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Highs Notes and Low Notes in Hong Kong
HUTONG - Local critics denigrate the new, trendy
restaurant Hutong, saying that it’s a place for the view but
not the food. Since I don’t live in Hong Kong, I feel that
I can disagree. The view is spectacular, even if you are not eating,
but the food plus the view makes 2 plus 2 equal 10.
There’s a lot of attitude here, for sure, from the time you
call. It’s the old New York City trick, offering either a table
at 6 PM or 10 PM. Who wants to eat then? After a bit of insisting,
you get your table at the hour you want it. And once you arrive,
the attitude calms, and if you are five or six diners, as we were,
you are ushered to a private room, with a spectacular view of the
harbor and all the lights of the grand high rise buildings, and you
feel, already, as though you’ve paid the price of admission,
and are content.
Sitting there, drinking a very crisp and very chilled French Chardonnay
from the south of France, we feasted on some spectacular and super
spicy fare: The two best dishes of the evening were a first course
dish of razor clams in a spicy sauce, the best razor clams I ever
tasted, except at the hands of chef Joel Robuchon. They were moist,
meaty, festive and fun to eat, whole morsels of protein and denseness,
good.
We ate a lot of dishes that night, from lobster to chicken, crab
to shredded pumpkin and potato, but the other best dish of the night – no
contest here – was the crispy de-boned lamb ribs. Hold your
breathe here, these are fatty ribs, but the kind of fat you want
to wrap your mouth around, chew and digest, inhale, adore. A new
dish, something we are not familiar with, something we can think
about going home and making: lamb, spice, moist, fun.
Throughout the evening , we felt part of the restaurant but not
too close, part of the city, but not too close. This is the magic
of Hong Kong, for you are a member of the club, but also apart from
it all.
Hutong
28/F One Peking Road
Tsimshatsui
Hong Kong
Telephone: 3428 8342
Email: huntong@aqua.com.hk
Web: www.aqua.com.hk
Open daily. All major credit cards.
Highs Notes and Low Notes in Hong Kong
VICTORIA CITY SEAFOOD - Ten
years ago, when I was assigned to judge the world’s
best restaurants – 10 top tables and 10 casual
dining spots – the welcoming Victoria City
Seafood was near the top of my list of casual eateries.
After a recent midday feast at this bustling Chinese
banquet-style restaurant in an aging shopping mall,
I’d still put it up there. The restaurant
never disappoints, and makes us all fall in love
once more with the delicate, sophisticated, easy
to love flavors and textures of Chinese fare.
While you pursue the varied menus here – I
always go for the extraordinary dim sum – take
notice of the warm, crispy, deep golden miniature
fried fish, with just the right amount of salt
to stimulate your appetite.
As ever, I had to stop myself from ordering a
second bamboo basket full of my favorite of all
dishes here, the moist, Shanghai-style hairy crab
dumplings, so fragile that the waiter escorts each
tender morsel from steaming basket to white china
bowl, allowing each diner to douse the feather-like
dumplings with the rich, fragrant, gingered vinegar.
The dumplings burst in your mouth, ooze with delicate
but determined flavor of the seasonal crab, creating
a sort of festive party in your mouth.
Colors, flavors, textures here are varied, from
the tiny deep-fried vegetarian spring rolls, all
crispy and golden, and minute enough to pop each
morsel in your mouth in the daintiest of fashions.
The warm, egg-shaped steamed vegetable dumplings
were exquisite, an artful mix of perfectly diced
bits of mushrooms and water chestnuts, made me
happy that I was not in the kitchen laboring over
these elegant morsels. I was perhaps most surprised
by the mild, silken steamed rice rolls (more like
rice powder crepes) rolled like a cigar --- here
a blend of dried diced scallops and shredded ham
-- and arriving layered topped with a rich and
elegant XO sauce. The Shanghai-style Yellow Bridge
Pastry arrived like tiny sesame-topped hamburger
buns, only more elegant, a yeasty warm bun stuffed
with tender bits of well-seasoned minced meat.
Victoria City Seafood never disappoints, and since
the big round tables are always packed with families
covering multiple generations, the energy of the
room will carry you along all on its own.
Victoria City Seafood
2/F Hung Kai Centre
30 Harbour Road
Wan Chai
Hong Kong
Telephone: 2828 9938
Open daily. All major credit cards.
BO - It’s been at least
10 years since I’ve been in a restaurant
that was preceded with such a hype and offered
so little. Bo – also known as Bo Innoseki – is
the unrivaled restaurant of the moment in Hong
Kong, touted by international critics as the El
Bulli of the Asia, in reference to the unparalled
Spanish restaurant north of Barcelona. Such comparisons
are a bit like saying that Kentucky Fried Chicken
is on par with a restaurant run by Joel Robuchon.
Rather than the adjectives of “dazzling,
innovative, and creative” I would say “unsophisticated,
bland, just plain weird, and 100% self-delusionary.”
Bo fits the Hong Kong classification of a private
club, meaning its health standards are less strict
that a bonafide restaurant and hours are regulated
and shorter. Some call them speakeasies, restaurants
that are run out of a private home, often by well-known
chefs. You enter Bo from a dreary alley, walking
up the two damp flights of stairs, entering into
a room that looks like it was put together five
minutes before. The decorator sort of forgot to
visit, as did the chef, the maitre d, etc. I don’t
doubt owner Boris Yu’s intentions, but I
do doubt his touch with reality. He truly believes
the hype, and thinks he’s just on the coattails
of an El Bulli. I am sorry, but the exhausting
multicourse sampling of tiny dishes out of shot
glasses and tiny Chinese cups, small plates and
bowls were without class, style, meaning, or flavor.
We moved from a clam topped with spicy tomato jelly
and a fuyu (Chinese preserved bean curd) foam,
that looked and tasted as though it was a five-year
old child’s first effort in the kitchen;
on to a pineapple foie gras ravioli with a bourbon
sauce. Do you need to read further? Do you have
indigestion yet? A lot of fuss with flavor, a lot
of big talking with no foundation. The much-touted
wine list offered few choices and no bargains,
and the cold, modern, loft-like dining room with
only three of a dozen tables taken on a weekend
evening, made me sad indeed. What’s more,
a white truffle menu that cost $100 US dollars
included two paltry white truffle offerings, each
with no more a few specks or slices of the fragrant
mushroom. What’s that about the emperor’s
new clothes?
Bo (also known as Bo Innoseki)
2/F T.M. Leung Building
16 Gilman’s Bazaar
Central, Hong Kong
Telephone: 2850 8371
email: dine@boinnoski.com
web: www.boinnoseki.com
Open daily. All major credit cards. 700 HK
truffle menu.
RESTAURANTE ESPACO LISBOA - It’s
not often that one gets a chance to travel from
Asia to Europe in a single hour’s shot, but
if you catch the ferry from Hong Kong to Macau,
you can pretty much find yourself moving from the
land of dim sum to the land of salted cod cakes
and flaming chorizo sausages, in the name of the
appealing little Portuguese spot known as Restaurant
Espaco Lisboa.
Here, down a small side street off the quiet Macau
fishing village of Coloane, you’ll find a
bustling little restaurant offering rustic, robust,
authentic Portuguese fare in a cozy setting. The
wine list here is extraordinary, and you can count
on the outgoing director/executive chef Antonio
Neves Coelho to guide you through the wine list
as well as the appealing menu. At a recent lunch,
we feasted on paper-thin slices of their pata negra
mahogany-toned smoked ham, along with tender fried
codfish cakes and can’t stop eating them
slices of rich, smoky, salty Portuguese sausages – courico
assado na canoa – that had been dramatically
flamed in a ceramic gratin dish, all right for
sopping up with the delicious Portuguese bread.
Our main course of traditional Portuguese duck
rice --- arroz de pato `a portuguesa – was
elegant in the heartiest of senses, chock full
of rich flavor and chunks of extraordinarily sweet
and tender duck.
Mr. Coelho and my dining friend collaborated on
the wine choices, including two outstanding, little-known
reds, a 2001 Quita de Vale Meao Douro, an exotic,
full-on red wine made in the steep hills of the
Douro, the home of the famed Port wine. Here, five
of some 90 grape varieties were selected to make
table wine in place of port, a success I’d
like to see, hear, and taste more of. Likewise,
the choice of a pure syrah Quinta do Monte d’Orio
2000 was ideal, beautifully complimenting the rustic
duck with rice.
Restaurante Espaco Lisboa
Rua das Gaivotas nr 8 r/c
Coloane, Macau
Telephone (853) 88 22 26
Open daily. All major credit cards.
SWATO FAT CHIU CHOW - If the
Chinese love their dim sum by day, those with a
bent towards the fish-based, earthy Chiu Chow fare – from
the coastal region around the Shanton district
of Guangdong Province – like their late-night
snacks. For those in the mood for a simple, earthy,
honest little meal with the locals of the Kowloon
district near the old airport, then wend your way
there and plan on a mini-feast.
Nothing here is in written English (though several
workers speak and understand) so at Swato Fat you
may need to resort to the old “point and
eat” method of dining. As you enter the restaurant
along a market street full of blazing colored neon
lights, you’ll almost trip over the makeshift
fish market set up outside, as several dozen Styrofoam
boxes serve as fresh, bubbling, holding tanks for
the fresh fish and shellfish.
Inside, the place is full of tables of locals
as well as a growing number of Koreans and Japanese
travelers who have discovered the popular eatery
and here food literally flies from table to table.
There is an open kitchen, miniscule but efficient,
with numerous woks, deep fryers and stock pots
going full blast, and a tiered buffet of the night’s
offers, ranging from fish to meat, shellfish to
vegetables, hot pots, to all manner of dumplings.
My all-time favorite Chieu Chow specialty remains
their rich, moist, delicious goose preparation:
the whole goose is braised in a vibrant broth of
soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger, star anise, cinnamon,
scallions and lemon peel. The meat is then cut
into generous, bite-sized pieces and each morsel
is dipped into a pungent sauce of garlic and rice
vinegar. In this simple, Formica-tabled setting,
you could close your eyes and imagine this dish
being served in the grandest of style. It has flavor,
elegance, simplicity, and soul.
And the feast goes on: There’s a lively
soup laden with chopped fresh celery, soothing
preserved cabbage, soft and pungent bits of pork
belly, and lots of black pepper for that added
spice and tang. A marvelous clay pot filled with
giant chunks of cabbage, dried mushrooms, and sweet
carrots in a deliciously aromatic broth. Delicate
dumplings, beggar’s purse style, arrive with
a finely minced filling of water chestnuts and
soft, pink baby shrimp. The only dish here that
disappointed were the scallion dumplings, too big
and too greasy to be pleasing.
Swato Fat Chiuchow Restaurant
60-62 South Wall Road
Kowloon City.
TAI WOO - Should you find yourself
suffering from jet lag, can’t sleep and are
hungry in Hong Kong, then head over to the Cantonese
seafood restaurant Tai Woo in Causeway Bay. Open
until 3 am, this bustling, banquet style restaurant
offers some truly wonderful fare. If I could return
for just a single dish here, it would be their
breaded and deep-fried oysters, giant specimens
garnished with plenty of smoky bacon and eaten
wrapped in a fresh lettuce leaf. The single dish – you’ll
no doubt need to halve the oysters to manipulate
them – offers every manner of gastronomic
pleasures, hot and cold, crunchy, soft, and salty.
I didn’t want them to end. But end they did,
followed by a pleasantly sweet sesame chicken dipped
in ginger oil, and deliciously textures deep fried
bean curd served with a red and spicy dipping sauce.
Starters of chilled baby cucumbers from Taiwan
were so crunchy and delectable, we ordered second
portions.
Tai Woo Restaurant
27 Percival Street
Causeway Bay
Telephone 2893 0822; 2893 9882
fax: 2891 9564.
Open Daily until 3 am. 10 am to 3 pm only.
LAW FU KEE NOODLE SHOP - After
a tour of Hong Kong’s outdoor street markets – despite
the ever-dwindling size and ever- plasticized wrappings – tuck
into a noodle shop for a breakfast of congee, the
popular Asian soup rice mix that comes with a choice
of condiments. A friend and I shared a warming
bowl of the soothing, steaming mix of brothy rice
that had been simmering in the compact open kitchen
of this famed little no frills shop. We opted for
the “do it yourself’ version, which
means that a bowl of liquidy, alabaster rice and
broth arrives, with a side dish of accompaniments
of your choice. We ordered a mix of slivered raw
fish, sliced before our eyes, garnished with ginger
and pungent scallions, then drizzled with oil.
We slowly added the fish and garnish, stirring
them into the warm rice mixture, making for a super-fresh,
just cooked breakfast that kept us going well into
the afternoon. After 11 am, order their selection
of noodles, barely cooked, with a touch of spring
onions, the way the Cantonese like them.
Law Fu Kee Noodle Shop
50 Lyndhurst Terrace
G/F, Central, Hong Kong
Telephone 2850 6756
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