West Coast Plaza, Crystal Jade HK, The Hurt Locker

Wow this entry dates back to 25th feb when Hurt Locker was still showing and it hasnt even won the oscar yet. How much has happened since then =P After the med eopt MCQ test (tks for picking up the osces after leaving so early from the paper, K!), I made a wrong turn towards Tuas and we ended up at West Coast Plaza whilst still trying to decide on travel plans.

We browsed around before deciding to try ou the D24 durian buns from Oishii Bakery ( West Coast Plaza). Durian paste was wonderfully potent but it'd do nicer in a puff form!

We were debating between Bread And Butter Box and Coffee Bean and chose the former. This is the Yin Yang - peanut butter and nutella and we loved how crumbly the bread was...till it was like eating air in the words of K.

Her He Bi Hiam Toast

Mine Kaya Toast...its like a thick toast with the characteristics of a crisp thin toast

We went for Prof Soo's - only half filled heh - but it was worth going for all the oeso/stomach knowledge. We were ravenous so we went to hurry get movie tickets before going to Crystal Jade Hong Kong (Orchard Central) and started with this Salted Egg and Chicken Porridge which was served in a claypot. Not quite the typical Crystal jade consistency of the porridge (a little more watery) but still very delicious as late night food.

A walk down memory lane with the very colourful and cheery menu complete with fantizi in the menu (the difficult chinese characters), loud chinese mtvs, and waitresses with HK accents. lol, even the PORRIDGE was named after a district in HK... And Kels had a nice window seat!

This is what we came for - Spring Chicken with a huge load of fries and crispy bits!!! Very freshly fried, very crisp skin, very juicy chicken... Its worth your 10 bucks - Arnold's sells this at a much steeper price but imho I think this is really really good, don't mind paying more...lol

Hot Plate has all the meats - fish fillet (very tender and nice!), Chicken (too tenderised =P), Lamb chop (yums too) and the Cheese Sausage which Kels had. We were deciding between this or the Ocean basket (but everything fried leh.....together with the spring chicken), but this was a real carnivorous grease bomb.

This is finally our last movie before MBBS (yeah and this chapter was typed before mbbs lol). But anw havent had a chance to write a review about The Hurt Locker, which we caught during the study break (when everyone scrambled home to study;P). This movie is incredible, in the sense that it was directed by a woman (the war, violence, grit was absolutely cutting). Its like, you'll never expect anything less than Carrie Brickshaw to direct Sex and the City.

And it makes you thank you every day of your life that you have such a safe environment to function in, live in, play, and have a little quiet at the end of the day. Movies like The Blind Side make you grateful for the bed you have (no matter how rich you are, you only have a bed to return to at the end of it all, aint it), and the fairness despite the unfairness in the world. Don't compare, don't complain, I'm so happy to have a chance to study what I chose and to make the people I love proud.. Is the unfairness of your situation the driving force for your work? So you can get a release from that unfairness? Is that what drives materialism?

Hong Kong : The day we went to the heartlands of 牛頭角

Openrice.com is such a fantastic hungrygowhere website for the clueless as it ranks eateries by categories. Egg waffle, or zidanzai is a signature Hong kong snack Kelly and i grew to love, so clearly, there was reason to do a search on hungrygowhere and out churned out this little street stall 無名炭爐雞蛋仔 (牛頭角下邨第9座食街對開(球場旁), Hong Kong), in 牛頭角- right in the heartlands in North Hong Kong.

雞蛋仔 Zi Dan Zai, is actually a 3 D waffle - instead of the usual sunken in squares you get in Western waffles (in Prima Deli) or those Belgian waffles, you get popped up circles.

What is unique about this stall is that their waffles are all placed on this charcoal grill after they are made, giving it a really unique, smokey taste.

We really loved their normal waffles - the batter was rather buttery and delicious, and has a charcoal grilled aroma. In Hong Kong, the waffle filling is a very creamy peanut butter and alot alot of white sugar, making the peanut butter very "gritty" and delicious !

And this is their amazing zidanzai... and after going around trying zidanzai from all over, we realised the density of those little bubble pops (reminds me a little of a more palatable version of umm, bubble wrap) is different in different stalls - some stalls specialise in light, airy versions, some half air and half dense cake, and others - like this stall, very dense inside.

Its like eating a very big, interconnected kueh balu..
Then Kelly led me to this dessert stall, 肥媽甜品粉麵小食 (牛頭角下村14座, Hong Kong) infamous for having a mystery hunk who helps his mom run the stall....but we asked him to help us take a picture (of ourselves) instead of taking a secret shot of him...doh...

Okay im damn sad now, after searching thru openrice.com, i realise this stall has folded....its such a gem i think its so wasted!!

There is Durian Steamed milk and mango sago pudding. The durian steamed milk was quite amazing, its like a durian custard. We realise Hong Kongers have a fetish for durian too!! And this marries their all time favourite steamed milk with durian. The mango sago pudding was not bad too.

They also have a fetish for this durian dumpling roll - we had this at Honeymoon desserts too.

But the difference is that the durian flesh here is much more than Honeymoon dessert's, which was full of cream. You can find this back in Singapore too, at Far East Plaza (level 2)

After that string of desserts we finally decided to head for proper food so we settled at a cha chan teng, 興記茶餐廳 (牛頭角下村10座11-12號, Hong Kong). Kelly the food leader recognised the picture of a shack and brought us here....and in we went, to a very old school cha chan teng.

Do you notice the chair seats are rather unusual? Anyway, the eateries in Hong Kong all have this table format - and sometimes, when you have to share tables, you share the same seat with your food partner, and may end up having to face total strangers - never understood why circular tables a la Singaporean hawker centres are a rarity in Hong Kong.

The black pepper chicken rice was fantastic. The chicken cutlet was freshly fried and was most crisp. Again, mopped up most of the pepper sauce with the rice. I need to find a replacement for this back in Singapore!

Kelly had Butter bread with omelette...

And Pork chop with maggi noodles - which she wished the meat wasnt soaked in the noodles...

Had my usual Yuan yang (although he didnt really understand my order)

We passed by another eatery which was really crowded at first and was really tempted to queue for dinner but then we became wiser and chose the above (cos the long long queue was like for a zi char stall and there was only 2 of us). Then we passed by another fried dough fritters stall and couldnt resist.

What is really unique about the dough fritters in Hong Kong is the Fried French Loaf. This is amazing, your normal baguette dipped in egg batter and fried - its sweet, savoury, with soft bread right in side.
I still like my sesame dough fritter - though this one was empty and extremely doughy inside. Miss my peanut filled dough fritters ! Those at Rochor Tau Huay at Selegie Road rocks my socks man.

It was a pretty interesting excursion to the heartlands - similar to Singapore - the corridors thru the flats were extremely claustrophobic with flats lining both sides of the corridors (and some were pretty dark and dodgy as well) , and the coffee shops and zichar concepts are really similar too - except that the Hong Kongers really eat at all times of the day, keeping these eateries up and running through the nights. Its a dream for all who indulge in supper.

Hong Kong: Cha Chan Teng special

You cant consider yourself to have experienced Hong Kong until you step into a Cha Chan Teng and experienced the ambience and buzz in the eatery - the brusque (and if you are lucky, enthusiastic) service, the fast-in-fast-out turnover of the place, and the noisy atmosphere and general busy-ness of the place. Most of the time, the popularity of the place is proportional to the quality of the food you can come to expect.
This first place I am going to talk about is Honolulu Cafe (Central, Hong Kong). We have returned to this place many many times for its egg tarts.We also almost always order the yuan yang - coffee and tea, and the ones here tend to be really milky - as compared to the faux ones in Singapore which has a larger coffee component which kinda overwhelms the tea.
My dear friend Kelly also started a pineapple bun (polor bun) frenzy and we loved it that it came with a thick slab of cold butter.
The egg tarts were the best part of the meal cos it was the flaky kind, which is quite rare in Hong Kong where there are many with buttery crusts..
The egg custard was really soft and flimsy and you can see the flaky, crisp layers of crust beneath - it was such a thin layer the whole egg tart eating experience was gone in a flash.
We came to Cui Hua (Central, Hong Kong) later that night. This place was also featured on the U-Magazine and is famous for its fishball noodles. This place operates 247 and is in the clubbing district so it is popular with the clubbers for supper. This place is so colourful and has so many cheerful bright colours it makes us happy just being in that place.
This was my mixed fish ball noodles - there was fish everything - fish ball, fish cake, fish stuffed beancurd and beanpaste - I liked it all cos it was great comfort food in the middle of the night.
Kelly had less variety in hers as she just went for the normal fishball noodles set - and she was eyeing those fried chicken cutlet/chicken rice/curry chicken that other tables were having.
Whilst the fishball noodles was nothing much to rave about, these hot buns are - they are just toasted butter buns were awesome !!! they were toasty and buttery and so delicious- especially since they were only HKD$1 (like, 20 cents in Singapore?!) per bun.
Their french toast was pretty much normal - all the grease and fried batter you can imagine, its here =P
Another place we always frequent (cos we're always in the Mong Kok area) is Jin Hwa (Mongkok, Hong Kong). We receed this place the night before and never looked back since then - we came here about 3 times.

The hot yuan yang here is my favourite, cos its so thick but well balanced.

The stir fried beef horfun is highly recommended. Plenty of worhei, and tender beef slices. Its greasy but we loved it.

The black pepper chicken chop with rice was also good, there was plenty of rice to mop up all the delicious black pepper sauce. It was high quality cha chan teng fare, I wished there were such good everyday meals I can tuck into back home in Singapore.

Then before our second visit back to Jin Hwa again, we stopped by Kang Nian Bakery just next door to it.

One of the novelties in Hong Kong is that their street food is literally, sold in the streets. This bakery kept churning out baked goodies and displayed it outside the eateries, a whiff of the pastries and its hard to rein in your temptation.. This napolean cake is like Hong Kong kueh lapis - layers of butter cake sandwiched between bread pastry.

Amazingly, we also saw roast meats being sold too - they just hang the carcasses all ready to be chopped up..
The egg tarts were scorching - they scalded Kelly's but it was no problem for me cos I ingest burning foods (hot Soya bean milk =) ) all the time. Egg tarts straight from the oven is certainly the best way to have them.

Okay, so much for the prelude to our second visit to Jin Hwa. Having one round of pastries did not stop us from having another round...

THe U-Magazine actually recommended the Polor - you (pineapple bun with butter) but they sell out everything in the day so during our first dinner visit we didnt get to try it. This is one of the best we've tried, the top crust crumbles so easily, giving way to soft bread within..

Ditto for the popular egg tarts, the pastry has a more buttery texture as compared to our favourites from Honolulu...

It has a balanced proportion between buttery crust and eggy custard.

It was a freakin hot day so I settled for the cold yuan yang... if you noticed I like my drinks hot - whether is it soya milk, milk, tea, coffee - i think the hotness retains the wholesome flavour of the drink.,
On our third visit here we had the beef omelette sandwich but it doesn't beat Kam Fung's (scroll further down). Nonetheless, steamed bread in sandwiches is something we miss dearly from our Hong Kong days.

Kelly loved the beef horfun so much, we had another round - the crunchy beansprouts and leeks was a good balance to the greasy kway teow..

We couldnt miss the polor you again...

And the egg tarts !! (Actually, we were just eating not cos its fantastic -as compared to Honolulu or Tai Cheong - but cos its a little strange to just eat polor you without any egg tarts after that, its a ritual already....)

I guess you should know what time of the day I came to drink my cold yuan yang (and getting to those popular egg tarts and polor buns...)

Let's venture abit off the urban central Hong Kong into Stanley - a rustic, weekend getaway for many eco-loving Hong Kongers, and a playground for the foreign expats and tourists.

It holds a gem: Si Yi (Stanley, Hong Kong) a traditional eatery right in the city centre of Stanley. Whilst the expats and foreigners hang out at the waterfront bars which seem swanky on a cursory glance, real traditional food is to be found within this smoky, hot, crowded place, with almost aloof service (as it seems, a hallmark of Cha Chan Tengs)

Mind you, its quite a queue to get in, and sweating in the mid afternoon sun waiting in hunger for your lunch is no mean joke.
As usual, our yuanyangs..
The pineapple bun with butter...this was rather soggy though..
The beef omelette sandwich was quite good - in Hong kong, they steam all their white bread that is used to make their sandwiches, making it very soft and fluffy.
Well we made this treacherous journey and braved the long queue to have this French toast with kaya...
Yes, they place kaya in between pieces of bread, then they fry it in egg, then top it all off with a slab of butter - how sinful can this be !! It was a grease bomb, with kaya and butter spilling everywhere but it was most satisfying.
This entry is so dated, the Stanley excursion actually occured on Easter so we had hot cross buns after our lunch...this was by the waterfront of Stanley beach. We loved these cinnamon flavoured hot cross buns, with scattered sweetness of raisins.
We were actually opening our toys from the Kinder Bueno Easter eggs... Mine is the uglier one and I am sure you cant decide which is...
There is also a new Kinder Happy Hippo in the Easter sale..
I am sure they still look happy....
Later that night we stopped over at Kamfung Restaurant (Wanchai, Hong Kong) for dinner. I read in hautestuff that this place has legendary egg tarts, but a secret (that Yixiao revealed, thanks for the let in!) is that their beef omelette sandwiches were fab as well...
Well too bad that night they were closing so they had neither!! We settled for their sets instead - Kelly's teh ping (which was apparently famous) and my warm milk (so I can dip bread in)
I had the pineapple bun with omelette - sweat bread with salty greasy omelette was good comfort food, eggs with bread is always my favourite.
During our second visit to Kam Fung, we had the fantastic beef omelette sandwich. The steamed bread was so soft and lovely, holding in between creamy eggs and tender whole slices of beef. This is the best sandwich I could possibly have, simple and nutritious, but so good.

We had the chicken pie too - the pastry is extremely buttery, unlike the flaky ones that I prefer.

And I'm sure you can guess that the egg tarts are also extremely buttery..

Kelly had their famous milk tea..

After that we then moved on to our next U-magazine recommendation - a Kaya Pineapple bun, to be found at Harbourcity Kitchen (Convention Centre, Central, Hong Kong) They call it the Crispy Kaya Sweet Bun, and we were very excited to try cos it encompasses two of our favourite things. Note that there is a one-for-one promotion after 3 pm (but we couldnt wait for it).

Actually, they pride themselves on making real Pineapple buns, or Por lor paus. Almost all bakeries in Hong Kong sell them, but the crust is mostly a sweet crisp crust, with no relation to the 'Pineapple' at all. Here, in Harbourcity, the buns have a fruity crisp crust, giving way to a central core filling of pineapple chunks and kaya. Well the brown kaya wasnt strong at all !

Later that day (yes, we went to 3 cha chan tengs in a day), we had tea at Lan Fong Yuen (Central, Hong Kong), an institution in the Central CBD district. It looks like a shack, doesn't it? They are famous for their takeaway milk tea sold from this shack.

Luckily the interior was decent (crowded, but got aircon =)) and there happened to be filming of some food variety show when we were eating there. Quite good entertainment - and for a while I was quite excited to spot some HK star - but they started speaking mainland Chinese so..... =P They interviewed the bosses for such a long time, the food just became cold and I'm not sure if I'm convinced when they eat (a small bit) of the food and rave about it..... take your food variety shows' ravings with a pinch of salt...

I had the condensed milk with peanut butter thick toast - extremely creamy I loved it, especially when I dipped it into my milk tea..

We had the french toast with kaya too and this takes the cake for having such a thick layer of egg crispy batter. This is like the one we had at Si Y but the kaya is not the nonya kind that we're used to in Singapore. Its sweet but doesnt have a strong coconut flavour.

Ended off with their legendary hot milk tea..