A Return to the Motherland - Hong Kong, Jan 2016

Back in January I took a short trip back to my motherland, Hong Kong, before heading on for a couple of weeks in Vietnam. This time I had a friend in tow who'd never been, which is one of the most exciting ways to visit your home city, and show off all your favourite haunts. A lot of the places I've mentioned before, but isn't it good to know that there's consistency?

Let's start with Kau Kee, in Central. I can't miss coming here for their beef brisket noodles; they're just so good. Curry tendon with e-fu noodles, an iced lemon tea and a side of vegetables will cost you under a tenner and it's so frickin' good. I know a lot of people are put off by the gelatinous nature of tendon, which can look a bit like pure fat but my mother tells me its very good for me and will keep me looking young. Full of collagen, guys. It's very small and there's sometimes a queue and you will be required to squeeze into the tightest spot but you will if you know what's good for you. 

G/F, 21 Gough Street, Central, Hong Kong

We followed this almost immediately with a bowl of wonton and fish ball noodles from Tsim Chai Kee. I've been torn between them and Mak's Noodle for best wontons, but the fish balls here are so good - properly bouncy, rough-hewn and with a hint of dried orange peel - that I've picked them as my winner. 

98 Wellington St, Central, Hong Kong

My friend called mercy but I wasn't having any of it and I marched her off to Din Tai Fung. They have a few in Hong Kong, but I've always gone back to the branch in Kowloon, in Silvercord shopping centre. Maybe because I know it's big. Anyway, they are the epitome of efficient and you can pop in for steamer of dumplings and be out of there in half an hour. Every time I say I'm going to go with a bigger appetite and try more of the menu. Every time I stuff myself silly on the soup dumplings. I go every time I go to Hong Kong. Hell, I went to the back of the beyond for another branch of Din Tai Fung when I was on a business trip in Seattle. Why oh why won't they open in London? 

3/F, Silvercord, No.30 Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Temple Street Night Market is over on Kowloon side, and it spans the length of a street, selling electronics, clothes and souvenirs. Most of it is tat, but I don't go there for the shopping. The restaurants that surround the stalls are properly spit n' sawdust - plonk yourself down on a rickety plastic stool, have a nose at whatever everyone else is ordering, and follow suit. I LOVE their melamine crockery too. We had prawns covered in as much garlic that would possibly coat them, all sticky and messy eaten with our fingers and sheets and sheets of tiny napkins. 

Scallops had the hugest roes I've ever seen, and they were steamed in their shells with black bean sauce, soy sauce, a little chilli and spring onion. 

We ordered rabbit fish since they sounded cute, and these were served simply steamed with ginger, garlic and soy. Along with steamed claypot rice with Chinese sausages and a couple of beers, this set us back about £25. Traverse the length of the street just to make sure, follow your nose, look for the restaurant with the biggest crowd and squeeze in. 

Jordan is the best MTR stop for Temple Street Night Market. 

For breakfast, we hit Australia Dairy Company which is your classic Hong Kong cha chaan teng (tea house). They are famous for their thick, crunchy, fluffy toast with the creamiest scrambled eggs. I'm not sure I could have taken a more revolting picture if I tried so I'm not going to share that with you - they will squish you into the tightest space imaginable to fit you in which isn't conducive to good snaps. But the eggs are glorious. The Hong Kong classic of macaroni in chicken broth topped with shredded ham is pure comforting nostalgia to me, the food of my childhood and it comes as part of a breakfast set. I don't expect people who haven't grown up with it to 'get' it but go for the eggs and you might be pleasantly surprised. They're open till 11pm, so you can go all hours of the day for classic Hong Kong-style food.

47 Parkes St, Jordan, Hong Kong

My friend had never really had congee before, so we went to Law Fu Kee in Sheung Wan to load up before we went off to our hike. The congee was thick and creamy, the rice grains just discernible. I had preserved egg with pork slices, while she stuck to beef. A side of wontons in broth set us up nicely for the morning. 

140 Des Voeux Road Central, Sheung Wan

As an aside, Dragon's Back is well worth doing. A 1.5 hour or so hike from the Shek O road, you get 360 panoramic views. It's often surprising to people that Hong Kong island isn't just one giant concrete jungle. We have beaches, reservoirs and giant golf courses.

That sort of thing tends to make you work up an appetite, so we headed to Ho Lee Fook for dinner. Geddit? Their website says they are a "funky chinese kitchen inspired by old school hong kong cha chaan tengs and the spirit of late-night chinatown hangouts in 1960’s new york" - all of my favourite things! We had to go. 

It's trendy. From street level it looks like your normal open kitchen with roasted meats hanging in the window, until you do an about-turn to the wall of waving cats. Downstairs it's properly dark; we felt our way to our table. Yes, that is a caveat for the terrible light in my pictures. 

The menu is massive. I wanted to eat everything on it but that was not to be, for we were merely two. Instead, we opted for some dumplings which were pork, "mostly cabbage" and great for it. Doused in sacha soy dressing, they were incredibly moreish. Accompanying these, we slurped down cocktails made with Pocari Sweat (only the best damn drink in the world) in plastic cartons. 

We knew the roasted meat was not to be missed. Unfortunately the "Roast Wagyu short ribs, jalapeño purée, green shallot kimchi, soy glaze" clocking in at around £45 was out of our league (and probably our stomach capacity) so we opted for Kurobuta char siu (barbecued pork). We were asked if we preferred lean or fatty and I'm sure you can guess what we went for. Sweet Jesus but it was glorious. Juicy, sweet, smoky. We despaired that we hadn't ordered any plain rice for mopping up those juices with. The best £16 we ever spent. 

When our rice did come we were also presented with plastic gloves. Apparently you're to mix this rice with your hands, to really get the seaweed, sesame and pork floss in there. It was good fun, and seriously messy. It really makes you aware of how often I might touch my face when I emerged, blinking in the lights, covered in flecks of seaweed.

Continuing the theme of eating with our hands, the sang choi bao (fresh vegetable wraps) were pork, with cucumber kimchi and pickled ginger. I loved this; refreshing, interesting and unexpected flavours from a Cantonese classic.

To finish, "Breakfast 2.0” Horlicks ice cream, cornflake honeyjoy, oats, dried longan, cocoa coffee crumbs"- it did, indeed, taste like the best kind of breakfast. If only my desk muesli could come anywhere close. 

Ho Lee Fook isn't cheap, and it certainly wasn't the kind of prices we had been paying in old faithfuls like Kau Kee. At around £40 a head though, its not bank-breaking and given the high quality of the ingredients and cooking, it made for pretty great value for money. I'm still thinking about that char siu. 

G/F No. 1-5 Elgin St, Central

We slowly came to realise that to eat at all the places we wanted to try, we were going to have to up our game somewhat. That's when two dinners came into play. Dinner Number One: Little Bao. 

It's a tiny little joint, maybe about 25 seats, and as such you have to wait. We did but it was only for 10 minutes thank god, because the food they were turning out looked incredible. It's easy to compare Little Bao to our own Bao but the two are far apart; Bao has the serenity and discipline of classic Taiwanese cooking updated for Soho, whereas Little Bao is this cheeky young thing, dipping her toe in all the fusion seas. We kicked off with a light salad of aubergines, which was actually a giant pile of delicious smoky vegetable topped with a spicy yogurt, pine nuts, and coriander. We devoured it. 

The baos on the menu are announced with "NO CUTTING". I don't know why. Seems harsh. The Szechuan fried chicken with Chinese black vinegar glaze, Szechuan mayo and coleslaw I was happy not to cut and have all to myself except we were supposed to be sharing, humpf. It was perfect; battered chicken, crisp as you like, with a tangy, punchy mayo. 

Did you know I love Filet O'Fish from McDonald's? Have you tried one? You should. The fish tempura bao reminded me of it, but in a really posh way with it's fancy lemongrass and fennel tartare and tamarind palm sugar glaze.

If that wasn't enough, the dessert fried bao with green tea ice cream and condensed milk was almost too cute to eat. But we ate it. It was incredible. 

G/F, 66 Staunton St. Central, Hong Kong

We were almost hysterical with fullness by the time we got to Yardbird, for what would be our 6th meal of the day. We kept erupting into uncontrollable giggles. I think the bar staff thought we were odd. They specialise in yakitori; grilled skewers of usually chicken, over charcoal. We propped up the bar with whiskey cocktails and got to ordering. Tempura sweetcorn was exactly that, and we were impressed they'd managed to make them perfect balls. 

Then followed a frenzy of skewers - we ordered chickens knees, meatballs that you dip in a goey egg yolk, chicken necks, chicken skin... and the skewers just kept coming. I was a bit surprised that they came as twos, as it wasn't specified as that when we ordered - my friend wasn't enormously keen on chicken knees and probably would have sat that out, but that was decided for her. I was also surprised to see that the skewers, charged between $42 - $46 (that's around £4 - £5) are per skewer. I should have twigged really; at Little Bao a dreadfully dreary waiter had intoned about Yardbird being expensive, since "they insist on using free-range chicken, eyeroll". Hey, that's cool with me. You pay for quality produce.

They made up for it when we tapped out at Korean Fried Cauliflower, which was completely delicious but absolutely enormous, and defeated us. The waiter was aghast that we hadn't been offered the half portion, and immediately changed our bill to reflect that, which was nice. It was so, so good. I feel a recreation coming on. 

33-35 Bridges Street, Sheung Wan

I like Yardbird's vibe. So much so that on my 10 hour stop-over on my way back from Vietnam via Hong Kong again, I went down to Sunday's Grocery in Kennedy Town. Along with Ronin, a higher class Japanese joint, they're all owned by the same people. Maybe I'm dense, but the website doesn't make it enormously obvious that Sunday's Grocery is a takeaway hole-in-the-wall, but luckily the friend I was visiting did. We grabbed sandwiches, cans of mixed whiskey drinks (they really like their whiskey) and headed to her apartment. 

The chicken katsu sando was all sold out (wail) and bemusedly I took the server's recommendation of the banh mi - I had just come from Vietnam - and he was right, it wasn't like any banh mi I'd had. Here we were strong on the liver, big on the pickled vegetables. The bread wasn't the airy baguette I had come to know and love, but nevertheless, it was a pretty great sandwich. The bite of chicken schnitzel I had was tip top too. I would like more places to sell me cans of whiskey soda, please. 

I've saved the best for last. I came here both at the beginning of my trip, and made an instant beeline for it during my stopover two weeks later. Yes, Yat Lok's roast goose is hardly a secret, but it really is so good. Perfectly, beautifully lacquered skin and succulent meat, the first time we came we ordered a quarter, to eat with lo mein (noodles to stir) served on the side. We just ate and ate and ate the goose, sometimes with a bite of steamed vegetables in between, a blissful look on our faces. I went back on my own and had a goose leg in soup, with ho fun noodles just to make it a well rounded meal. Stunning stuff. Ol' sad-sack over at Little Bao told us the Tai Po branch was better, which I'm sure it may well be but if you haven't the time to hike out to Tai Po, the Central version still blew me away. 

G/F, 34-38 Stanley Street, Central

I'm fairly certain it would be quite difficult to eat badly in Hong Kong; my peoples just wouldn't stand for it. Even in the airport (roast goose and crispy belly pork, pictured) the food is better than you'd find in a lot of London restaurants charging double for it. 

I miss my motherland. 

Shuang Shuang, Chinatown

Shuang Shuang is a new-ish restaurant, taking over the space that used to be Mr Wu's buffet of woe on the corner of Wardour Street and Shaftesbury Avenue. When it was being built I wondered if we were getting another conveyor belt sushi joint, but I only got half of that right - conveyor belt, yes, but instead they specialise in hotpot. 

Hotpot is incredibly popular in Asia; some know it better as steamboat. It's especially liked as a style of meal for groups; its great fun and sociable, and you get a bonus face-steaming facial. It's a messy meal, as it involves dipping raw ingredients into stock, and then swooshing through various sauces and for that very reason Shuang Shuang provide bibs. I was a bit skeptical about the concept; it's meant to be a sociable dinner, so how would the individual stock pots work? Turns out they have both individual ones and ones to share, with a split for different stocks. Upstairs they have tables for parties of four. All bases covered, then.

The only cooked options are the 'snacks', and the jasmine tea egg was properly gooey. The pigs ears in Xinjiang spice were crisp, crunchy and addictive. That flavour built up incredibly, and before long we were gasping for water. They are a perfect little beer snack. 

We were invited to pick between the broths, and after having tasted them the 'fish pond', which was scented with lemongrass and reminded me much of a tom yum was selected, alongside the vegan soy milk base. I was hoping for a thicker, creamier broth for the soy milk, much like the gojiru that Koya Bar serve but as the broth reduces down, it typically gets stronger in flavour. I was a little taken aback that they charge £7 - £8 for the broths, as you can't really have a meal here without it. 

We got stuck into the ingredients, using the tongs to pluck the ingredients out of their plates and into our wire mesh baskets, to get dunked and cooked in the broth. All of the ingredients that whizzed past on the conveyor belt were of high quality, and we didn't feel there was any point in which we were lacking in variety. Other hotpot meals I've been for in London serve large portions of each ingredient which is great when there's four or six of you, but can be a bit filling when there's just two. This conveyor belt system means you can choose to eat a wider variety in smaller portions. Our favourite was the prawn balls; it arrives in a bamboo tube, for you to spoon into you broth, where it puffs up and bobs to the surface when its cooked. 

Roots like pumpkin, daikon and lotus stems need to go in early on, to give them plenty of cooking time. I usually forget about them and fish out a nice surprise when I'm sweeping the pot. Shuang Shuang has a guide to how long things need to cook for, but for anyone who cooks at home I imagine this would be redundant, as it were us. 

I like that they have more traditional ingredients, like tripe, and this blood tofu. It's pigs blood set and sliced - it has the texture of silken tofu. They also have 'luncheon meat' - aka Spam - which is really very delicious boiled. Trust me. Lots of vegetables went by, like choy sum, gai laan and corn on the cob. They also have very thinly sliced beef, available as wagyu as well which we didn't bother with; after all, you are boiling it and wiping it through a pretty intense sauce. 

Traditionally, once you're done with cooking your bits and bobs, noodles then go in for you to finish off with a noodle soup using the broth that's been enriched with all the flavours of your ingredients. I liked the knotted noodles, and trashy instant noodles hit the spot too. I'd like to see more options for the noodles as they were quite limited to these two on the night we went. 

And then we were done. Soy milk ice cream with crystallised ginger was a lovely, refreshing end to the meal. 

I've been reading the reviews trickle in with interest, and sure enough a lot of them quip about not wanting to cook their own dinner. Giles appears unable to gauge the heat of vegetables coming out of a cauldron of boiling stock. AA Gill confuses hotpot with soup. Bafflingly, a lot of them complain about the stress of so much choice. Have they been to Yo! Sushi? Is that heart-stopping too? Chill out, guys. There's much mention on feeling stressed about all the utensils on offer. Let me break it down for you - tongs for raw food, wire mesh basket for fishing, chopsticks for cooked food into the mouth. The critics seem to have broken down into hysterical children at something more complicated than ordering off a menu. Peculiar really, as I absolutely loved hotpot as a child, and I do now. It's meant to be fun.  

There is the delicate matter of the bill, though. As with any conveyor belt restaurant, one does have to be a little savvy with mental arithmetic. All the careful sourcing, house-made tofu and quality of the ingredients mean that to come to Shuang Shuang, feel like you've had a decent meal and maybe half a bottle of wine, you're looking at £50 a head. Not inconceivable for a Central London restaurant, but Little Lamb, a few doors down, has a hotpot set menu at £23 a head, whereby you order 5 ingredients each. (NB. this is most worthwhile if you are a party of 4 or more.) Quality and variety costs. 

Shuang Shuang,
64 Shaftesbury Ave, 
London W1D 6LU

I dined as a guest of the restaurant. 

EDIT from the PR: the prices have been altered since the visit to the restaurant and the average is now around £25-£30 a head. Shuang Shuang have now introduced a set menu ‘The Market Set” which is £12.50 for broth, dipping sauce, noodles and x5 green plates. 

Where to Celebrate Chinese New Year in London

Kung hei fat choi! It's the Year of the Monkey, and for the next two weeks families all over the world will celebrate Chinese New Year. It's a time to get together and eat, to wish each other prosperity and wealth, and to get together and eat. Have I mentioned it's big on eating?

Traditionally foods eaten tend to be noodles, to symbolise longevity (woe betide you if you cut these with scissors during this time). Whole fish, often steamed but also braised are often on tables, as the word for fish can sound like 'surplus'. Dumplings look like ingots of silver and so are eaten for prosperity, and well, who doesn't like a dumpling? You may see a lot of oranges and tangerines in Chinese homes, as well as the colour red, to symbolise luck and success. There are plenty of recipes appropriate for this time of year in Chinatown Kitchen, like Sichuan wontons, steamed sea bream with goji berries, and tomato, preserved vegetable and egg noodles - but what if you don't want to cook? Here are some recommended places in London to go get cooked for, instead.

Gold Mine, Bayswater

Gold Mine has long since been a favourite for Cantonese food. I've taken friends there, I've taken family there, I've taken clients there. Every time it's consistently good. The best thing here is the duck - roasted Cantonese style, so forget the pancakes. The crisp, lacquered skin and tender, juicy meat comes drenched in its own sweet, star anise basting sauce and it's just incredible. You can order it on or off the bone. Other good things to order are char siu, siu yok (crispy pork belly), lobster and spring onion noodles, steamed egg custard, Japanese egg tofu with minced pork, a vegetable dish (we had gai laan, with oyster sauce), salt n' pepper squid and some rice. That should do 6 of you nicely.

102 Bayswater
London W2 3RR

Tel: 020 7792 8331

Silk Road, Camberwell

Anyone who knows me at all would have known this was coming. I'm a huge fan of Silk Road - I've celebrated my last 5 birthdays there, in fact. I love them mainly for their vegetarian dishes, like smacked cucumber, homestyle aubergine & cabbage, and Xinjiang shredded salad. The lamb skewers are not to be missed though, nor are their dumplings. Book to avoid disappointment.

49 Camberwell Church Street
London SE5 8TR

Tel: 020 7703 4832

Little Lamb, Shaftesbury Avenue

Hot pot (or steamboat) is a very traditional celebratory meal, and it doesn't get much more traditional than an evening at Little Lamb, bang smack on Shaftesbury Avenue. A few doors down is the recently opened Shuang Shuang, another hotpot place serviced by a conveyor belt (more on that to follow), and while I really liked it there, Little Lamb gives more of an opportunity for a larger group get together, with a tighter control on spending. For a set price of £23 a head, one can order 5 ingredients each. I've found 4 - 6 is the optimal number for Little Lamb, and a wide variety of ingredients to dunk in the bubbling broth yourself. 

72 Shaftesbury Avenue 
London W1D 6NA 

Tel: 020 7287 8078

Xi'an Impression, Holloway

One of my favourite openings of 2015, I only wish I lived closer. Xi'an Impression is a tiny little place, 

but they're turning out some incredible food. These spicy belt noodles are flappy folds of joy, and their 

'burgers' - stewed meat in toasted flatbreads, are incredible. Influenced by a large Muslim presence, the food
here is characterised by spice and the use of lamb. More words are here. 

Xian Impression
117 Benwell Street, N7 7BW
Tel: 0203 441 0191

Dragon Castle, Elephant & Castle

Everyone has their favourite dim sum joints, for whatever reason, and mine is Dragon Castle. While they won't win any awards for their dim sum, it is consistent, fresh and reasonable in price. It's near my home and the room is large, so it's not too long a wait for a table (though around Chinese New Year it's better to get there early). 

100 Walworth Rd, 
London SE17 1JL

A. Wong, Victoria

Where Dragon Castle is a casual dim sum restaurant, A Wong is the opposite. Located in Victoria, they serve 
dim sum during lunchtimes only. The dim sum is served per piece, meaning that if you're there as a couple 
you can have very different meals. Often dumplings are served in 3 or 4 which makes dining as 4 often awkward - 
not here. Their food is very much re-imagined classics of Chinese food. On our visit my mother had sesame dumplings
with foie gras, and a crisp char siu bao, topped with a sweet crust. 'Three sauce rice noodle roll' was your classic 
cheung fun filled with Chinese doughnut, the swipes being the sesame, hoisin and soy sauce. The xiao long bao had 
too thick a skin,but otherwise we had a very enjoyable lunch here. As you might imagine, it's easy to rack up a bill, 
though you can make it out at around £20 a head without booze. 

70 Wilton Rd, 
London SW1V 1DE

Tel: 0207 828 8931

HKK London, Shoreditch

If you want to go super-luxe I would head to HKK. I trialled their Chinese New Year menu last year and found 
incredibly well made high-end Cantonese cuisine, featuring a delicacy of flavours and incredible skill in cooking.
All my quibbles from last year - I wasn't enthused about about the poussin and I missed noodles - have now 
been rectified in this year's menu, so I'm imagining a near-perfect experience. 

88 Worship Street
Broadgate Quarter
London EC2A 2BE

Baozi Inn Skewer Stall

If Chinese New Year passed you by completely and you haven't had a chance to arrange a night out with friends
and its not looking likely, just run past Chinatown and grab a couple of snacking skewers from the Baozi Inn
Skewer Stall, next door to the main restaurant. Nothing but a counter with a pot of bubbling broth, they always
manage to cook each ingredient just so, to retain the best of their character. I particularly like the fish tofu, broccoli,
enoki mushroom and 'luncheon meat'. Spam. Mmm. 

Baozi Inn Takeaway, 
27 Newport Court, 
WC2H 7JS.

Garlic Butter Scallops with Ricard

I spent a few days over the new year in a lovely part of Normandy, in France. Just outside Honfleur, we holed ourselves up in a gîte, eating mountains of cheese, playing board games and generally lounging around in trousers loose enough to do so that they'd almost be classified as pyjamas. 

I don't know about you but when I go away I become unnaturally interested in foreign supermarkets. I can spend hours in the aisles gazing at all the different things they have to us, jealous of the large varieties of fruit and vegetables, becoming confused at having to weigh and sticker anything we buy. 

As it was approaching New Year's Eve, this particular French supermarket had boxes of oysters, piles of prawns, and scallops live in their shells. The French love nothing more than to celebrate with creatures of the sea. We couldn't resist the scallops. 8 of these beauties cost 13 Euros - 13! That's around £1.20 each. I'm moving to France.

Have you ever opened a scallop? I hadn't. Thank god for YouTube. It's a damn sight easier than opening an oyster. I set about de-shelling eight scallops, which took a not-inconsiderable amount of time, and it led to me having very vivid dreams about scallop skirts. They are frilly. 

Anyway, it's a crime to flavour scallops with anything too aggressive as you want the sweetness of the scallop to come through. We made a compound butter of garlic, parsley and lemon zest and set it to chill, thinking that this would be simple and beautifully delicious. But oh! We also had a bottle of Ricard just hanging around. I hate drinking Ricard. It's too reminiscent of Sambucca for my liking, without the sweet stickiness of teenage regret, but actually once flambéd, it mellows out and adds just a hint of aniseed, much like tarragon. And who doesn't enjoy setting fire to things? These turned out pretty freaking great. 

Garlic Butter Scallops with Ricard

Serves 8 as a starter

8 scallops, released of their shell, with roes

150gr butter, room temperature

2 fat cloves of garlic, minced

A hefty pinch of salt

A small handful of flat leaf parsley, minced

Zest of half a lemon

A buttload of coarse sea salt - you can omit this if you have a better way of balancing scallop shells on a baking tray

80ml Ricard

A gas click-lighter, or a very long match

Set the grill on to high. Mash the butter, lemon zest, parsley and garlic together. If it's getting a little warm place in the fridge to firm up.

Scatter the salt across a foil-lined baking tray and balance the shells on top. Preheat under the grill for 10 minutes. Then add a tablespoon of the butter to each shell, and place it under the grill for another 2 - 3 minutes, making sure the butter is sizzling but the garlic isn't burning.

Add the scallops to the butter and place back under the grill for 5 minutes. 

Remove, place the baking try on a heat-proof surface. Add 2 teaspoons of Ricard to each scallop, lighting the alcohol as you go, leaving the flames to go out naturally. Be careful of your eyebrows, hair, any loose clothing. 

Serve with crusty bread to dip in the juices.