siew came it glistened under the bright white lights of the restaurants, and it was all we could do to hold off attacking it while we took a photo for posterity. I’ve met people who are religious about taking photos of their food and I always wonder what they do with the photos, and why they take photo-taking to the extents that they do. Some don’t even consider the aesthetic quality of their subject. I’ve seen people take photos of green bean soup, which looks – even if you do it well – like an unidentifiable green mush. Why do they do it? I can never understand. For me the enjoyment of the meal comes first, and sometimes I am so overwhelmed by the urge to eat that photos be damned. And if the photo-taking puts off what happens to be perfectly charming conversation and the mood of the moment, then I often think better of it. In this case I had promised my colleague that I would take a photo of the char siew just to show him the quantity you get, which isn’t a lot for twenty bucks.


But I suppose you do pay that sort of money for quality, which the Oversea char siew definitely is. Fatty, succulent and carved into substantial enough cubes to be a gloriously meaty bite, it compared very well with the version in KL and indeed other versions elsewhere. It was a little sweet at first taste, but then I found that eating it together with the Chinese parsley added tartness and improved the experience.

The 功夫汤 – gongfu soup – was a cheesy take on gongfu tea: medicinal soup double boiled in clay teapots. What this meant was that by pouring the soup out into miniature teacups, you could drink the soup on its own without the ingredients. Of course, you could also open up the teapot to get at the various pork cubes, dried scallops and all other manner of goodness hidden within. It was certainly a very interesting presentation and it didn’t hurt that the soup was delicious – intensely flavoured, yet light and refreshing.

I think that since it is early days for the restaurant, they are still working out what their popular dishes are, and the right quantities of ingredients to stock. As a result, they had run out of several of the things I had wanted to try. The XO duck tongues, claypot pork ribs and roast duck were all out. We wound up ordering a couple of other "second choice" dishes to round out our meal, but they didn’t hit the heights of the char siew and the soup. The sambal eggplant could have been great, but they hadn’t salted the eggplant enough beforehand so it was still a little bitter; and they hadn’t cooked it long enough, for the skin on the eggplant was a tad too firm for my liking. I like my eggplant mushier. The teppanyaki beef rib was well flavoured and tender, but alas, nothing out of the ordinary.

Expanding overseas (pardon the pun) is never an easy thing, especially for restaurant chains. Setting up a whole new supply chain, sourcing and procuring ingredients, hiring, dealing with a whole new set of regulations, approvals, permits – it is a significant investment of time and resources. So you shouldn’t do it if you’re not planning to stay. I hope Restoran Oversea is here to stay; from what I have seen I have no doubt that they do good work and can become a local institution. For their sake I look forward to many more families trooping there for their Sunday dinners and couples headed there for first dates or anniversaries.

What would you pay for?

Waku Ghin @ Marina Bay Sands
10 Bayfront Avenue
Singapore 018956
Tel: +65 6888 8507

So despite all my rhetorical remonstrations about the rising price of fine dining in Singapore, in the end I’m still a sucker for it. I still want to be wowed, I still want to be shown a good time. Maybe those good times don’t come along as often as I’d like, but they represent a luxury that I am unwilling to forego completely. Shanaz was in town the other week, and we took the opportunity to try one of the celebrity chef restaurants at the Marina Bay Sands casino – Waku Ghin, by Tetsuya Wakuda.

What is it that you pay for, anyway, at these places that see fit to charge such astronomical prices? The way I see it, I’d gladly pay such high prices for several things. First – the cost of quality, fresh ingredients. It is not cheap air-freighting, say, fresh-caught seafood from miles and miles away on a daily basis, and ensuring that the seafood reaches your table in a time better measured in hours rather than days, all the while making sure it stays fresh. Secondly, I’d pay for talent. If the guy’s a good cook, you’ve got to hand it to him. But seriously, I know these restaurants have to pay a little more to attract skilled front and back of the house professionals, and the staff-to-customer ratios at these places are often really low – to ensure an unforgettable, pampering experience for the diner. Then there are the costs of training and retaining these folks – not an easy thing to do in the rough-and-tumble culinary world where turnover is unlike any other industry. So, I really can’t begrudge a few dollars on menu prices if the people are good at what they do. Thirdly, I’d pay to see effort. The effort chefs put into developing, honing, fine-tuning their recipes; changing them seasonally. The effort that the waitstaff puts into creating a magical evening for me; or the effort that the dishwasher makes in ensuring spotless dishes or cutlery. If people are busting balls, I would willingly pay what it took to get them to do so.

It seems a little callous to reduce the cost of a good meal to such basic elements – there are other things you might pay for as part of the fine dining experience: a good location or view for instance. Or you might think the extra work, research and development needed for molecular gastronomy may be worth paying a few extra dollars for. Or perhaps the costs needed to maintain a comprehensive winelist may be something you’re willing to foot (although I’m pretty sure that the markups on wine more than cover those). In any case, after our meal at Waku Ghin it was abundantly clear which of these elements your money was really going towards.

Waku Ghin is Chef Tetsuya Wakuda’s first establishment outside of Australia – his flagship restaurant being Tetsuya’s in Sydney. The concept here though, is different from the Sydney restaurant. At Waku Ghin, food is prepared and served teppanyaki style, at one of a few counters with immaculate iron griddles and granite countertops. Each of the counters is enclaved away from the others, and there is a drawing room in the corner of the restaurant – overlooking Marina Bay – where you retire to have your dessert and petit fours after your meal, which is in itself part meal, part demonstration.

The interesting thing about Waku Ghin is that they welcome and are even happy for you to take as many photos and videos as you want. I didn’t bring my camera, so I had to be content with taking the odd iPhone shot while Shanaz went a little obsessive compulsive with her photo-taking. She’s promised to send me the pictures, but she’s also promised me lots of other stuff before, so we’ll see if she makes good this time.

At the start of the meal our chef brought out the fresh seafood in a carton for us to ogle and I must admit I was slightly aroused at this sight. (I did not, of course, disclose this to my dining companions.) The ingredients, with their deep, rich, natural colours, looked as if they had only been caught hours before. Not even at farmers’ markets or wet markets had I ever seen ingredients this fresh, this succulent, this appetising. It was all I could do to stop myself from reaching out to caress them.

We started with a terrine of duck and foie gras which was technically excellent but unfortunately not memorable. To be fair, it’s not the best lead-in going from oohing and aahing at raw lobster tails, a two foot long trout, and other assorted tasty ingredients – to eating two tiny cubes of terrine and foie gras. They were delicious, don’t get me wrong, but our thoughts were unfortunately elsewhere. I will also say, though, that this dish was, like everything else, meticulously and scrupulously executed. There was just the right amount of vinaigrette on the frisee, just the right balance of greens to protein – no more, no less. I couldn’t help but think that everything had been painstakingly measured, portioned and prepared and it was a tone that carried through the rest of the meal.

The next appetiser was raw Botan shrimps marinated with sea urchin and topped with caviar. Now, you and I both know that appetisers are supposed to be flavour bursts, to open your palate in preparation for the main course(s), but there was little that could have prepared us for the explosion of umami that was this dish. The waitress touted it as one of Waku Ghin’s signature dishes, and I certainly enjoyed it very much. It came with a little spoon you were supposed to use, and I took a little-boy pleasure in cleaning off the dish.


Marinated Botan Ebi with Sea Urchin and Oscietre Caviar

We then moved on to a dish of trout, slow cooked to a deep orange, tenderly placed atop a Belgian endive and paired with a Japanese seaweed sauce. There was a healthy cracking of black pepper atop the trout, which I loved, and which made the kick from the seaweed sauce more pronounced. This was no ordinary peppercorn, it was woody, tart and spicy beyond the pepper you and I use at home. By itself this might have already been my favourite dish of the night, but what sealed the deal was the salad of endive leaves and pear that accompanied it. The vinaigrette for this dish was spectacular – a perfect balance of sweetness and sharpness. I asked the waitress to find out what was in it and she came back with the perfunctory answer of ‘red wine vinegar, honey and olive oil – that’s it’. Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if that is really it. There has to be crack cocaine in it, because it wasn’t even funny how fast I inhaled that salad.


Slow Cooked Tasmanian Petuna Ocean Trout with Witlof and Yuzu

At this point, the first of the chef’s theatrics began on the griddle in front of us, with the cooking of Alaskan king crabs atop a bed of sea salt and covered with bamboo leaves. They were finally served drizzled with lemon scented olive oil, but to tell the truth they were – while very good – a little bit of a letdown after the elaborate show of preparation.

The next course was lobster braised in stock, and involved yet another intricate kabuki. First, the lobster pincers and tails were sauted with garlic and shallots, before lobster stock and fresh tarragon added. Our chef made a big show of ladling the stock over the lobster pieces with a spoon but the entire time he was doing it Shanaz was cringing on the edge of her seat. From where she was sitting she could see the ends of the lobster meat curling up, and her worst fears were realised when – after le montage au beurre and the addition of lemon zest – the lobster was served to us a tad overcooked. This set Shanaz off wailing about the injustice of this callous treatment of such quality ingredients, and for good measure she threw in a jibe about tarragon being a ‘common’ herb. (What can you do; women, they’re always throwing in something completely unrelated when making their point, and making the argument about something else instead.) I knew better than to come back with a snide remark, though, and so kept my mouth shut, and when I looked over at her plate after a while she had finished the dish anyway.


Braised Lobster with Tarragon

Snide remarks aside, I do have to agree with her that our lobster was overcooked, and that it was a terrible way to treat ingredients of this quality. The final product was still pretty tasty – it was pretty hard for it not to be given the ingredients – but the knowledge that it could have been better coloured our enjoyment of it slightly. I remarked to Shanaz that never in my life had I had the opportunity to work with such premium ingredients – and indeed, few home cooks ever will.

The next two courses were of beef – first a piece of Japanese Wagyu striploin rolled into a tiny pillow of awesomeness, served with maitake mushrooms. The beef was incredibly fatty, with salt and pepper the only adornment it needed. After that came cubes of Australian Blackmore steak with fresh grated wasabi and citrus-soy. The star of the show here, I thought, was undoubtedly the fresh wasabi. It was not as pungent or spicy as the processed wasabi we were used to eating, but had an almost soothing burn when paired with the beef. My steak was a little overcooked for my liking, but I wolfed it down nonetheless. (Shanaz’s, I thought was perfectly rare so there were no complaints from her this time.)


Grating wasabi

We then had a course of chicken consommé with rice and small fillets of snapper, which was impressive for the pure and strong taste of the consommé. Clearly this was not a consommé made from your average industrially raised farmbird. I don’t know what exactly it was made from, though, and by this point I was too full to care. Before dessert we had a shot of Gyokuro tea, an expensive kind of green tea that differs from the normal green tea in that the leaves are grown under shade or at least shielded from the sun for at least two weeks before harvesting. This gives it a distinctive sweet aroma, while producing a leaf with less catechins (the source of bitterness in teas) than normal green tea. It was made with lukewarm water, and in all made for an interesting experience to drink.

Dessert was steady if not spectacular – a chilled strawberry shortcake served in a martini glass, followed by the house cheesecake, which was almost too fluffy in texture. We then had several cubes of Japanese melon with cracked black pepper on top – which was interesting because the melon was not only incredibly sweet, but had also had something done to it such that it completely disintegrated in your mouth upon contact. The experience was a mixture of eating a solid piece of melon and drinking melon juice, and one that was very interesting indeed.

For the most part, Waku Ghin is spectacular food that will please you if only for one reason – the quality of its ingredients. I take nothing away from the ability of our chefs and waitstaff for the night, but with ingredients this spectacular, you don’t have to do much to them, and Waku Ghin wisely refrains from doing so. But you pay a pretty penny for the luxury of these ingredients - $400++ a person. I personally don’t know they manage it, but to be able to get crab legs from Norway, lobster from Canada, trout from Tasmania, Wagyu from Japan and Blackmore steak from Australia – delivered fresh daily is an incredible accomplishment. (Sure, the environmentalists will have their say, and with good reason too.) The trick that Waku Ghin pulls is therefore not one of cooking, or presentation, although they have those tricks in abundance too. The trick it pulls in rather one of procurement. Chef Tetsuya has undoubtedly built up an impressive network of suppliers who can get him these premium ingredients with the timing and regularity he requires. That, in the end, is what you pay for, at Waku Ghin.

Mobile uploads - food lomo

A room with a view - wasted

Si Chuan Dou Hua
80 Raffles Place
#60-01 UOB Plaza 1
Singapore 048624
Tel: +65 6535 6006


I believe strongly that the design of any place should incorporate its greatest and most distinct assets. In the case of Si Chuan Dou Hua @ UOB Plaza, this is the spectacular view of downtown Singapore. Along with that is the wondrous natural light that it gets, being at the top of one of Singapore’s tallest skyscrapers and – unlike other restaurants closer to the ground – bathed in sunshine that is unfettered by the collection of other buildings around it.

Unfortunately, the designers of this place chose to hide these assets behind a labyrinth of thick walls. Granted, these walls are of dark, sensual teak, and very good to look at in their own right, but one can’t help feel cheated after travelling 60 floors – via two elevators, three if you come from the basement carpark. I expected a grand view, and I didn’t get it. The windows are aesthetically well designed too, but ultimately not enough to let in the light, and inexplicably fitted with blinds and framed with cross sections.

For the crowd that the restaurant targets, though, it might make the most sense. I imagine that the restaurant serves mostly the business lunch crowd – who want to feel cocooned away in private rooms, with only occasional reminders of the heights they occupy. Indeed, the perimeter of the restaurant – the areas with the most access to the view and the outside light – had largely been set aside for these private rooms, leaving the inner chambers of the restaurant with little natural light and without an inkling of the tremendous view that lay beyond those teak walls.


I was at Si Chuan Dou Hua recently for a workshop, after which they fed us with dim sum. I have to say, the dim sum here is surprisingly very competent. One wouldn’t expect a Sichuan restaurant to be well versed in what is a primarily Cantonese genre, but I found out that the chefs (Malaysian) had trained in Hong Kong, and you can’t get much closer to the source than that.


The pastries that I tried – a pancake of chicken floss and a seafood sesame bun – were exquisite, and the pastry itself was first-rate. Working in my line I have begun to develop an appreciation of the possible highs and lows of texture, of crumb structure and of mouthfeel that bakers can accomplish – and I can say that the chefs at Si Chuan Dou Hua know what they are doing.

Because prawns are an integral ingredient in so many dim sum staples, exercising care in the choice and use of this ingredient is paramount. The ones used at Si Chuan Dou Hua are juicy and succulent – especially in an excellent beancurd skin dish – and if they had ever been frozen, I certainly could not tell.


There were a couple of missteps, though. The dan dan noodles came in a sauce which was all heat and no flavour. Spice is well and good if it accentuates, or imparts flavour, but to numb the tongue and not offer a reward with that shock is just cruel. Another disappointment was the house beancurd. I bought a couple of orders to take away, and – conscious of the importance of consuming them “fresh” – sat down to eat it at the earliest opportunity. But the beancurd was not as smooth as some versions I’ve eaten, and also came in a syrup that was not sweet enough by some distance. It was actively disappointing, and for a restaurant that references beancurd in their name, quite a letdown indeed.

So long, for now

Pavilion Restaurant
20 Craig Road
#01-02, Craig Place
Tel: +65 6557 2820

There are very few things I am willing to wake up early on Sunday mornings for. One of them is the practice of yum cha – going to restaurants and eating dim sum. I absolutely love doing this. Sometimes it seems that weekends wind up being busier than weekdays are – with one commitment after the other. Going for a nice leisurely dim sum brunch relaxes the mind and body like nothing else, and it is one of my favourite activities.

I got back from Sri Lanka Sunday morning at 8am after a red-eye, and any other reasonable person would have headed straight home for a deserved forty (or eighty) winks. But Victor had organised a brunch – to be his farewell before he leaves for Taiwan for a year – and it was one I could not miss. I headed home to shower and managed to close my eyes for an hour or so before it was time to head out again.

(Besides, he was buying, and I am cheap like that.)

Victor is one of my trusted foodie friends and eating kakis, and can always be counted on for good judgment when it comes to all things gastronomic. Our tastes are also quite similar in that we have an unabashed love of hawker food, and when it comes to restaurant dining we tend to prefer classical Chinese cuisine, with its soups and roasted meats. His departure may have meant just one less person in my network of scouts, but one who was a significant contributor. His presence will be missed.

He deferred to me for a choice of restaurant, and I suggested Pavilion. I had heard about it a little while ago from an acquaintance – and had wanted to wait till it had been open more than four or five months before trying it. Victor’s farewell came at just about the right time, and he was gracious enough to acquiesce to the suggestion – so off we were!

Pavilion is situated in an area with quite a bit of character, the Duxton/Keong Saik area, just a few doors down from Pasta Brava. It is pretty interesting coming here for dim sum on a Sunday because nothing else in the area – littered with bars and shady KTV pubs – is open at the time. Add that to the fact that it is smack on the fringes of the Central Business District – desolated on Sundays – and you have a restaurant that is bathed in an eerie calm as we approach it.


The inside was just as empty as the streets outside were, and for a minute we did a double-take, wondering if we were at the right place. But the restaurant soon filled up, and through our meal we saw a procession of families, groups of foodie friends – young and old alike – come and go. The clientele was decidedly eclectic, and it had the feel of a restaurant that had not come into its own yet, still finding its own gaggle of regulars.

The food surprised and spluttered in equal measure, alternating between the sublime and the shoddy. We started out really strong, with a cold dish of homemade beancurd with red cherry shrimp and century egg completely knocking me off my feet. I didn’t bother taking a photo of this since it was not much to look at, but one taste and I was reminded not to judge a book by its cover. The beancurd was soft and silky, and topped with a sauce made from century egg – so imagine white slabs covered in a gooey greenish-brown sauce. It didn’t look very appetising, but it was quite stellar.


Compared to the version at Victoria Peak, the siu yoke was at least cubed in sizeable portions, and paired with a decent Dijon. We also had a soup of crab meat and fish maw, which was very well executed. I don’t know why, and it may be just me, but restaurants never put enough pepper and vinegar in their soups. You may think it’s a personal taste thing, but I have never seen anyone drink soup from a Chinese restaurant without adding to taste. We all do it. It’s never seasoned enough when it comes out of the kitchen. Why wouldn’t chefs just adjust, and season the soups a little more? Perhaps it has now become a psychological mind-game, and chefs deliberately under-season the soups because they know diners will adjust it themselves anyway.



The dim sum dishes that we ordered were very impressive. I have to say Pavilion goes all out for some of these. Their siew mai was larger than any other version I’ve seen, and had large pieces of scallop in them – an appreciated twist. In contrast, the liu sha bao was tiny – the size of a golf ball – and despite the custard not being runny enough for my liking, was a very creditable effort. The deep fried spring rolls tasted rather ordinary, but at least didn’t taste oily or greasy.



It is right about here that the meal went downhill. We had ordered a set menu – at $78++ a very reasonably priced dim sum set menu for 4 – and rounding out the dim sum was a trio of “normal” dishes. The steamed kailan with beancurd and mei cai (preserved vegetables) was just passable, saved by the burst of umami that the mei cai gave the dish. The belly-rib “Zheng Jiang” style was battered and deep fried well, but somehow the taste just didn’t agree with me. This could be just a personal thing, for Daselin had many good things to say about the dish.



But what was severely disappointing was the wok-fried hor fun with pork and chye poh. Dry, dreary in colour, and lacking in wok hei, it really almost felt like an amateur had cooked it. There was nothing bringing together the dish, no harmony of flavours, no cohesion. By themselves, these are very cheap ingredients – rice flour noodles, strips of pork, and chye poh – and it really felt like it. I could only take two spoonfuls before I had to push the bowl away. Victor polished his bowl and joked that he didn’t like to waste food, but shook his head in disgust when I offered him the rest of my bowl to finish off.

The hor fun reinforced my innate distrust of set menus. Very often, restaurants will offer their star dishes as part of a set menu, but the line-up will invariably be rounded out with other disappointing dishes, or dishes on which they make the highest margins. At Chinese restaurants, you are almost always better off ordering a la carte.

Dessert was similarly uninspiring – two servings of tofu ice cream topped with a sesame and a lychee syrup. This place seems to really like the soybean, by the way.

Despite all that, I actually rather liked Pavilion. It is nice and cosy, and that first beancurd dish won them enough brownie points to forgive one or two misses. (Not the hor fun though, nothing can excuse that.) The service staff was efficient and attentive, and kind enough to let us stay long after the lunch hours – filling our teacups without asking.

So it is goodbye for now for Victor, and as we eventually trudged off from the restaurant there was a little sadness lingering. But we took comfort in two things: knowing that he would be back, and the fact that he could unearth more good eats in Taiwan. Consider this his overseas scouting mission, then!

Floored by fruit

One of the biggest drags for serious foodies in Singapore is the lack of fresh produce. Singapore grows less than 5% of the food it consumes, and land is so scarce that it is typically allocated to other uses than food production. Even though the agricultural parts of Malaysia may only be a few hours' drive away, something like a Blue Hill would still be next to impossible here.

I was reminded of this during a recent trip to Sri Lanka, where I was served a piece of papaya as part of breakfast. The papaya did not look all that appetising: veiny and overripe in parts while underripe in others, and I almost pushed the plate aside before something in me clicked. It may be the guilt from having too little fibre in my diet, but something made me pick up that spoon and carve myself a bite of that papaya.


Boy am I glad I did, because it was juicy, succulent and sweet beyond belief. I realised just how much eating fruit in Singapore had dulled me to the heights that fresh fruit can scale. The fruit we get in Singapore is almost always grown elsewhere, picked before it is ripe and sprayed with chemicals to retard ripening and kill pests, before it is transported here. I had forgotten just how sweet and wonderful a piece of fruit, picked when ripe and eaten within a day or two – or even hours – could be. This piece of papaya was a timely reminder.

Epic fail

Everyone needs one of those days to remind them that they are not invincible, that there is work yet to be done and hours yet to be put in. I think I know a fair bit about food. I think I can cook. But you wouldn't have known it today.

I can't remember the last time I was so disappointed with a meal that I put out. I over-salted the potatoes. My vinaigrette broke after I had tossed the salad in it. But most disappointing of all, I committed the kitchen's cardinal sin.

I over-cooked the steak.

Steak is one of those things that is pretty forgiving to cook. It's best when kept simple - salt, pepper, a nice pat of butter, grill. If you want to be fancy you can introduce garlic, or rosemary. In any case, you don't have to be Tom Keller to cook steak. The only thing that you absolutely cannot do is to over-cook it. Words cannot express the disappointment at carving through a piece of well-done meat and seeing brown instead of red or pink. Or gnawing through what could have been a tender juicy steak, but instead - for all intents and purposes - became nothing more than a dry piece of rubber.

That's what gets me the most when I eat a well-done steak - whether or not I was the one who cooked it. It's the fact that the cook abused the potential of that piece of meat. There is only so much good beef around, so really, every well done steak is one less steak that could have been done medium rare. So today I wasted three pieces of Australian striploin.

No point making excuses. I shat the bed, plain and simple.

A couple of photos from the meal:

(None of the said steaks, of course - that would just be offensive.)



Probably the only thing to come out right of the entire meal, because it required so little work. Asparagus, wrapped in some Spanish jamon that my sister had brought back from her travels, drizzled in olive oil, salted and peppered.


Salad of arugula, roasted red pepper, portabello mushrooms, red onion and leftover asparagus.

Peace and quiet at the Gallery Hotel

I think it is a sure sign of age that one begins to appreciate property cycles. The Alkaff Mansion recently went under tender after a few unoccupied years – an undignified period in an otherwise glorious history. I remember going to the Alkaff Mansion as late as 2003, as a fresh-faced intern accompanying my bosses for a lavish team dinner. The food was uniformly terrible, but the Old World luxury and decadence that the place evoked was something else indeed. Yet on subsequent trips back to Singapore I learnt that it had closed, and late last year when I found myself in the area I decided to drive by on a whim. The place was deserted and the grounds had fallen into disrepair – leaving the Alkaff Mansion a shell of its former self. I mourned it silently and went on my way again, completely forgetting about this place until recently. The news that the property was put up for tender gave me a good feeling, but also reminded me of my age. Who knows what manner of other establishments I have seen come and go – in the world of slim margins that is the F&B business?

I went to the Gallery Hotel twice recently, both times in search of good food. This place is similarly a wonderful space for dining and drinking outlets, but in danger of being forgotten and made irrelevant. Both times when I was there it was quiet, far removed from the heyday of Mohammad Sultan Road, and seemingly far removed now even from the hustle and bustle of the Clarke Quay area, which is but a stone’s throw away.

To explain, the Gallery Hotel is a boutique hotel located right at the very end of Robertson Quay, on Mohammad Sultan Road. The stretch itself used to be chock-full of bars and pubs, and I recall many a fun night out there; but SARS proved too much of a blow for many of these places to recover from. Consumers fled the place, and so did the businesses not long after. Now, the place is a little less boisterous, and there are more restaurants than watering holes. The foot traffic has gone down significantly, and the area’s businesses are kept afloat, I’m sure, only by its affluent, largely expatriate, residents.

What I’ve always appreciated about the Gallery Hotel is its architecture – something that I haven’t seen it get much public recognition for. The Mondrian-eque windows on the main tower block are probably its most recognizable aspect, but there are many other postmodern characteristics of this building that make it very distinctive. The building – if you can call it that – is really a collage of different building forms. There is a main tower block, and various incongruous “satellite” building forms attached to it, each with unique shapes and sizes. Chief among these “satellites” are three cylindrical structures fronting the road – each containing F&B outlets. The one inconvenience that this “disassembly” creates manifests itself if and when you are going to the Gallery Hotel and looking for a restaurant for the first time. Nothing is intuitive – you can’t even follow the numbering patterns of the outlets – and of course the building forms are so surprising that you don’t expect to find dining outlets in some of them.

But to the hotel’s credit there is a lot of signage, and if you are observant enough you will not even need to stop and ask for directions. And once you get to the place you are going to, the calm and quiet that the whole compound exudes is enough to make you want to kick your shoes off and settle in with a nice warm mug of tea.

Satsuma Shochu Dining Bar

Satsuma is located in one of those three cylindrical structures, and is a Japanese place famous for its collection of Japanese shochu – liquor typically distilled from sweet potatoes. The word on the street was that the food was very good too; so when I lost a bet to Kevin recently and had to buy him dinner, I exercised my option to choose the place and took the opportunity to try Satsuma out.

I arrived first, and had a few minutes to settle down with a nice mug of citrus tea and check out the surroundings. The teak paneling with sakura motifs may be stereotypical, but it just looks so damn good in the warm lighting that you forgive them that much. I assume this place is frequented by Japanese expatriates or tourists (and indeed we did see several groups of them), because the waitstaff greet you in Japanese, and it seemed that most of them at least spoke a little bit of the language.

The one thing that you can be assured of going to a Japanese restaurant, and especially one that is actually frequented by Japanese, is that the service is going to be good. Indeed, it is a far cry from the normal service standards you get elsewhere in Singapore. The people who waited on us were warm, patient, and friendly – which, as shocking as it may sound, is a lot to ask for in Singapore. I think there are a few things to look out for in restaurant service. Most basic of all is functional competence – whether someone can bring the food to your table, refill your water, and do all the basic tasks involved in waiting tables. Second of all is their attitude – you always want the friendly ones, not the ones who look as if they would rather be somewhere else, and definitely not the angry ones. The best of the best also have technical competence – they know enough about the food and the wine to make informed recommendations. And underlying all of that is their passion – whether they have the passion for food and the passion to do a good job and ensure you have a great night out. I have met people with all four characteristics, but usually two or three is good enough. In Singapore even the functional competence is not a sure thing, and anything beyond that is a tremendous bonus.

The food at Satsuma is pretty good too. We stuck with the sumiyaki – basically meat on a stick, grilled over charcoal. This place compares well with Kazu in Cuppage Plaza, but the interesting thing is that the sumiyaki in Kazu was a lot smokier and you could taste the char. Satsuma’s sumiyaki is a little more refined and visually more pleasing. I’m not saying one is better than the other, however, just that they are different and that I enjoyed both. I was impressed that they could ask for our doneness preference for the steak skewers (medium-rare), and even more impressed when they actually delivered on their promise. It must be difficult – or if not difficult must take some skill at least – to ascertain perfectly the doneness of tiny squares of meat on a stick which are being held over a charcoal flame. Because the squares are so small, and the proximity to the flame so close, the room for error is a lot greater – so kudos is definitely due the kitchen staff at Satsuma. Since we are Asian we also ordered some rice dishes, but neither the garlic fried rice or the curry rice with pork belly was very outstanding. I think the trick here is to just stick to the skewers – most of which were very good – and avoid the rest of the stuff that is on the menu.

Sapporo Ramen Miharu

The Japanese people’s love of ramen has been well-documented and has served as fodder for popular culture – with good reason, too, for there is nothing like a bowl of noodles and hot soup in a harsh winter. This love of ramen has been exported worldwide (through lesser “instant” variants of the dish), but these instant noodles do no justice to the quality and quantity of the many Japanese regional variations of ramen. Indeed, very few places outside of Japan can truly claim to do so, for several reasons. Japanese flour is typically milled to a higher quality than others (lower ash content, etc); and their water is generally softer than that which can be found in other countries. This has positive impacts on, respectively, their quality of their noodle products, and the flavour of their broths.

Miharu was recommended to me by ML, who I didn’t know very well at the time she made the recommendation. (I still do not know her very well.) Typically I am wary of following up on the recommendations of strangers, for not everyone has the same standards of quality. (That’s just a nice way of saying that I am a snob.) But you have to admit that clearly the recommendations of people whom you are confident know and appreciate their food – would carry more weight than someone who you barely know, someone you may not even have broken bread with. Yet there was something about the way ML recommended this place that made me put it on my list of places to try. She was insistent, yet not overbearing, and the way she described what she appreciated about Miharu as opposed to some other places made me think that at the very least, she knew what she was talking about.

So the other day when I again found myself in the vicinity of the Gallery Hotel, I decided to give Miharu a shot. Miharu imports their noodles (Nishiyama brand noodles from Hokkaido), and several other ingredients from Japan, and so in that respect is considered quite “authentic”. But I have long since realized that even the same ingredients cooked in different locations can produce vastly different dishes, especially in Singapore, with our temperature and humidity. Besides, I have never been to Hokkaido, so what would I have to compare Miharu against?

What I could say, though, is that Miharu is good without being spectacular. The noodles had good texture, but retained a slight waxy taste from the alkali salts, which may not have been washed out thoroughly. The broth that I tried (tonkatsu tonshio – pork-based broth with salt) had good flavour, but not enough spice for me, and I regretted not picking the chili miso broth. The strip of pork loin (char siew) and the hard boiled egg were both ordinary at best.


What I can’t decide on – is how I feel about the addition of corn as a topping. My grandmother used to do this on the first day of Chinese New Year (when she kept vegetarian) – in effect using corn to substitute pork bones as a flavour enhancer for stock. It produced a sweet stock vastly inferior to anything you can get with animal products. Now, it may not be bad if it did not have to suffer this comparison, but in my mind I always compared the corn-based broth that my grandmother made – with the other broths that she made the other days of the year, with pork bones or chicken bones or dried scallops. At Miharu they add corn as a topping, which I didn’t like; but given my childhood I doubt I can call that a fair or objective indictment.

While I cannot say that I did not enjoy my experience at Miharu, I have to be honest and say that it was quite mediocre. Unfortunately, that means that ML – who I hope is not reading this – is henceforth struck off the list of people worthy of making recommendations.

Of innovation

Restaurant Kin Kin
40 Jalan Dewan Sultan Sulaiman 1,
(Off Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman)
Kuala Lumpur

So much of the productivity in the culinary world comes through imitation. Chefs the world over are continually learning from the dishes and techniques of other chefs, or other cuisines. To be sure, specific recipes and formulations are closely guarded, but I can’t think of many other enterprises where the sharing of intellectual property is as unfettered (and as un-priced or unregulated). This imitation is most prevalent in Asian hawker fare, where successful dishes are reverse-engineered and replicated until they become staples of the food scene. I can think of a few examples, like cereal prawns and Marmite pork ribs.

So it is a momentous occasion when that rare innovation occurs in the hawker scene, when someone creates a new dish that is quite unlike any other (and in the process spawning his or her own wave of imitators). A recent trip to KL – a veritable mecca for hawker fare – yielded just such a discovery: chili pan mee (辣椒板面) at Restaurant Kin Kin.

A group of us made the drive up to KL over the long weekend, and tried this place on the recommendation of a couple of locals who were serious foodies. Typically, when word-of-mouth recommendations are passed between foodies – it’s hard to avoid drawing comparisons. These comparisons can be drawn across cuisines (“It’s like a Chinese version of spaghetti bolognaise.”), across dishes (“It’s a mix of Hokkien noodles and char kway teow.”) or in reference to other versions of the same dish (“It’s similar to the one in MacPherson, but they use more sweet sauce for this one.”). However, the person who recommended this place to us was at a loss for comparisons. “I don’t know how to describe it to you”, he said, “Just try it – it’s a life-changing experience.”

So we packed ourselves into two taxis and ventured forth for a late Saturday lunch. Kin Kin is located in one of the last places you would expect to find good food – one in a row of shophouses ranging from auto shops to goodness knows what else, on a sleepy side street off the main drag in the Chow Kit area. As it was a Saturday, most of the other shops along the stretch were closed, and the only hustle of human activity emanated from Kin Kin, making it easy to locate. It was about 3pm in the afternoon – well after normal lunch hours – but the place was still crowded. Surely a good sign.

Kin Kin is a dusty, humid store in a dusty, humid city (the lack of ventilation becomes crucial once you realise that spice – the kind of sweat-inducing, lip-numbing spice – is what makes their signature dish so good). There really isn’t anything you can say about its décor, apart from the fact that the ceramic wall tiles are adorned with messages hand-written in permanent marker. These messages range from proclamations that there are no other (legitimate) branches, to warnings not to even attempt to steal the house-made chili paste. Curiously enough, they are written in a faltering English, which in itself is sometimes hilarious, but must also be taken to mean that this place enjoys a significant tourist clientele (or that tourists are more likely to make off with the chili paste).

When I say that the chili pan mee is a dish unlike any other, I might be exaggerating slightly. 板面, loosely translated as “board noodles” since they refer to flat flour noodles (like fettucine), has come to represent another dish that is typically served in soup, together with minced meat, mushrooms and deep-fried anchovies (ikan bilis). The version at Kin Kin does come with all those ingredients – but is served dry, with the addition of a poached egg on top. The piece de resistance, however, is the loose paste of chili flakes that is placed on each table. What you are supposed to do is to add however much chili you can handle to your bowl, then mix it together with the noodles and other ingredients. The runny yolk of the poached egg helps to incorporate everything, and the end result is something that looks like spaghetti bolognaise.


It tastes completely different, though. The best part of Kin Kin’s chili pan mee, in my opinion, is the noodles. Springy to the bite and cooked to perfection, they belie the fact that all that went into their creation was probably just eggs, flour and water. The other star is, of course, the chili paste. From the dark intense colour of the paste, I expected an overpowering flavour. What I got was something just shy of that – something that still allowed for the subtle tastes of the other ingredients to shine through without overpowering them. Yet the chili still had an intense flavour of its own, a sort of umami that defied description.

There are many things you have to put up with if you want to eat at Kin Kin, where the balance of power is most decidedly not with the customer. You have to wait – a combination of it being always crowded and the production process being slow – up to 30 or 40 minutes for your food. Service is almost non-existent and the staff operate on their own terms – meaning that they will get to you when they can and want to. Then there are the spartan and stuffy surroundings, which do not exactly inspire confidence in their hygiene levels. But these failings, which might be death blows for any other establishment, are only minor inconveniences to be suffered willingly here at Kin Kin. The quality of their product (and the reasonableness of their price) makes everything worthwhile.

On the drive back Laura remarked that after trying this, and other hawker specialties during the trip – she remained unconvinced that KL had the variety of hawker fare to challenge, say, Taiwan. She pointed to a greater variety of foods and snacks in Taiwan, and a greater variety of treatments, as evidence of a more innovative food culture. She may be right, or her allegiances may be due to the fact that she is from there; and I personally haven’t eaten enough in Taiwan to speak intelligently on the subject. Either way I think we can agree to celebrate innovation when we see it, and Kin Kin is certainly a good example.

Gobble gobble

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Singapore so I had to wait till the Christmas period before making a turkey. Here it is right out of the oven.

Photos from Golden Peony

I had brought my camera to Golden Peony the last time but realised - just as I pulled it out of its bag - that I had forgotten to charge the battery. The only way to remedy that? Go back.

The amuse-bouche. Wonderful colour, and a perfect way to start the meal.


These were absolutely excellent - deep fried spring rolls with a wild mushroom and winter vegetable filling. The skin for the spring rolls was thicker than you normally get them, and was fried to perfection - in that the exterior was crisped while the interior retained wonderful texture.


Wontons with a ginger puree topping.


The roasted meats platter - comprising siu yoke, char siew, soy sauce chicken and smoked duck with mango.


House-made noodles in superior stock, with conpoy and sea perch.


Stir-fried noodles in sort of a black bean sauce, if I remember correctly, with tiger prawn.



For some reason this trip back did not hit the heights of my previous visit, but everything was still very, very good. We splurged on tea as well, and got a very fragrant 黄金桂花茶. Good tea is very important in Chinese fine dining, I feel.

Oldie but goodie

I have written about it before so I will spare everyone the gory details, but I revisited the Blue Duck Tavern on my recent trip back to DC, and once again had a delightful experience there. The only exception was the terrible wines that we had to drink, but that might have been more a consequence of a limited budget. The first one we ordered, a 2007 Morgone from Marcel Lapierre, was absolutely undrinkable. We had to send it back, which Ty did with a wonderful touch of class. We left it to the waiter to pick a replacement for us, which was only marginally better.

You could argue that it is the sommelier's responsibility to make sure all the wines on the list are enjoyable - even the cheap ones - but hey, you can't please everyone.

This was a special for the day - advertised as a New Orleans gumbo with duck breast. Not much of a gumbo, and not enough spice, but still very delicious. The best part about the Blue Duck Tavern is that everything is brought to the table in these serving dishes, so it is very easy to share (and steal) food.


I regretted that my simple iPhone camera could not capture the true magnificence of the beef short ribs.


When in Rome, right? I was only in that part of town for so long, and I had to eat crabcakes. These were served on a bed of fennel, which could have been cooked a little longer but was quite tasty nonetheless.


Everything here is simple and heartwarmingly good. No fuss, no muss, no complications and/or avant-gardism. Just food done tavern style, done well and presented with pride. It is one of my favourite places in DC for lunch, not least of all because of the beautiful light it gets and the stunning open kitchen.

Project Fragrant Harbour, part II

Tung Po Seafood Restaurant
2/F, 99 Java Road
Java Road Municipal Services Building
North Point
Tel: +852 2880 9399

I suppose every country has its own version of comfort food – and our equivalent of tze char cuisine would be the dai pai dong fare in Hong Kong. The traditional dai pai dong referred to the open-air food stalls operating on sidewalks, with foldable chairs and tables set up around them – but there are precious few of those left, and dai pai dong is now used to refer to any generic hawker-type setting or food. One of the best places we went for this type of cuisine in Hong Kong was Tung Po Seafood Restaurant.

The word “restaurant” is quite a misnomer, for Tung Po is actually just one of many kitchens set up directly above a wet market. It therefore takes up one of many sections of tables and chairs set up on the second floor of the Java Rd Municipal Services Building, in North Point. This was one of Anthony Bourdain’s stops during the Hong Kong leg of his No Reservations TV show. Now I have never tasted Anthony Bourdain’s cooking, but I saw a segment once pitting him against Eric Ripert in a battle of “sell-out” celebrity chefs. The segment threw them into the heat of the bistro kitchen on the premise that each of them – caught up in their celebrity – had forgotten how to handle the frenzy that is the kitchen. Cut to two hours later, and Bourdain is sweating like a pig, backed up on his orders, and in desperate need of a break and a cigarette. Yet Ripert is still sailing along, the look on his face serene and placid, still churning out steaks to order. Ever since then I have taken on a (probably misguided) dim view of Tony Bourdain, and of course that isn’t helped by the immense jealousy I feel at the places he gets to go to and things he gets to eat.

Nevertheless, Daselin reaffirmed that this place was worth going to, and so we orchestrated an outing one night. Now, there is almost nothing you can say to romanticise the surroundings, unless you are a true-blue heartland Hong Konger. Yet there is something so comfortable about the spartan setup, the noise levels, and the hustle and bustle – that it just makes you want to eat, and eat a lot. Tung Po may occupy humble settings, and it is often loud and boisterous; but it is always a great atmosphere to enjoy great wok-fired food.


One of the greatest things about this place was that they served beer in pre-chilled bowls that they called 战斗碗 (Bowls of Battle). My hypothesis is that it is easy to get drunk this way, because you have no concept of how much liquid is in a bowl. When you drink pints of beer, you know roughly how many you can have before you need to take it easy (too many). But when you are drinking from bowls, you have no such advance knowledge, and so you just keep drinking. Coupled with the fact that the friendly beer-girls top you off incessantly, it is a recipe either for a great night, or for disaster – whatever your point of view.

The food at Tung Po cannot be considered traditional Cantonese food – although there are the staples on the menu. According to the segment on No Reservations, the chef-owner worked in a hotel restaurant before taking over Tung Po from his father, and has since created dishes unique to his palate that have been roaring successes. There are at least two with cosmopolitan influences – a squid ink pasta dish with cuttlefish balls, and deep-fried pork knuckle. Both of these were executed with Cantonese influences, and were very good. I loved the squid ink but thought it needed a little more pepper to be a truly spectacular and satisfying dish, while the pork knuckle was good without being great.



Of course no meal is complete without rice, and Daselin recommended the rice steamed in lotus leaf, that she had tried on an earlier visit. This was done rather well given the large portion size, and we attacked it with gusto.


I love bamboo clams, and these were excellent, with spice and just enough heft. The clams were also fresh and meaty, and it spoke volumes that this was the first dish to be finished.


Tung Po was relatively cheap too, since we did not have any of the big-ticket items like crab or steamed fresh fish. We trooped away for dessert at a nearby stall, feeling like happy campers, and thoroughly prepared for the rest of the night. (It turns out that we were in no way prepared, but that is another story, for another forum.)

Project Fragrant Harbour, part I

I spent the last few days in Hong Kong, and I must confess that at no point through the entire trip did I ever feel anything close to hunger. The entire trip was a whirlwind of eating, drinking and karaoke. It was absolute heaven for someone as enamoured with Cantonese cuisine as myself, and I came back in severe need of sleep and exercise.

My first stop after dropping my bag off at the hotel was a shop called Kau Kee (九记) - famous for its beef brisket noodles. I had heard much about this place, most of it good, and it was one of the must-visits of my trip. I had heard about the long lines, especially during mealtimes on weekends, and so I planned on stealing a march on everyone else by arriving in the mid-afternoon on a Monday. Daselin was lazing at home after a night of drinking, and everyone else was in the office, so I decided to check it out on my own.

Kau Kee is a tiny place that seats maybe about 30 to 40, and according to my sources frequently has just as many people waiting outside for a seat. Thankfully, there was no queue when I got there, and I was ushered in with brusque efficiency. There is really only one thing to order - the beef brisket noodles - in several variations. You can get it in the clear beef broth, or a curry broth; and you have a choice of hor fun (thin wide rice noodles), meen (flat egg noodles) or mai fun (vermicelli). I went for the former in the broth.


Perhaps I have not experienced true greatness where beef brisket noodles are concerned, for to me this must have been as good as it gets. At first sight it was very much less than impressive, and the small size of the bowl gave me pause. But the brisket was well-marbled and chewy, with a taste of beef that was just strong enough. The noodles were cooked well and absorbed the flavour of the broth. The broth, though, was the true star of the show. Clear, with a good consistency and the kind of flavour that can only come about with time - it was amazing even in 30-degree heat. God only knows how much more enjoyable this must be in the winter.


The other must-try at Kau Kee is the house-made chili sauce. I feel sorry for those who do not eat spicy food because adding this to the broth is taking it to another level taste-wise and colour-wise. The chili had a sour, spicy tang that complemented the sweetness of the broth perfectly. I liked this place so much that I went back again the next day, one of only two places in Hong Kong that I visited twice. The second time around I tried the curry version, which was sadly not as impressive, but I made up for the disappointment by ordering a bowl of the broth.

The other place in Hong Kong that I visited twice was Tai Cheong bakery for their egg tarts. My love of egg tarts is well documented (and well-evidenced in my physique), but this egg tart completely blew my mind. The pastry was not flaky, but rather solid and tasted like sweetbread. The fat-to-flour ratio was off the charts. Even though I don't bake much, I knew that shortcrust pastry was half fat to flour, and Shanaz had told me once that the best puff pastry in France had a 3.5:4 fat to flour ratio. But someone had told me that there was more fat than flour in the Tai Cheong pastry, which completely astounded me, especially since not all of the fat is butter (they use lard as well). It didn't taste as sinful as I make it out to be, but good lord it was delicious. The custard was just runny enough to be able to slurp down, yet not too runny that you made a mess while eating it. I bought one and ate it as I walked down the streets of Central and got myself completely and utterly lost since I stopped paying attention to anything other than the egg tart.


Next up on the list was a restaurant recommended by Camille (and Camille's dad), and corroborated by a Hong Konger I'd met the weekend before my trip. Camille promised a melt-in-your-mouth char siew, and honestly she had had me at "melt", so Eugene and I made the pilgrimage to Causeway Bay to try this restaurant - called Sai Yuen.


The cut of meat usually used for char siew is pork shoulder, which tends to be leaner and results in a chewier dish; quite different from siu yoke, which uses pork belly, and is a lot fattier. At Sai Yuen, they use a much fattier cut of meat for their char siew - either the belly or the tenderloin - which is unorthodox but results in a very sinful version of the dish. It was good without being great, and in comparison with the version at Overseas Restoran in KL, it was a shade inferior.

Personally I prefer my char siew not too fatty (but not too lean as well!) Some of my favourite versions of char siew use the part of the pig between the shoulder and the belly - the pig's underarm, if you will. This is typically called 不见天 char siew (directly translated as char siew that never sees the heavens), since it is from a part of the pig that never sees the light of day. There is a stall in Tiong Bahru market which does this very well.

Victor also dragged me to a nondescript restaurant in Wanchai called Che's Cantonese (车氏) because he had had an amazing version of 流沙包 (custard cream buns) there. These are steamed buns with a runny custard filling of egg yolk, butter and cream, to be differentiated from a closely related food item, 奶黄包 (custard buns), which have a solid custard filling. Curiously enough, I have not seen the former made much outside of Hong Kong, while the latter has had more success at export. Whatever the case, both of them are mini heart attacks and should be consumed in moderation.


Victor made an elaborate act out of eating these - from the initial deep breath to draw in the smell of the freshly steamed buns, through the delicate pulling apart of the bun to reveal a runny yellow mess seeping out, to slurping down the creamy custard while nibbling on the doughy goodness of the buns. The whole scene took close to four minutes. I for one, did not have his patience, and finished the bun in a matter of bites. He convinced me to try it his way the next time round, but still I was less than impressed. It was good, that was certain, but nowhere as life-changing as Victor had made it out to be.


What was the true star at Che's was the crispy chicken (脆皮鸡). I have always loved this technique of preparing meats (duck, goose, chicken) - where the the heat is turned up for the last part of cooking the bird, to crisp the skin. Beforehand, the skin is also scored and salted heavily. Even so, it is a feat of skill to keep the meat cooked just right and still moist, while the skin is broiled to a crackling crisp. Even more difficult is ensuring that the excessive salting of the skin does not make it inedible. The version at Che's had a thin, crispy skin which you could break off by hand, and yet the meat was still tender and just cooked through enough. As a reasonably skilled home cook there are many things that I won't eat when eating out, especially if I thought that I was perfectly capable of making the dish as well if not better. This was one of those times where I just crumpled in my seat thinking, well eff that, I'm not going to be able to make this myself at home, so it's a good thing I can pay someone to make it for me.