Food Roundup (Week 6)

Ate so much GOOD FOOD last week!!

1.  Dinner @ some random "open-air food stall" (dai pai dong)
Dai Pai Dong's are quite common in Hong Kong.  They're literally stalls, sometimes lined in rows down a street/alleyway and you just sit on the street, order and eat.  The one we went to is somewhere in Central (near Lan Kwai Fong), can't remember the exact street though).

We had a group of 8 and they didn't have enough tables out (yet), so they pulled out two folding tables and 8 chairs out of nowhere and set them up in seconds.  After we sat down for a few mins, I looked around and there were at least 4 more tables set up with people sitting there already!  I was surprised to see people in suits eating here.  Must mean that it's good? :P

Everything was sticky/dirty:  The tables were sticky, all the utensils were sticky and even the menu was sticky. HAHA.  Just means that you MUST wash all your stuff with tea.  We were even sitting beside the drainage/sewer, which is kinda convenient when we dispose of the dirty tea.  Ordered some really good stuff, the BEST sweet & sour pork (ribs) and eggplant I have EVER eaten. Getting hungry thinking about it.

The normal sweet and sour pork you get in Canada is tomato-style sour, but this one was more lemon-y.  The taste was just perfect.  The eggplant and peppers were stuffed with fish paste (made me think of you, Jorge!!) and I have seriously never had such beautifully cooked eggplant. I thought I loved eggplant before, but now I REALLY love eggplant.  I don't think I can eat eggplant anymore when I go home... 


2.  Egg Tarts @ Tai Cheong Bakery (Central)

These are the best egg tarts I've had in my life (so far).  The pastry was so wonderfully flaky and the egg part was sooo smooth!  They also have egg white egg tarts, but my friend said it wasn't as good as the regular one.  It was $5 per tart, quite pricy but SO WORTH IT!  My friend had a mini chicken pot pie and it looked SO GOOD, gonna try it next time :)


View Larger Map


3. Snow White Sago @ Honeymoon Dessert (chain restaurant)

This was recommended by my foodie friend Jen (ha ha) and of course it was AWESOME!  It was so interesting to eat - there were lots of weird fruits I've never had before, like dried longan and other misc fruits (lol) but it tasted so good with the ice creamy, ice flakey, sago "soup base".  I've also heard that this place is famous for its Mango Sago with Pomelo (right pic) so I'll definitely try that one next time :)


4.  3AM Dim Sum @ Sun Hing (Kennedy Town)

Was SO awesome, see my blog post about it here.  I'm getting sooo hungry just looking at this picture...


5.  Black Pepper Beef Rice @ Pepper Lunch (Langham Place, Mong Kok)

Apparently according to Wikipedia, Pepper Lunch is a "fast-steak" chain from Japan.  I walked by the food court in Langham Place and almost EVERYONE was eating this, and it made the whole food court smell so so good.  I think there are 4 locations in Hong Kong.

Basically you have raw meat and corn in the middle of a hot sizzling plate with rice around it.  While it's still sizzling hot, you add sauces like garlic or soy sauce and then mix it around with two metal spoons to cook the meat and mix the rice in.  The beef was a little too peppery for me but adding more garlic sauce helped :P  It's pretty fun to eat but quite pricy, the cheapest is the black pepper beef rice for $38, and goes up to over $70 HKD for rice with actual steak.


View Larger Map

Hiking up the Peak

 

 View from Victoria Peak

There are tons of hiking trails in Hong Kong, since there are mountains pretty much everywhere.  The hike up "the" peak (Victoria Peak) is actually one of the easier ones, only about 45 min - 1.5 hrs depending on how fast you go/how many breaks you take.  Some of the more intense hiking trails can go over 4 or even 6 hours.  This mountain is the highest on the Hong Kong Island, but you can't actually access the highest point. Here's more info on Victoria Peak @ Wikipedia.

We started out on the north side of the HKU campus, exiting on the north side of Run Run Shaw.  Followed a few sets of stairs up to Robert Black College, turned right and passed some tennis courts and  then saw the beginning of the trail.  Quite confusing to find actually, but we just followed people :P

Within 5 minutes we were surrounded by green.  The air was much nicer and there was a nice breeze to help with the walk up.  I was already pretty tired out from all the stairs walking... haha.  Most of the hike up is on a paved sloped path though so it wasn't too too bad.  Just difficult when I was carrying my DSLR and tripod, haha!

There are also some beautiful views on the way up....

Took the following pic about half way up the trail.  Around that point the trail changed from a "morning trail" to a "fitness trail" LOL. We were sad.

The last 10 mins of the hike is just flat walking.  The peak actually has a bunch of shopping centers, restaurants and look out points.  We decided to walk the malls and have dinner so we can take a look at the view at night and catch the light show (which actually wasn't that impressive from the peak).

(Left: shopping area.  Right:  Restaurant with awesome view!)

We went up the Peak Tower (below) to get the best view of the peak.  I'm hoping it was the best view because we had to pay $25HKD to get up there :P  There's a railed viewing area right at the top of the "bowl".

BEAUTIFUL Hong Kong!!

 (View during the light show)

Fast Food Delivery

Collecting phone numbers for fast food delivery @ HKU, let me know if you can think of other restaurants that may have delivery in HK!

Mcdonalds
2338 2338
http://www.mcdonalds.com.hk/english/mds/

KFC
2180 0000
http://kfchk.com

Yoshinoya
2550 5678
http://www.yoshinoya-hk.com/en/

Pizza Hut
3180 0000
http://www.pizzahut.com.hk/en/delivery.html

PHD
2111 1234
http://www.phd.hk/en/home.html

Ebeneezer's Kebabs and Pizzeria
3622 3622
http://www.Ebeneezers.com

Subway
3622 3622
http://www.sandwiches.hk


Pizza Box 
2515 1515
http://www.pizzabox.com.hk/weborder.htm

Shakey's Pizza:
http://www.shakeys-pizza.com/delivery.php


Wildfire:
http://www.igors.com/igors/menu/wildfire_delivery.pdf

3AM Dim Sum

Yes, literally 3AM.  There's apparently only two restaurants that have 3AM dim sum, and yes they OPEN at 3am.  That street was rather sketchy, everything else was closed :P  The place is called "Sun Hing", apparently you can tell the taxi driver "3AM dim sum" and they'd know where to go.  Unfortunately for us our drivers didn't :(

We got there about 5 mins past 3 and it was already starting to get packed.  Here you don't really order your own food (sometimes they ask you what you want or ask you if you want what's coming out of the kitchen), you go up to this table where there are towers of dim sum steamers and you look through them to pick what you want.

You can also see the people making food!  Here they're making some more baos (WHICH WERE DELICOIUS!!!!):

I think this was one of their specialties - "egg yolk buns" 奶皇流沙包. (Top right in the pic below)  They inside kinda tastes like butter and sandy egg yolk, sounds disgusting but it was AMAZING! So "smooth"...

 Something else that was really good was fried milk.  The milk was kinda like jelly... and the outside was sooo freshly crispy.  Really good...

Apparently the students that live in halls at HKU do this all the time.  We actually saw groups of students in their hall jackets (all matching!) eating together :P  By the time we were about to leave this place was packed and there were some people lining up outside!

Map (10 Hau Wo St):

View Larger Map

Food Roundup (Week 5)

Sorry I'm half a week late with this, just been having too much fun ;)  It's come to my attention that I've been blogging so much about food and not about my other experiences here...but obviously food is the best part :D  Ok... more interesting posts coming soon :)

More food this week because a bunch of us (actually, 42 of us!) went to celebrate a friend's birthday at a Chiu Chow restaurant.  We had a 10 course meal (pics starting from first pic of 2nd row) for ~$1100 HK, which came out to about $110 per person - that's less than $20!! More details in #1:

1.  10 Course Set Dinner @ Tak Kee Chiu Chou Restaurant (Kennedy Town, Western District)

Most of the food was pretty "typical Chinese", but the one thing I've never seen before is this fried noodle pancake shown above.  It's sliced like a pizza, and you add vinegar (I think) and sugar on it.  It tastes pretty good, especially with the sugar contrasting with the vinegar.  Interesting :P  Good meal overall, we were all extremely satisfied at the end!

2.  Nestle Mango Sago Popsicle

Had to buy this once I saw it!!  Mango sago is an extremely popular dessert in Hong Kong, and it's basically chilled mango juice with cubes of mango and pomelo.  Awesome dessert in the form of a POPSICLE?? I think it was only $4HKD ($0.55 CAD)... By the way, the drink on the right is a white grape aloe drink, it tastes almost exactly like the aloe drinks at home but Minute Maid branded...haha.

A side note, I've been eating breakfast more often at the canteen and it's so good!  There's so much choice and it's pretty cheap (usually under <$25HKD = $3.50CAD).  They have the usual eggs, toast, sausage, ham (all HK style of course), you can also get fried fish fillet (my favourite), turnip cake, chicken burger patty (don't ask), macaroni and ham in soup (very HK style), daily congee and fried noodles.  Usually 3 of these items comes for under $25.. so cheap!!  First few pics in the "food roundup" picture are breakfast meals.

Having a pretty epic food week this week so stay tuned :)