Tim's Kitchen

Admittedly this is a very belated post, a visit made last October, but a post nonetheless! Happy New Year everybody - the holiday period was definitely enjoyable for me, being a glutton and all....hope all of yours was too!

Braised pomelo skin with shrimp roes ($80/pc)

Really good - not to get into the whole cooking process but the soaking of the skin to remove its bitterness alone takes around 3 days... since this is something I wouldn't bother doing, this is one dish I like ordering. The shrimp roes were fragrant too and seasoning was just right. 

Chilled marinated goose meat roll ($54)

Not a big fan of beancurd skin but I liked the filling - different textures and flavours made for a delicious bite.

Choice of 2 BBQ meat: BBQ pork and roasted crispy baby pork belly ($118)

BBQ pork (char siu) was mediocre at best, lacking both sweet and salty flavours, charred bits and wasn't quite tender enough; but that clear five-layered roasted pork belly was as glorious as last time.

Double-boiled winter melon soup with shrimps, yunnan ham, crab meat, fungus ($550/7 servings)

In line with the end-of-summer heat, we pre-ordered this bad boy to share. Luscious winter melon meat with fresh seafood and quality ham... lovely!

 

Deboned Eight Treasure Duck ($500)

This was fall-off-the-bone tender, one can easily cut through the meat with a spoon. Well-seasoned and something worth ordering in advance for.

Barley, chesnuts, green beans, lotus seeds, gingko nuts, egg yolk and various offal including liver.

From a previous visit: 

Two barbeque selection ($118) - BBQ pork and roasted baby pork belly

Oven-baked chicken with preserved vegetables wrapped in lotus leaf ($450)

This chicken was one of the better Chinese-style chicken dishes I've had. Very tender chicken with basically no fat between the skin and meat, and full-on flavours coming from the bird itself and saltiness from the preserved vegetables. I'll be ordering this again.

 

Tim's Kitchen deserves its popularity. I have yet to try the taro puff with sliced duck and the fried glutinous rice,  and will definitely be back for those!

Food: ♥♥♥♥1/2

Service: ♥♥♥

Price: About HK$300-400

 

Tim's Kitchen

G/F & 1/F, 84-90 Bonham Strand,

Sheung Wan 

Hong Kong

T: +852 2543 5919 (bookings highly recommended, many dishes require at least a day's notice) 

August Restaurant Week HK - La Parole

Taking a break from playing catch-up on writing about my foodventures in the past year... I just wanted to write about a few recent places I visited during Restaurant Week this month. 

First up - a dinner at La Parole 

Menu

For those who aren't familiar, a select few restaurants in Hong Kong participated in Restaurant Week whereby they design a menu for a given price/category; and customers book in advance (through diningcity) to try out the specially designed menu.... La Parole was one such restaurant; and dinner was priced at $428 for four courses.

Yardbird

Yardbird @ Sheungwan

Yardbird has fans. A lot of fans. And despite the long queues (no reservations taken), one waits, and wait they should - the food here is fab. Below is a collection of photos over several visits, with a few comments here and there.

Menu, specials on board

Doppio Zero

Doppio Zero @ The Pemberton

On a Monday lunch hour Doppio Zero was quite empty. It was blazing hot outside and the first thing we ordered were two icy cold drinks, for me, an iced coffee that was actually quite delicious and for K, a lime soda. We then started to go through the lunch options and decided on the following: 

La Parole

La Parole @ The Pemberton


La Parole had opened at The Pemberton not long ago and at first I have to say I had my doubts given the choice of  restaurants in the same building. The owner of La Parole is the same as Leonidas Chocolate stores around town, as well as the newly opened Shou Zen on the 7th floor upstairs.


For dinner they only do sets, there's a 3-course ($380), 4-course ($428), or tasting menu of 6-courses ($600). 
As for choices, there were 6 appetizers, a daily soup, 7 main courses and 6 desserts to pick from. 

bread basket

208 Duecento Otto

Date: 24th September

208 Duecento Otto @ Sheung Wan

For lunch, B, M and myself made a trip to 208 Duecento Otto in hopes to find good Italian food after much hype about this restaurant since its opening earlier this year.

Stepping through the entrance and making our way upstairs to the dining hall we knew a lot of effort and money had been put into the design of the restaurant...but how about the food?

There were only two lunch sets, rather than the three which had been published on their site.... we opted for the 3-Course express lunch, each ordering different mains. 

Chopped pizza dough with basil and a little olive oil. Turned stone-cold quickly, which I didn't appreciate. Texture wasn't exactly good either - way too chewy. 

First Course

Salad of arugula and shaved parmigiano reggiano cheese, dressed in a balsamic vinaigrette with lots of pepper and salt. 

The chefs were a little too heavy-handed on the salt, but otherwise a simple and stellar salad. The serving was quite large too, but most importantly the two main ingredients - leaves and cheese were very, very fresh. Couldn't and wouldn't ask for more!

My Second Course

Margherita

The first pizza came out with the center completely soft, clearly because the pizza sauce was too liquid. So I asked them to bake it slightly longer to which they agreed, but the waiter commented that this was how pizza napoletana is meant to be.... FYI no pizzas should ever be soggy.... yes they may be soft (as in the case of Neapolitan-type bases) or crunchy/crispy, but soggy? In the end they were unable to re-fire the first uneaten pizza and made a new one for me in the end. The second one was still quite soggy in the center, but slightly better and acceptable. They could use more torn basil for flavour, but otherwise a very ordinary and unimpressive margherita. 

M's Second Course

Spaghetti with parma ham and bell peppers

Quite a small portion, and sauce was acceptable, thanks to the parma ham and adequate salt. Spaghetti was cooked al dente so it had a nice bite. 

B's Second Course

Penne with Eggplant 

This vegetarian pasta was definitely one of the blandest pastas I've tasted. The sauce was predominantly tasteless, and the oiliness of the sauce didn't help either. Eggplants, parmesan and basil did not impart adequate (if any) flavour....and the penne was a bit too chewy for me, could probably have used another minute or two in the hot water. 

Third Course

A scoop of gelato of your choice

We picked saffron (right), green apple (bottom), raspberry (left). 

The saffron was quite milky and although the saffron was not particularly strong it was quite enjoyable. 

The raspberry was tart and had bits of rasperry pulp for texture which I didn't mind, but for the masses I think straining the mixture prior to churning would've been better. 

The green apple sorbetto was my least favourite - despite the bits of green apple the icy sorbetto itself tasted a little artificial for me...

coffee....

or tea??

Despite the mediocre food, reservations are a must. This place was fully packed by 1pm, and was told they had a long wait-list for dinner time. 

Food: ♥♥

Service: ♥♥♥

Price: $$$

208 Duecento Otto

208 Hollywood Road,

Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

Tel: +852 2549 0208

Sang Kee

Date of visit: 13^th September

Sang Kee Congee @ Sheung Wan

I woke up with a craving for something soupy...and thought of Sang Kee. I dragged my poor brother out with me to Sheung Wan, promising him some good congee (though I had never been). After getting slightly lost in the unfamiliar streets I finally found Sang Kee (there are a few branches around the same area, but each specialise in something different e.g. rice vermicelli or beef brisket). Sang Kee Congee was small and full at 11am, but we were just arriving as some were leaving, and were seated amongst other grandpas and grandmas quietly slurping their huge bowls of congee....and we knew we had arrived somewhere special.

shredded pork and century egg congee $25 (large)

a piece of century egg... 

Lean pork and century egg is a common and popular combination, and Sang Kee's made for the best version I've had (which I can remember). the consistency of the congee was perfect - thin and rice is cooked to the point of being only tiny particles left. I couldn't detect the use of cornstarch or other thickeners either. The ingredients gave the plain congee flavour, and it was slightly salted so it was really enjoyable on its own. 

fish belly and sliced fish congee (yu-lam and yu-wun) $32 (large)

There was plenty of fish belly (i.e. fish attached to bones) in this big bowl of congee, which was much plainer and loaded with spring onions in comparison to the lean pork-and-century-egg-combination above. The fish itself, being white, does not impart much flavour to the congee so the bowl of soy sauce is there for diners to dip the fish for more 'taste'. The consistency of the congee is the same as above - thin, with the rice 'broken'. 

From the two the pork and century egg definitely outshone the fish belly/sliced fish congee, though both are indeed different and had equally good congee base. 

pan-fried fish (dace) cakes $10 

These pan-fried fish cakes were a disappointment (at least, on my visit any way), and don't think I would order them again on a next visit. Fish cakes itself were soft and all I could taste was oil.... i.e. the fish cakes were a sponge which absorbed way too much oil! (ps. should have ordered those fried dough sticks/crullers instead!)

Fish cakes aside Sang Kee definitely did not disappoint and those huge bowls of congee provided a filling and comforting breakfast. 

Food: ♥♥♥♥

Service: ♥♥

Price: $

Sang Kee Congee 

G/F, 7-9 Burd Street, Sheung Wan

Tel: +852 2541 1099

ABC Kitchen

Date of visit: 31st August 2010

ABC Kitchen @ Sheung Wan Cooked Food Market

M and I have been wanting to visit ABC Kitchen for some time, since the rave reviews after its opening... tonight we finally made it to Queen Street Food Market, hungry and expecting good food. 

menu for tonight.

Bread – home-made dinner rolls speckled with herbs were warm and soft upon serving, but unfortunately too ‘doughy’ for me. 

Rouille on toast, bouillabaisse. 

Bouillabaisse ($88) was a small bowl of seafood in at most a few tablespoons of soup. Bouillabaisse is a seafood stew originated from Provence, containing at least three types of seafood and topped with bread/toast spread with rouille. ABC Kitchen’s version was definitely a thick stew, and not a thin broth on our visit, and contained a large prawn, a couple clams, mussels and a small piece of white fish. Taste wise it was rich in seafood flavours, and hearty – I loved this stew! But portion-wise, they definitely could’ve been more generous, especially with the soup. On top sat a toast (a different cut of their home-made bread) spread with (I am guessing home-made) rouille, which was really excellent, probably even better than the stew! 7.5/10

Suckling Pig ($118) took a while to be served… at least 20-30 minutes after ordering. The portion was again slightly disappointing, our two cuts consisted of one crackling skin only and the other a bit of meat attached. We both thought the skin was indeed very crispy and well roasted, and the meat tender and moist. However, the two blobs of sides next to the pig spoilt the dish a little for me. The purple cabbage was insanely sweet, whilst the mash…bland and awful. They added in bits of corn and carrots for texture and colour but without seasoning the whole concept fails! 7/10

Carbonara ($58) was probably the worst carbonara M and I have had. I stopped after two bites because life is too short for poor pastas. Our linguine was sticky and softer than al dente, but that wasn’t bad enough. The sauce given was too little, too rich and bland - it could’ve been thinned down to coat the pasta properly, therefore preventing the linguine sticking together. There was no taste of egg, and the fatty bacon did little to help with the flavouring of the whole dish. 2/10

Banana banoffee Pie ($38) was the dessert we picked over a dessert sampler, because we were quite full by now. It arrived shortly and I swear both of our jaws dropped in awe of the presentation. Digestive cookie crust? Yes. Toffee? Yes. Banana? Yes. Cream? Errr..yes, if aerosol cream counts. But how they managed to screw up this simple dessert is beyond me. The photo in this case explains. Nonetheless, I did think their toffee was quite special and tasty. 5/10 (because of the yummy toffee). If you are looking for good banoffee pie, M recommends Portobellow whilst Jaspas' banoffee pie for me was way way way better than what we had!

Our bill came to about $300 for two - definitely not cheap, despite what reviews have said. For the quality and surroundings of the dinner this night $300 would be fair, if not slightly over-priced. 

Food: ♥♥

Service: ♥♥♥

Price: $$$

ABC Kitchen

Shop CF7, Food Market, 1 Queen Street

Sheung Wan

Tel: 9278 8227

Sui Kee Café - a must-visit!

Date of visit: 10th Aug 2010

SuiKee Café @ Sheung Wan Municipal Services Building / Cooked Food Market 

menu

After lunch at Yung Kee the boys were only 6-outta-10 full... so I took them to Sheung Wan Market for some good eats!! I had read about this place and have made a mental note to come for a long time...so off we were. $20ish cab ride later we were at the doorstep of an indoor-market. On the second floor there are plenty of 'dai pai dongs', each specialising in different foodstuff - there's one doing Thai food, one doing dim sum etc....  We went to shop CF17 and found a table for ourselves and placed our order: one milk tea (iced) each, and two French toasts to share. 

Iced Milk Tea ($9 each) comes in a re-used Schweppes bottle. The old man delivered these goods quite soon after our order, so I'm guessing they were made earlier that day and refrigerated. No ice here, so the tea and milk concoction is rich, and as you can see by the colour of the drink, the tea is quite strong - exactly what I like! If you prefer milkier drinks then this may not be for you.... (as it was not for A anyway). 

French Toast ($18) is made to order and different from any French toast (HK-style of course) I've ever had. Whilst I grew up with the deep-fried kind, with either a sweet spread in between (peanut butter or Kaya) or plain with golden syrup on the side for you to pour (think Lan Fong Yuen or Stanley Market's 泗益), Sui Kee's version is two slices of white bread pan-fried with a little egg wash until golden brown and then condensed milk is drizzled on top.... now this, in our unanimous agreement, surpasses the deep-fried version! This was something that we raved about from after eating it until night....if you have any doubt as to what I've just said, please do try it for yourself! 

Plate no.2: doesn't that look divine?!

cute little man who served us =)

Food: ♥♥♥♥♥

Service: ♥♥♥

Price: $

Sui Kee Café (瑞記咖啡)

Shop CF17, 2/F, Sheung Wan Municipal Services Building And Civic Centre, 

Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

Tel: +852 2850 8643