Since my previous post on Sheung Wan restaurants seems to have been well-received, I figure a similar post on dining spots in Sai Kung is in order.  If you don’t live in the area, you might think that Sai Kung is only those waterfront seafood restaurants but actually OpenRice lists 299 restaurants in the Sai Kung district.  Most are in Sai Kung Town, but not all.  This is just a rundown of the ones I’ve eaten in.  Note that I have not eaten in some of Sai Kung’s more famous restaurants, such as Loaf On and Anthony’s Kitchen and One Thirty-One.  One of these days …

Honeymoon Dessert – Yes, they’re all over town but if I’m not mistaken, this is their original location.  Every bit as good as you’ve heard, when the weather’s nice people are still lined up on the street waiting for a table at midnight!

Anthony’s Ranch - Anthony knows food (and I know Anthony, so take this with as many grains of salt as you wish).  Some of the best baby back ribs in HK, really good steaks, and what I’m sure are the best huevos rancheros to be found in Hong Kong (only on the breakfast menu but they’ll sometimes make them for other meals on request).  A bit on the expensive side for some items.

May’s Sawaddee Thailand – A bit confusing because there are three places in town with this name and at least one claims to have no relationship to the others.  Popular and reasonably okay Thai food.

Paisano’s – This is the original branch of what is in my opinion the best pizza in Hong Kong.  The owner, a former golf pro, is an Italian-American whose parents have pizza places back in the US.  He makes his dough and pasta fresh daily.

Pepperoni’s – I’ve been here several times but it’s been years since I’ve gone back.  It’s very Hong Kong-style pizza (wrong kind of dough, sauce too sweet), the other dishes are okay.  The owners of Pepperoni’s also own Jaspa’s, Wagyu and several other chains around town.

Jaspa’s – With branches in Soho and TST (and Saigon!), this is the first place that fills up in town on weekends and with good reason.  I’ve been coming here for 10 years and never had a bad meal.  Whatever you order comes with a huge amount of fresh greens.  And last time I was there, Moreton Bay Bugs were back on the menu!

Chuen Kee – I think there’s been some consolidation of ownership among the waterfront seafood restaurants.  For all I know, they might all be owned by just one or two people now.  If memory serves, this is the one that is listed in the Michelin guide.  Stay away from larger fish, lobster and more exotic choices and the price can be quite reasonable.  Beer is super cheap here and a great place to sit at night stuffing your face and watching the crowds stroll by. I’ve probably eaten at all the waterfront seafood places at one time or another, I’ll just list this one.

A.J.’s Sri Lankan Cuisine – I believe this is the only Sri Lankan place in Hong Kong.  R.J., the owner and chef, is really from Sri Lanka (the place is named for his son) and the food is consistently delicious.

Sawaddee Thailand – Okay, I see they’ve removed the “May’s” from the name of this location.  It’s a back alley place, cheap folding tables and plastic stools.  I think they’ve got the most authentic Thai in town.

Mr. Froyo – Nothing that really sets this apart from the other frozen yogurt shops in town except this is the only one in Sai Kung town and it’s quite nice. (Oops, there are two now.  This is the only one I’ve tried.)

Ali-Oli – If this isn’t the best bakery in Hong Kong, it certainly has to be in the top ten.  Aside from the cakes and fabulous breads, they set up tables outside now for sandwiches, salads, or just a cup of decent coffee with a croissant.

Hebe One O One – In a village house in Pak Sha Wan.  Readers of Sai Kung Magazine voted this their favorite Sai Kung restaurant last year.  Another consistent spot, it’s what I think of as Australian style.  Great grilled stuff and my gf swears by their apple crumble.  The ground floor bar area is filled with overstuffed old leather sofas and steamer trunks for tables, first floor a more traditional looking restaurant, rooftop bar.

Colour Brown – Yeah, we do have a Starbucks in town but why go there when we also have this gem?  Serious coffee, good sandwiches and cakes, a small place that’s impossible to get into on weekends but worth the wait.

Anthony’s Catch – Same owner as Anthony’s Ranch, this is mostly Italian-style seafood and they make their own pasta.  Expensive but quality stuff.

Fiesta Fiesta – An odd little place in the old part of town, they have some western dishes and some Filipino food.  And it’s the Filipino food that we go there for.

Ristorante Firenze – An Italian restaurant that appears to be owned and run by Indians.  Quite good.

Sauce – I think I’ve been here twice in 10 years.  It’s not bad, it’s just not as good as Jaspa’s in my opinion.

Steamer’s – A longtime Sai Kung favorite, a bar with half a dozen outdoor tables and some British and Indian style pub food.  Nothing exceptional but cheap & cheerful.

Classified – The Sai Kung branch of the popular HK chain has me on the fence.  Sometimes when I go here I really love it, other times it hasn’t quite lived up to my expectations.  On the whole though, I’m glad they’re here.

Sawaddee Thailand – This is the branch next to McDonald’s.  A couple of outdoor tables and usually busy.  My opinion is that the food is fairly average HK-style Thai.

Village Malaysian and Indian – I’ve been here twice and wanted to like it a whole lot more than I do.  Ground floor of a village house, they grow their own spices in their backyard, yet the two or three times I’ve been here it’s been less than inspiring.

Juicy J’s – Big British-style breakfast served all day in a tiny place, they also specialize in hot dogs with Japanese toppings.  Definitely different and the one time we were there it was quite okay.

Bacco – The upstairs portion of this bar is a branch of HK Indian favorite JoJo’s.  The one time I ate here, the biryani had what was obviously frozen vegetables in it, something I think is inexcusable in HK.

Agua Plus – It was Aqua Plus when they first opened, then it changed for some reason.  This was a hard luck location with two previous places not catching on here, but they’ve made a run of it.  Booze and outdoor seating, mostly, but the British pub grub and Indian curries are quite okay.

Occo – The Pepperoni’s/Jaspa’s folks shut down Cru, which I loved, and re-opened as Rocco, but then had to drop the R because there’s already a Rocco someplace else in town.  Been here once, it’s good, I miss Cru and don’t know why they felt impelled to change.

Ten Ku – See if you can follow this.  The sign outside says “Shushi”.  The listing on OpenRice calls them “Shsui”.  Whatever it is, I came here twice and doubt I’ll go back for a third try.

Wing Wo – There are actually two listings for this place in town (they have two shops, directly across from each other).  One listing says closed, the other says closed for renovation.  Either way, incredibly friendly staff, cheap prices but some of the worst dim sum I’ve ever had in Hong Kong.

Thai Ho – Actually I’ve never been here but each time I walk by I tell myself I need to try this place.  Maybe by listing it here I’ll remember next time!

There was a great small and cheap Vietnamese place in town that recently closed that we miss.  A couple of years back Dia, which I thought had the best Indian in town, got replaced by a Japanese “fusion” joint that I still haven’t tried.

For many, the center of food in Sai Kung is not the water front or the Man Yee Square, it’s the alley that runs between Fuk Man (yes, I know) Road and King Man Street.  There must be at least 20 different hole in the wall joints here, mostly HK style noodle joints, some little Thai places, all of them extremely cheap. most of them foreigner friendly, most of them quite good.

So there you go, 27 out of 299, obviously I still have quite a few places to try!

What places have I missed?  What are your favorite spots?

I’m coming up on one year working in the Sheung Wan district.  That’s following a year in which I worked in Cyberport, one of the worst places in all of Hong Kong for food.  Open Rice currently lists 496 restaurants in Sheung Wan so I suppose one might say I’m spoiled for choice now.  Sheung Wan is interesting in that much of “old Hong Kong” is still very visible.  However, the pace of gentrification is rapidly increasing, rents are going up, the neighborhood is changing almost daily before my eyes.  I thought some people might find it useful to know where I’ve gone for lunch and maybe even give a few recommendations in return.  Note that my office is not far from the MTR and Wing On and that I have a tendency to avoid walking up hill in the direction of Hollywood Road and Soho; I pretty much stay close to “home” for lunch. No food photos, no silly language about mouth feel or how some wine has undertones of chocolate and carpet scrapings, just the facts, as it were.

One final note – most offices in the area start their lunch hour at 1 PM.  That means if you go out to lunch at 12:30 you stand a good chance of getting in almost anywhere without a wait.  At 1 PM, any place in the hood that offers lunch under HK$50 will have a long line in front – that means either doing takeaway or going someplace expensive if you don’t want to wait.

Sang Kee – These guys have 3 store fronts along Hillier Street and Burd Street.  They’re most famous for their congee and their beef brisket noodles.  A bowl of beef brisket noodles costs HK$26 and is quite nice.  They also have this sort of fish pancake thing for $11 that I always order as a side dish.

Barista Jam – Everyone’s favorite coffee shop also serves pasta, salads and sandwiches.  A little bit pricey but not bad.

Dim Sum Square – A tiny place that gets seriously packed at lunch time.  The quality of their dim sum is average at best but the prices are good.

Pizzeria Jacomax – Owned and run by an Italian, the pizzas are supposed to be quite good here.  I’ve been here once, ordered a panini, it was awful, haven’t been back.

Malaymama – One of my favorites.  I can’t speak to how authentic this hole-in-the-wall place is but I love their bak kuh teh and their laksa.  Around $45 per bowl unless you go for one of their “special” combinations, seriously filling and tasty stuff.

Pret A Manger – Sometimes I just want a sandwich and Pret has a $50 combo that includes a bowl of soup, half a sandwich and a cup of tea or coffee. It’s also a fairly comfortable place to sit and read while you eat.

Men-Dokoro Ryo Tei – There are two ramen shops near my office.  I prefer this one.  A little bit pricey – a bowl of ramen, an order of gyoza and a drink has me pushing the $100 mark but sometimes it hits the spot.

Chez Meli Melo – An odd little shop in an odd out of the way location doing authentic French baguettes.

North Garden – Your basic standard Cantonese seafood restaurant serving dim sum for lunch, I’ve been here a few times for big team lunch events.  Quality-wise they’re about in the middle of the pack. Nothing is great but nothing sucks either.  Prices also in the mid-range.

Monsieur Chatte – A small French grocery store in Sheung Wan?  Well, they’ve lasted 4 years and have now opened a second branch in Elements so I guess they’re doing okay.  Aside from the wine and cheese and homemade foie gras, they have 4 different baguettes each day along with some pasta and salad choices.  The bread for the baguette is seriously good.

Pho Tai – People seem to really line up for this Vietnamese spot. I think it’s more for the price than the quality of the food.  It’s okay.

Ninoen – This little Japanese take-away only place must be less than 100 square feet.  I tried a sushi assortment here once.  About the same quality as you’d get at Park ‘n Shop.

Katong Laksa Prawn Mee – Directly across from Malaymama, I’ve been here once.  I ordered the prawn mee.  I think I found 1, maybe 2, pieces of a prawn in the bowl.  Haven’t been back.

Trattoria Doppio Zero – This is a seriously nice Italian place.  I’ve been here twice and loved it each time.  But set lunches start at $100 so it’s a place I go only on rare occasions.

JP Deli – Tried here once.  A bento box of Japanese style fried chicken with rice & veggie set me back around $50.  Quite okay but I thought a little expensive for what you get.

Bowl Burger – Sometimes I just have to have a burger.  This is the closest burger place to my office.  It’s better than McDonalds.

Mian Cafe – Two menus here – one for Japanese food, one for Taiwanese.  So far I’ve tried off the Japanese side (pork cutlet curry with rice) and it was quite okay.

Masala – The closest Indian place. Their set lunch includes soup, salad, naan, rice and a main dish.  A lot of food for the money compensates for the food only being so-so.

Bun Me – I wish this place was better.  Even so I end up coming here roughly once a week.  Their baguettes are Hong Kong-style – soft.  They don’t have pate to put on the banh mi.  Otherwise it’s quite okay, their vermicelli salads are nice.

Subway – Yeah, I come here sometimes.  Every day they have a different $19 special.

Maxims Palace Chinese Restaurant – In the basement of Shun Tak Centre, it’s every bit as good as you’d expect it to be.  Also expensive – special occasions only.

Harmony – One of the more English-friendly cha chaan tengs in the area.  The food isn’t great but they have a huge menu, well translated, portions are huge and prices are cheap and they’re very friendly.

Mutekiya – Our second ramen shop. Been here twice, I just seem to prefer Men-Dokoro.

Taiwan dumpling place, no English name – Quickly becoming a new favorite.  They have about 8 different dumplings to choose from, mix and match, they also do a really nice hot and sour soup with dumplings.

Cafe Nirvana – Oy vey.  I really want to love this place.  A funky bar, almost a dive bar atmosphere, during the day they have set menus for Italian and Thai food, neither of which they do particularly well.  But it’s a comfortable place to sit.  Their lasagna’s not great but it doesn’t suck.

Lee Fa Yuen Korea House – The set lunches are around $70 and for that money you get a ton of decently prepared Korean food. Probably not the most authentic Korean food, mind you, but good enough.

Grove Sandwiches – Another sandwich chain in Hong Kong, they manage to make Oliver’s Super Sandwich seem good.

Magnolia – Okay, I’ve never been here for lunch, they don’t serve lunch.  But it is in Sheung Wan.  A private kitchen doing authentic New Orleans cuisine.  We came here once for dinner and it was fantastic. Highly recommended.

Gourmet Burger Union – This branch of a Hong Kong burger chain has outdoor seating only and is a bit of a walk.  I’ve only been here once as a result but the burger was quite okay.

Gaia Ristorante – The set lunch here is $248, which means I don’t come here unless someone else is paying.  It is really good, though the portions are on the small side (not counting, of course, the antipasto buffet, which is very nice indeed) and service is haphazard.

Hmmm, what have I left out?  There’s a branch of Cafe O that I’ve been to a couple of times, relaxing and decent food.  There’s this place on Queen’s Road, upstairs, Cafe something, recently opened, western set lunchs running between 50 and 100, had a nice burger and salad there.  A few more hole-in-the-wall joints with no English name doing some seriously good noodle soups seriously cheap.

So that’s 30+ places out of 496.  I still have quite a few to go!  (And sometimes when I’m feeling ambitious I’ll head over towards Central for a bite.)

What places have I missed?  Which ones do you consider to be a “must”?

With the weather so depressing outside, we spent the day cooking … and eating.

My gf dug out the Julia Child cookbook and went for chicken ragout and I must say it came out rather nice.  It’s a sort of rich, dark stew with a very deep and flavorful sauce.  Can’t complain about her getting more ambitious in the kitchen.  I think one reason for the ambition is that I recently got some new pots and pans, German stainless steel, 50% off sale in Hang Hau.

I was vaguely less ambitious.  Salmon.  Quick and easy recipe grabbed out of Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.  Cast iron pan.  Little bit of vegetable oil.  Salt & pepper.  Salmon, skin scored.  A minute or two on each side.  Then used Bittman’s “5 Minute Drizzle Sauce” – extra virgin olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt & pepper, heated up in a sauce pan, poured over the salmon.  The salmon was Alaskan sockeye salmon, scored from The Porterhouse.  I gotta say, they’re not a cheap, but some of the stuff I’ve gotten from there has been seriously good.  Their Angus burgers (8 ounces each, 6 for about $200) are the best I’ve ever had at home.

We also prepared something to marinate overnight and cook and eat tomorrow – suon nuong, or Vietnamese style pork chops.  These are the ones we had on the street when we were in Nha Trang and I can still remember how damned good they were.

I found this recipe in Saveur Magazine and a friend of mine asked me to post it on the blog so here goes, more or less:

You start with thin pork chops, no more than 1/4 inch thick.  Then you need:

• 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
• 1/3 cup thinly sliced shallots
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced lemongrass
• 2 tbsp peanut oil
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1-1/2 tbsp fish sauce
• ground black pepper
• 8 garlic cloves finely chopped

Heat the 1/2 cup sugar in a saucepan until it turns to liquid caramel. Remove from heat, add 1/4 cup boiling water, return to heat, cook till the caramel dissolves in the water.

Put this in a food processor or blender along with the rest of the sugar, lemongrass, shallots, oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, pepper and garlic. Puree until smooth.

Put the pork chops in a pan or dish, cover with the sauce, cover and chill anywhere from 1 hour to over night.

Cook the pork chops in a cast iron pan about 2 minutes till cooked through and charred in spots.  Serve with rice and chili-garlic sauce (we have lots of bottles of Sri Racha sauce at home, I can’t live without it now).

Richard, let me know if you try it out yourself and how it comes out.

This ad was in The Standard today.

I love In-N-Out Burger.  There is no fast food burger in the US that comes close to this one.  For those who’ve never had one, maybe the best comparison I can come up with is to say it’s like Triple O’s only better.  They’re only on the west coast of the US, the burgers are made from quality meat, real cheese, the fries are made from fresh potatoes right in the store.  So the notion of In-N-Out in Hong Kong is like a fantasy I wouldn’t dare to have.

But wait a minute.  Just what is going on here?  One day only?  4 hours only?  And in Braemar Hill, FFS?

Is there anything about this that even slightly makes sense?

An absolutely gorgeous day today and I couldn’t believe that I managed to leave my camera behind when we went out.

Anyway, the small shop sizes and relatively low rents in Sai Kung mean that people feel a bit freer to try something a little different here, or at least try to get a business off the ground.  Sai Kung is home to HK’s only Sri Lankan restaurant (AJ’s) and is where the Paisano’s empire got its start (a mere two years ago – he’s up to 5 or 6 locations and is promising four more for next year as well as expansion into Shanghai and Beijing).

Walking around today, we found a new place, open for just two weeks, with the descriptive but perhaps unfortunate name of Juicy Jap Dog.  All day breakfasts, all natural smoothies and combinations of Japanese things on top of sausages.  I tried the Olopon dog – Yuzu Ponzu, grated radish and green onion.

My gf went for the Okonomi dog, featuring Okonomi sauce, Japanese mayo, bonito flakes and cabbage.

The hot dogs were big, plump and, yes, juicy.  The shop is at most 200 square feet, including the kitchen.

Just around the corner was an even smaller place called Ali Baba’s Curry House which, oddly enough, doesn’t serve curry.  They had samosas and a kind of crepe (I asked if it was murtabak and the guy said, “yes, it’s kind of like murtabak”) with various meat or fruit fillings.

The samosas are sitting there on a tray, ready to pop into a bag, but the crepes are made fresh when you order them – and cost a measly HK$20 each.  And yeah, it was nice.

Which makes me think about something that Hong Kong has lost by outlawing most street food, the notion of going from stand to stand, grabbing a little bit here, a little bit there, mixing and matching tastes and cuisines.  You can do that in many places in Asia but really, what’s left of street food in most of HK are small little shops with counters out on the street, mostly selling various bits of crap on sticks.  (And when I say crap, don’t get me wrong, I frequently go for this stuff, but I’m sure that most of it is horrendously unhealthy.)  It ain’t anything close to walking around the back streets of Shanghai or Beijing or a food street in Kuala Lumpur – even the cooked food centers in the wet markets (Sai Kung’s wet market doesn’t have one) aren’t like this.   As long as our useless government is into needlessly “upgrading” streets and neighborhoods and destroying what character they had (have you seen the plans for Sneaker Street, Fa Yuen Gai, in Mong Kok?) why not create some food streets – streets with street carts or dai pai dongs and tables, some crap on a stick here, a bag of dumplings there … but I can do without the stinky tofu, okay?

Do people in Hong Kong know about Lucky Peach?  It’s a quarterly food journal published by McSweeney’s and co-edited by David Chang (of NYC’s Momofuku empire).  It’s a literary journal, with recipes.  Issue number one came out last summer and was mostly devoted to ramen.  It includes “Mediocrity,” a conversation between Chang, Anthony Bourdain and WD50′s Wylie Dufresne, sitting around in a bar in San Sebastian, Spain.  And “Harold McGee in Outre Space.”

Issue #2 came out recently and my copy will be arriving this week via Amazon.

Something else that I just ordered is called Notes From a Kitchen.  The first thing to know about this is that it comes in two volumes, is 932 pages long and weighs 15 pounds.

Provocative artist, filmmaker and photographer Jeff Scott and chef Blake Beshore bring you the re-envisioning of the modern American cookbook. Notes from a Kitchen redefines the cookbook genre in a spectacular two-volume, 900 page cloth-covered collection that feels more like a beautiful museum artifact and private chef’s journal than a traditional cookbook.

This beautifully-crafted collection explores today’s most exciting young chefs in their kitchens and in personal conversation. Featuring over 1,000 vibrant color photographs, uniquely edited documentary film footage and private journals, this new form of modern cookbook studies the unique artistry that surrounds their emotional craft.

How do you get documentary film footage on the printed page?  I have no idea.  Huffington Post says it “redefines the cookbook” and has images of some of the pages.

Interestingly enough, they raised the money to publish this book via a Kickstarter project.  At Kickstarter, they describe it this way:

Notes from a Kitchen is the first book ever produced, which accurately portrays the daily creative lives of world-renowned chefs in a strikingly visual and narrative format. Never before has a cookbook focused more intently on who a chef really is as a person and why they place their culinary passion before almost everything else in their lives. This revolutionary cookbook reveals firsthand the daily journey inside a chef’s culinary obsession.

Kind of an unfortunate use of a comma in that first sentence, eh?  Anyway, it’s released on December 10th.

Artist, photographer and director Jeff Scott and chef Blake Beshore have teamed up to produce this inventive two-volume compilation, changing form and function and transforming how cookbooks are utilized today. We want to produce a book that is accessible to foodies, while also stimulating the culinary passions of working chefs, sous chefs, line cooks, servers, culinary students and avid home cooks.  Our intent is to focus on the authenticity of the craft and not on the hype. This reinvention of the modern cookbook is a one-of-a-kind culinary experience.

I’ve pre-ordered one already.

The 2012 Michelin guide to restaurants in HK and Macau will hit stores soon.

The list of three star restaurants increases by two:  L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon and 8½ Otto e Mezzo.  The two three-star restaurants at the Four Seasons (Caprice and Lung King Heen) both retain their ratings. But Sun Tung Lok was knocked from 3 stars down to 2.

New to the two-star list are Bo Innovation (regaining the star they lost last year), Lei Garden (Mong Kok), Shang Palace, Spoon by Alain Ducasse at the InterContinental, and Ye Shanghai (Kowloon).

Of all the restaurants listed above, the only ones I’ve been to are Bo Innovation and Spoon.  I’ve been to Lei Garden – but their Wanchai branch, not the Mong Kok one.

But I gotta tell ya, last night we went to Nha Trang (the original branch on Wellington Street) for dinner with another couple.  We both love this place and don’t get here anywhere near often enough.  The other couple eat there much more frequently, so we let them do most of the ordering, which naturally meant we got to taste a few dishes we hadn’t tried before.  And they were all good, especially the chicken ceviche and a salad with grilled squid and green mangoes.   Overall, we probably ordered enough food for 6 people.  Even so, the bill came out to about $280 per couple.

Also, in other eating notes, yesterday I finally went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Lan Kwai Fong, for lunch.  Of course the food from one Hard Rock to another is pretty much identical.  It is what it is.  Determined not to order a burger, I went for their “twisted mac ‘n cheese” which comes with a grilled chicken breast – which made little sense on the menu or on the plate, while the promised garlic bread was toast without a hint of garlic or butter.  Three different waitresses stopped at our table to ask if I wanted Tabasco sauce.    Today another first for lunch, Duke’s Deli.  I ordered their Philly cheese steak and I gotta say, I’m not from Philadelphia but that was probably the best cheese steak I’ve had in Hong Kong and I’ve had a few.

Oh, according to my mother, one of my cousins, the one who works for Mario Batali, is now “executive sous chef over his entire operation and oversees 8,000 meals per day.”  Hope he still has that gig next time I get to New York.

On the one hand, I’m embarrassed because I brought my camera bag out with me but I left it in the car and so no photos.  On the other hand, not having a camera with me meant that I could focus 100% on the meal and in this case the meal was worth focusing on.

Hong Kong’s high retail rent situation basically means that almost no individual can afford to open a restaurant in a prime location any more.  That’s now the province of corporations.  Dining Concepts is one such corporation – they’ve got 18 restaurants in HK as well as two delivery services.  Their restaurants have been mostly very successful, both commercially and with the critics.  Recently they’ve brought BLT Steak and BLT Burger here as well as Michael White’s Al Molo.  They’ve got Craftsteak (and they swear they didn’t steal the name, sure, whatever), Blue Smoke, Bombay Dreams, Soho Spice, Archie B’s, Taco Loco and a few more.

I was in the mood to celebrate tonight – my company’s CEO confirmed to me a few days early that I’ve passed probation which doesn’t always seem to be a given in this company.  He’s very demanding and the workload is the opposite of light weight.  I felt a good dinner to be called for and wanted to try something new.  We were already in Causeway Bay so we went for Manzo in Times Square.  This place has been open for about a month and since people seem to really love Bistecca, I figured this place ought to be pretty good as well.

Despite the fact that this is on the 11th floor of a shopping mall, the interior is warm and friendly – fake brick on the walls, wood floors and wood beams everywhere, the walls lined with bottles of wine and olive oil.  There’s an open kitchen in the rear with huge hams and cloves of garlic hanging from the ceiling and some giant industrial machine that seems to be used for slicing the prosciutto.  To the right of the kitchen is a butcher-shop-style refrigerated case with their cuts of meat on display.

At 9 PM on a Saturday, the place was busy but it was slightly after the dinner rush so we were seated right away without any reservation.  There were a number of intriguing starters listed but we went for their salad bar – HK$98 per person – which included some of the aforementioned prosciutto, some excellent smoked salmon and a selection of veggies and salads.

In terms of the steaks, they have three basic groupings.  The first is the mega-expensive group, with two types of 32 ounce steaks for two, priced at HK$1180 and HK$980.  They say:

A feature of the steak at Manzo, is the introduction of exclusively-grown beef to the Hong Kong dining scene, a concept that presents the finest beef from farm to table. The concept, a first for Hong Kong, enables Manzo to contract a cattle ranch to rear a quantity of beef cattle for the exclusive use of the restaurant. This choice is based on securing quality, flavour, tenderness and sustainability from red and black Angus steers, and have them raised to our exclusive specifications.

The next group is Australian Wagyu, two choices at $488 and $688.  The final group is USDA Prime and that’s what we went for, two 14 ounce rib eye steaks, HK$258 each.  (Note that this is $90 cheaper than what I believe would be the same steak at Bistecca.)  Ordered medium, they were cooked perfectly, about an inch thick, nicely charred and the juices just poured out of them onto the wooden serving plates.  We also ordered some creamed spinach, as good as any I’ve ever had, and I regretted not ordering the zucchini fries (saw them on the next table and they looked damned nice) or the new potatoes with pancetta and rosemary, but I figured our appetites just weren’t up to it.  Add in two glasses of wine and a bottle of water and our bill topped out at around HK$1100.  And as it happens, neither of us could finish more than half the steak so we’ve got dinner for tomorrow night as well.

Overall, the menu is intriguing – they list 6 different types of salumi and you can get a platter of any 3 for $198.  They have pastas, seafood, grilled chicken breast, lambchops, even a $98 burger.  It could be that their shopping mall location means they’re trying to be all things to all people rather than focusing on a smaller range.  On the other hand, we gave full marks to everything we had and I confess, I’m hoping to get back there soon to taste their roasted veal marrow bones with oxtail marmalade.  We never made it to dessert, a true pity since they’ve got gelato and sorbet, a ricotta cheesecake and tiramisu among the choices.

I see from the menu that their antipasto buffet table figures in their set lunches as well.  A set lunch with a “Heritage Black and Red Angus Burger” and the buffet will set you back a reasonable $168.

I felt that given the location and the quality of the food we had, the price was quite reasonable and I’ll be happy to return there.

Well, maybe not quite a bazillion.

Ferran Adria is possibly the most influential chef in the world.  He managed to build El Bulli, located in the middle of nowhere, into the number 1 rated restaurant in the world before closing it earlier this year. So if you’ve never eaten there (few have), you never will.  But you will still have opportunities to try Adria’s food.

Later this month he’ll be in Hong Kong, at Tosca at the Ritz Carlton. Via Asia Tatler,  from August 26th through the 28th you can have an 11 course meal with wine pairings prepared by Adria’s protege, chef Paco Roncero, for the sum of HK$4,800 per person.  Not that I can even begin to afford this but it’s probably actually worth it.

In addition, there are “special package offers for attending the conference ranging from HK$2,200 (for a whole-day conference on August 26); conference plus dinner packages (HK$7,000 per person); or conference, dinner plus one-night stay at the Ritz-Carlton for HK$16,750 (for two).”

Of course this is Ferran Adria we are talking about and the announcement was made this morning so I suspect the entire damned thing is already sold out.

(The title may not immediately seem to make sense relative to this post.  Best I could come up with right now and there is a slight relationship to something towards the end.)

Last week’s episode of No Reservations finds Anthony Bourdain in Macau.  Bourdain has of course been to Portugal and has featured the Portuguese community in the US but expresses total amazement, shock and awe when it comes to Macau, having never been there before and having no previous idea what it would be like.  Unfortunately too much of the episode is devoted to non-food activities – we get 10 minutes of him playing Baccarat the Grand Lisboa, 10 minutes of him racing go-karts, 10 minutes of him bungie jumping from the Macau Tower.  I sort of understand why he does this.  He’s been doing this TV travel-eating show thing for about 10 years now and has been visibly trying to broaden the range of what he covers for the past several years with varying degrees of success.

In terms of food, he’s taken to The Eight for dim sum, Antonio’s, Fernando’s, Club de Militare and one home-cooked meal.  His web site mentions the egg tarts at Lord Stowe’s but that didn’t make it into the show.  The one food that he eats that really gets high praise is the pork bun at Tai Lei Loi Kei.  I’m pleased that he enjoyed Fernando’s but overall I wish that he’d devoted more of the show to the food and to some of the other amazing Portuguese and Macanese restaurants there.  Well, you can’t please everyone.

Macanese food may be one of the ultimate fusion cuisines – it’s a mix of Portuguese, African, Indian, Malaysian, Chinese – fusion before the term even existed.  Regarding those pork buns, he goes on at great length about what genius it took to put a pork chop between two bits of bread.  My question for today is – why stop there?  Why aren’t people in Hong Kong and China putting other stuff between two pieces of bread?  Granted, in Hong Kong local people seem to have a preference for white bread with the crusts cut off.   I can’t figure out why New England style lobster rolls or Cajun po’ boys don’t seem to exist here.  I only know of one or two places that do a meatball sub and have never found a veal parmigiana sub here.

But it strikes me funny that people in Hong Kong do travel a lot.  And while many of them go on package tours and get taken to Chinese restaurants in Paris, many are equally open to trying dishes native to the places they visit.  Then they come back here and for the most part they either don’t demand to have the same things available here or they may settle on mostly 2nd class reproductions of what they had abroad.  (The good stuff is here too but can often cost as much as a trip to that foreign land.)

Taking it a step further, they don’t get creative with it and take it to the next level.  Oh, we get a very tiny handful of chefs trying something new at places like the either-you-love-it-or-you-hate-it Bo Innovation.  But it’s the rare exception, not even close to the rule.

If the Chinese government can’t figure out why it was Hollywood that took Chinese legends and had global successes with Mulan and Kung Fu Panda, can someone figure out why it took a New Yorker to make a sub with fried tofu?

I’m not the biggest bean curd fan in the world but I’d definitely give that sucker a try.  The kicker is said to be the “unicorn sauce” with no fewer than 16 ingredients including jalapeno, sriracha sauce, tarragon, horseradish, apple cider, malt vinegar, pickles … the list goes on and it reads absolutely horrendous yet something in me says that it probably all comes together in a damned satisfying way.

Hong Kong is faddish on food.  Someone decides to try something, it works, and then 20 other people open places with the same thing.  A few years back it was tapas.  Now it’s French bistros and ramen shops.  Maybe next year we’ll get po’ boys.  I’ll bet that char siu might work really well in a sandwich with the right kind of bun and sauce …