DO NOT PATRONISE

This is a diary of hate.




OK, maybe I exaggerate.

I admit that I am quite a fussy eater, and quick to judge whenever food, service – or the general quality of the restaurants I go to – is sub-par. If a place fails to impress, rarely do I give it a second chance. Of course, this isn’t a cast-iron rule. I was far from moved the first time I visited Westend Bistro in DC, but regrettably went back, seduced by the name of Eric Ripert in the window. The second trip confirmed just how poor it was.

But I struggle to think of another eating establishment that I have so thoroughly detested, and yet visited so often, than the in-house restaurant at the club I go to. Even the Ratty had its moments, but I dare say that I have never had an enjoyable meal at Manzhu Café at the Chinese Swimming Club. And yet I go back.

Let me explain. The Chinese Swimming Club is a club in Katong, where my parents used to take my siblings and me when we were kids. I learnt to swim there, and we spent many Sunday mornings horsing around in the pool. Afterwards we would go to the in-house café and I remember that the fried chicken wings were absolutely spectacular. Perhaps their quality has been garnished slightly by my hazy memory, but no matter, it is the sentiment that counts.

Today, I retain my membership at the Chinese Swimming Club, which has changed dramatically over the years – and occasionally visit the gym there whenever the guilt from pigging out hits me. The kicker is that there is a monthly food and beverage levy, or quota you have to use each month – which gets forfeited otherwise. Pretty standard practice. But the only place you can use this credit is at the Manzhu Café, quite possibly the poorest excuse for a restaurant I have ever been in.

The Manzhu Café actually has a lot it could work with. Soaring ceilings and tall sheathes of glass for walls; it looks out at the swimming pools and, further still, at the low-rise skyline of the Mountbatten area, which is tranquillity typified. It seats at its maximum about 100, or 120, but I have never seen it that packed, and at most I have only ever seen it half-full.

The food, I should say upfront, is very mediocre. What pisses me off is that I cannot even say it is downright bad. That would actually make me more satisfied, to condemn it thus. But the problem is that it is not terrible, but just middling in every way, as if it were concocted to satisfy the greatest number of people at the lowest common denominator – and as a result truly gratifies nobody.

But what irks me the most about the Manzhu Café is the horrendous quality of service. There isn’t a hostess, so you have to seat yourself once you make your way in. This is not actually a big deal (and is actually par for the course at many places), but it is what happens after that that is infuriating. You would think that a restaurant would train its staff to attend to people that walk in, if not immediately, then pretty soon after they do. But I once walked in, sat in my seat for ten minutes, got up to get myself a menu from the station, and sat undisturbed for a further ten minutes. The waitstaff at the Manzhu Café do know how to do their jobs. They can bus tables, they can serve food, they are reasonably efficient at taking orders. These things - they can do. But it doesn't occur to them to do it, so you have to ask them to do it, which sort of defeats the ideal of service. I think that nobody has ever really connected all the dots for them, and shown them the different steps, different things to be done once a customer steps in, once he is seated, once his food comes, and so forth. First, it doesn't occur to them that customers want water when they sit down. But then once they have asked for it, and received it, it doesn't occur to the waitstaff to check back after a certain time to refill the glass. I do not know if it is innate in the staff that they hire, or a consequence of the training they go through, but there seems to be a complete lack of proaction in all of them. I have seen a whole gaggle of waiters chatting at the station – with the manager, even – while waters go unfilled and empty plates go uncleared. Even if there was nothing to do (which, in a restaurant, is a rare occurrence), public skiving by waitstaff is absolutely unacceptable. The dining experience is a jigsaw, with many different parts, some of which are causal of others, some of which necessitate others. It is only the very best restaurants who succeed at piecing this jigsaw together perfectly for its customers, so that they do not have to themselves.

(There is one lady, an older Eurasian-looking lady, who is the sole exception to all I have described – the one ray of sunshine in the Manzhu Café. She always has a smile for everyone and is the most conscientious of the lot. I try to sit in her section when I can, but it is not always possible.)

The sad thing is that I am forced to go there, otherwise I forfeit a sum of money each month. It is not the amount, but the principle of the matter that counts. And what pisses me off even further is the knowledge that the Manzhu Café is effectively being subsidised – by the F&B levies from all the members of Chinese Swimming Club. If this place were running on its own merit, without customers who were obliged to patronise it each month – it would close down in a heartbeat. I have no doubt of that.

So I continue to visit the Manzhu Café. The first few times going back I still held out hope that things would change, that the previous times were aberrations. Each time I was disappointed, or driven mad by something. And nothing tastes good when you are angry. At this point I do not know what I would do if the service suddenly improved. Now, each time I go back, I almost physically manhandle the first person I see upon walking in – and state in no unclear terms that I would like a menu and a glass of water, please. You have to. Otherwise you could be there for a while.

For some reason I thought that writing all this down would lessen my hate of the Manzhu Café.

I was wrong.

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.

Top Secret

Joo Heng Restaurant
360 Joo Chiat Road
Tel: +65 6345 1503

It is hard for me to explain, to anyone who has not lived in Asia, what tze char is. It is not a cuisine, nor is it a technique. There are no rules, recipes, or common ingredients (well, if you don’t count oyster sauce). It can be Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew in origin, or can draw upon a host of other influences. Upon reflection it is even more difficult for me to pinpoint what makes good tze char. Is it the unmistakable char and texture of food that is cooked at impossibly high heat? Is it the liberal use of soy and oyster sauce, in dishes that are both sweet and salty at the same time? No one really knows. But most people in Singapore know good tze char when they eat it, and I am no exception.

First, a primer. Tze Char (煮炒) is loosely translated as “stir-fry”, and to me refers to wok-cooked food that can be found in any manner of establishment in Singapore: from the lowly hawker stall to the larger places that almost approximate restaurants. These mid to larger places typically serve a variety of dishes, sometimes including big-ticket seafood items like crab and lobster. Someone once remarked to me that the true test of a tze char place is its fried rice, which is true to a certain extent. I have found the quality of the fried rice to be a consistent barometer of the quality of the food at any given tze char establishment, and since almost every tze char place serves fried rice in some form it is a easy comparison.

On my return from the States I set about trying to rediscover all the good tze char places in Singapore. Sin Hoi San, a perennial favourite, was still decent to good (and still expensive). My dad used to take us to this one stall, Keng Kee, in the Amoy St hawker centre that was his favourite, but their star has long since dimmed. There were many options, but no true contenders. I despaired, for every Singaporean needs a go-to place for comfort food. And then, I found mine.

My mother recommended Joo Heng to me warily, as if once hooked on it I would forsake her own home-cooked food. She herself had been to dinner there with her colleagues, and had come back with only good things to say. Given that the restaurant has been around for a long while, I wondered aloud why I had never heard of it, and expressed my many doubts in no uncertain terms. I must say that I no longer have any.

The excellence of Joo Heng makes me mad that I had not experienced it while growing up, and cannot therefore “lay claim” to the place. For it is one of those places that families go to with unwavering dedication and in ritualistic fashion, and generations have been weaned on their food. Yet I was doomed to be a late convert, to have my eyes opened only in adulthood.

Joo Heng is located along Joo Chiat Road, a stretch littered with KTV pubs and other less-than-savoury establishments. It is obvious that the place has expanded from its original size, for it is made up of two storefronts – one of which looks much newer than the other. I have tried eating on both sides, and I must say that eating on the older side somehow makes the food taste better.

I hesitate to recommend any dishes at Joo Heng, for while they are not all stellar there are too many of the the good ones to list. The must tries include the claypot tofu, the sesame oil chicken, and the fish-head steamboat. I think its real strength lies in the wok hei of the food. Just from the aroma alone you can tell that it has been cooked at high heat, and the efficacy of the restaurant’s runners means that the food always reaches your table piping hot. A warning: do let your food rest a little before attacking it. The taste is unmistakable – flavours are melded together like they only can at high heat; ingredients are flash-fried for a crispy exterior and succulent, tender interiors. A great example would be their omelette dishes – where they fry up eggs with savoury ingredients of your choosing: crabmeat, prawns, etc. My personal favourite is the omelette with whitebait. Because it is cooked at high heat, the edges of the omelette are crisped perfectly, and the inside is just the right side of runny. The saltiness of whitebait is a perfect complement to the egg. I order this as an appetiser every time.

So now, I am hooked. After I discovered the place I went around asking my foodie friends if they had heard of it, and invariably they all did. Those bastards just conveniently forgot to tell me about it. Apparently this is one of those places that everyone makes an effort to keep on the down-low, the secret neighbourhood favourite that everyone is possessive of. Writing this blog entry may defeat that aim (although I doubt it, given the minimal readership of this blog), but I felt I had to share.

Turning Japanese

Kazu Sumi-yaki
5 Koek Road
#04-05 Cuppage Plaza
Tel: +65 6734 2492

I will be the first to admit that I have a weak knowledge of Japanese cuisine, which is perhaps a gap in my culinary and gastronomic understanding. One always reads about top chefs going ga-ga over Japanese food and I have never fully comprehended why. I suppose Japanese cuisine must be taken in context – that is, you have to eat it in the right surroundings and go through all the right rituals (preferably in the company of a beautiful Japanese woman, of course). It doesn’t help that I have never had a transcendental Japanese culinary experience, or that even though I feel full at the time of eating it, I am invariably hungry again after two hours.

I met Winnie for dinner the other night and we (or rather I) decided to try out Kazu in Cuppage Plaza. One of the benefits of being such a snobby pain-in-the-ass about food is that people – at least the ones who love me – always let me choose the restaurant. However, it must be said that the weight of expectation can also be a curse sometimes. In any case, Winnie had also heard good things about this establishment, and she was quick to agree to the choice.

Cuppage Plaza is a rarity along Orchard Road: it is a relatively old shopping mall that is a far cry from the brisk, crowded havens of mass consumption that flank it. The upper floors are dominated by Japanese karaoke pubs, massage parlours, dance studios and Japanese restaurants – things you don’t often see in the cut-throat world of retail that is Singapore’s premier shopping district. For some reason the Japanese expatriate community has made Cuppage Plaza its own, and there are many businesses catered to the Japanese population in Singapore. It is never crowded, and walking from the always bustling Centrepoint into Cuppage Plaza always feels sort of like stepping into an oasis of calm. There are no words to describe why this is the case.

Kazu Sumiyaki, then, is a tiny restaurant on the fourth floor of Cuppage Plaza that serves sumiyaki – Japanese barbeque – basically skewers of meat and offal grilled over an intense charcoal flame. Despite its popularity among both Japanese expatriates and Singaporean locals it has never expanded, and so reservations on a weekend are a necessity. The place itself is small, and seems to have been built for the Japanese. By that I mean to say that the chairs and tables are not only small but also arranged in very close proximity to one another. For people like me who like to shift 45 degrees in my chair and sprawl out at the end of the meal, it is an absolute nightmare.

Compared with the American way of eating, which emphasises the protein in a single large portion, Japanese dining is markedly different. Starch is the staple – be it rice or noodles or something or other – and it is then supplemented by small portions of many different foods from all food groups. I read a study once saying that the Japanese consume 30 different foods on average in a single day. This, then, might be one of the keys to what is possibly the healthiest cuisine on earth – variety in minimalist portions. (That, and the low fat, high salt content and predominance of seafood.)

Winnie and I ordered some rice, and then set about picking as many different skewers of unidentified things as possible. The menu is very extensive at Kazu, and is dominated by meats – chicken, beef, pork. I had been exhorted to try the Kurobuta pork belly, and that was the first thing I asked for. Unfortunately Winnie is allergic to shellfish, and doesn’t eat liver, gizzards or hearts, so those were off the table (pardon the pun), out of respect to her. She did, however, make an exception and agreed to try the foie gras.

As the skewers started arriving fast and furious, it became a near impossibility to try and remember which was which, and we concentrated on getting as much into our mouths as quickly as possible. The foie gras was a major disappointment, nowhere as fatty as French foie, and only a fraction of its deliciousness. The Kurobuta pork belly on the other hand was nice and fatty, but needed a little more salt. Enoki mushrooms wrapped in beef were delicious, as was crispy chicken skin. The quails’ eggs were also done wonderfully, as was a dish of halved eggplant roasted, topped with ground pork and drizzled with a black bean tare sauce. Oysters wrapped in bacon were sheer decadence, and the beef tongue that I had all to myself was stellar as well. One of the surprises of the night was a recommendation by our waitress – mochi wrapped in bacon. Mochi is a Japanese glutinous rice cake typically eaten for dessert, but here it was light and impossibly fluffy, its sweetness underlined by the saltiness of the bacon. It only served to prove what I had known all along – that you can add bacon to anything and have it be delicious.

Kazu made me think about why I don’t eat Japanese food that often (although I remembered why when the bill came). But all glibness aside, the sheer variety of the foods we sampled was a delight in and of itself. It was like appetiser heaven. The waitstaff were friendly and the food came quickly and it did not stop. I could have sat there all night but it soon came time to go and I sighed as I dragged myself up off the chair. That, I suppose, is vindication enough of a good restaurant.

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.

Surprise, surprise

Café Strindberg
Pohjoisesplanadi 33,
Helsinki 00100, Finland
Tel: +358 9681 2030

I must admit that it has been a long while since I have been surprised by a restaurant. These days, I rarely go out to eat without a thorough consideration of the options available to me, accompanied by extensive consultations and online research on the worthy candidates. I can’t remember the last time I just popped into a restaurant, in the hopes that it would be good. On the one hand, life is too short for mediocre meals, so any advance preparation and an element of discrimination must be worth it – right? On the other, this also means that by the time I actually set foot in a restaurant, I would have at least some inkling of what the restaurant was all about – who the chef was, what kind of food it served, what it was known for. For better or for worse, this takes the magic of unexpected surprises out of the dining experience.

I was in Finland recently for work, and our meeting counterparts had suggested a place close by their offices for a working lunch. In my mind I had written this meal off – expecting a simple sandwich place and a quick, hurried meal interrupted by the taking of notes and the back-and-forth of negotiations and explanations. As such, I didn’t bother researching the restaurant, and when I got there I had close to zero expectations of the place. It turns out that I had severely underestimated the Finnish.

Café Strindberg is part of the Kamp Galleria, an upscale shopping complex in the heart of Helsinki. It is on a corner right off the Esplanad – one of Helsinki’s major pedestrian and traffic thoroughfares – and at first sight looked extremely promising. The ground floor is a café in the truest sense – with a deli and pastry counter, tables and chairs scattered in a cosy manner, and Finnish rugs adorning the walls providing the kind of atmosphere that is perfect for sipping hot chocolate. The second floor consists of a bar area, with both hightop counter tables and laid-back couches; and the restaurant, an elegantly designed eating area overlooking the Esplanad. The windows are huge and spotless – this is a trend very prevalent to the buildings in Helsinki; I found out later that because daylight hours are so short in the winter and the fall, the Finns like to make the most of natural daylight when they can. For lunch, this makes for very pleasant dining – for some reason sunlight and white tablecloths relax me in a way that few other combinations can.

The place is clearly a tourist attraction – we heard a smattering of foreign languages at the tables around us, and the dead giveaway was that they had the menu in English in addition to the Finnish. Yet for a tourist attraction it seems to strike an easy balance between the cosmopolitan (it would not feel out of place on the Upper East Side) and the local (Finnish delicacies like herring and salmon soup are just some of the specialties here). Our waitress spoke in fluent and distinctly American accented English, and did her level best to make us feel at ease in a foreign land.

The bread is one of the main draws here – for in addition to being well-baked it comes with a stellar spread of hummus, something completely unexpected. Who knew that you could find good hummus in Helsinki? I threw decorum to the wind and focused on demolishing the contents of the bread basket; I was probably never going to see these people again and so gave myself license to pig out.

I had a Caesar salad to start – admittedly a boring choice, but for all its good food it is terribly difficult to find decent treatments of vegetables in Helsinki, and I was in need of some. I asked for a topping of crayfish, which was surprisingly fresh. Some of my colleagues took the more adventurous routes of liver in lingonberry sauce, and escargot – both of which received a thumbs-up, but which I did not get to try.

Our hosts proclaimed Helsinki as being renowned for fresh seafood, and I went with the Artic char on a bed of lentils. I particularly liked the lentils, simply done and to the right consistency, and something I had not eaten in a long while; but the fish itself was a minor disappointment. It was cooked well, but the skin still bore heavy traces of the salt that had been used to dry it out, which made eating it almost impossible. The king prawn risotto that one of my colleagues ordered looked promising, but I saw her reach for the salt and pepper not once, not twice but three times. There is no worse crime, I think, than under-seasoning food. But in sum the reports from around the table were generally positive, with the whitefish being a standout dish.

I don’t think I would have enjoyed myself as thoroughly as I did if I had gone to Café Strindberg with any advance knowledge of it. It may not have been a standout restaurant, but the quality was enough to surprise me, and the atmosphere was top notch. It felt like a great place for a leisurely lunch, and the people-watching both in the restaurant as well as on the esplanade outdoors was first-rate. The restaurant was a tad expensive, but perhaps the downstairs café would have been easier on the wallet and a better alternative for frequent repeat visits.

On the plane leaving Finland (for London, DC and New York – where I will continue to eat my way through old favourites and restaurants that I know so much about), I couldn’t help but rethink my approach to eating out. Perhaps once in a while it may be a good idea to just throw caution to the wind and gamble on the restaurant in the corner that looks inviting despite the limited human traffic and lack of word-of-mouth publicity. I may rethink that strategy the next time I just jump into a place and have a terrible meal, but the potential for romance, I think, is just too enticing.

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.