Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

Location: Hong Kong

Author: My Husband

Of all the different types of Chinese cuisines available, it is no secret that Christina and I like Cantonese best. While those who misunderstand the cuisine describe it as “bland”, we feel that good Cantonese cuisine is all about highlighting and enhancing the natural flavors of the main ingredients in a dish. This is best done by carefully balancing the textures and flavors in a dish to ensure that the main ingredient is not overpowered by the other things in it.

In good Cantonese dishes, you can always find harmony in the flavors/textures: the sweetness of fresh steamed fish is complemented by the subtle saltiness of a light soy, the heaviness of a thick stew is cut by a few drops of vinegar, the softness of tofu is contrasted with a crispy deep fried prawn paste, etc. Cantonese food can be subtly flavored, or it can be strongly flavored, but whatever the case, it is the balance found in those flavors that creates the depth and complexity in taste that so satisfies those of us who appreciate the cuisine.

On the flipside, it is difficult to cook good Cantonese food. The freshness of ingredients and the talent of the kitchen staff are of paramount importance in determining the success of the food, and cut-corners or missteps in the cooking process will result in a “faulty” dish. In North America where the majority of Chinese restaurant dishes are cooked to meet a price point, it is challenging to find good Cantonese food indeed.

But what happens if menu prices take a second seat to food quality? What happens when a chef decides to cook the best food he can by using the freshest ingredients without worrying about food costs? Lung King Heen happens, that’s what, and the inspectors from the Micheline Guide liked it enough to award this restaurant and its chef three stars.

On this Hong Kong trip, my foodie aunt insisted that we go to Lung King Heen to try the dim sum for ourselves. Will we find the balanced flavors and textures that we so prize? Read on to find out…

We were seated at a very spacious four-top next to a bank of huge picture windows. Some seriously nice china was used for the place settings.

Nice view of Kowloon from our table.

When the Michelin Guide awards a restaurant three stars, it’s not only about the food. That the food is excellent is a must, but service and ambiance must be also be top notch. And Lung King Heen delivered.

The service was excellent – warm hand towels and finger washing bowls magically appeared when needed, tea cups were kept filled (teapots were kept warm at a nearby service console, keeping our table clear for the dim sum), water glasses were constantly refreshed, and a simple glance at the waiter had him by our table in a jiffy. The two waiters assigned to our table anticipated our every need and brought us stuff we wanted before we could even ask. For instance, after I ate a bun without using cutlery, a silver finger washing bowl appeared by my side. After I washed, the bowl disappeared. Even more impressive was the unobtrusive manner in which the service was delivered; we spent the entire lunch chatting amongst ourselves and despite all the freshening of the drinks and china at our table, our conversation was not disturbed at all. Who says good service at a Chinese restaurant doesn’t exist?

A trio of sauces. Note the perfect alignment of the three teaspoons…

Steamed dumplings (潮州粉果). A thin and delicate thin skin holding a filling made with shrimp, pork, chives, and mushrooms. Very nice.

Prawn dumplings (I蝦餃). The prawns were fabulously succulent and fresh. One of the best I’ve had.

Pork/Prawn dumplings (燒賣). The bouncy pork filling was topped off with prawn. Looked pretty and tasted great.

Lobster and scallop dumpling. This is one of the more renowned dim sum dishes at Lung King Heen. The dumpling skin holds a generous portion of scallop and lobster, which are topped off by half a shrimp. Each dumpling is served in its own steamer. This was wonderful.

Grated daikon pastry. A flaky pastry shell enclosing a savory daikon filling. See how the pastry takes the shape of a daikon?

BBQ goose buns. Perfect sweet/savory balance in the BBQ goose encased in a delicate bread shell. This was fantastic.

BBQ Pork (叉燒). The presentation left a bit to be desired, but tasted decent. I’ve definitely had better BBQ Pork elsewhere.

BBQ Pork Jowl. Perfectly fried, each slice was beautifully crunchy. Best pork jowl I’ve had. This was so good, we ordered a second serving.

Deep fried squab. This is Christina’s favourite, and she loved it. She said it blew the Tai Ping Koon version away, and I agreed. Definitely one of the highlights of this meal.

[Dry] Fried glutinous rice. There was an optimal ratio of rice to other ingredients in this one, which gave the dish a wonderful texture.

Abalone fried noodles. This was fried with abalone stock and some slices of abalone. Good textural contrast, but the abalone rice at Thai Village in Singapore is still our favourite.

Toothpicks in a solid silver holder were offered after we finished our savory selections.

Osmanthus jelly (桂花糕). Very fragrant and not overly sweet, this was one of the better examples of this dessert.

Portuguese style egg tarts. Oh yeah Baby! Fabulous.

Double boiled bird’s nest served with almond & coconut cream. Very nice.

Mango flavored sago cream with pomelo. This one was a huge hit with all of us. It’s much nicer than the version available at Hung Fa Lau.

Complimentary desserts.

Suffice it to say, we were STUFFED after this meal. And yes, the flavors and texture of the dim sum dishes here were balanced, and overall food quality (save the BBQ Pork) was excellent. This is the best dim sum I’ve had in quite a while, edging out even the Shang Palace in Singapore. The food, service, and décor in Lung King Heen could not be faulted, and despite it being a Michelin three-starred restaurant, the price for the meal was not super expensive. This is another restaurant we plan on heading back to the next time we’re in Hong Kong.

To conclude this post, here are some pictures taken at (and outside) Lung King Heen:

Lung King Heen is located on the 4th floor of the HK Four Seasons.

Another view of Kowloon.

Nice view from the multi-storey atrium of the hotel.

Typical Hong Kong street scene. The trams are a good way to see the city, and cheap too, at only HKD $2 per ride.

Next post – my wife’s old stomping grounds.

Location: Hong Kong

Author: My Husband

After having our 糖水 at Hung Fa Lau, we stepped out of the restaurant and went into the one right next door. Dinnertime!!

Tai Ping Koon (太平館餐廳) is one of the oldest ongoing dining establishments in China/Hong Kong, and is the originator of quite a few HK-style café dishes that are so ubiquitous today. For this reason, many consider it to the forerunner of the HK-style café or “茶餐廳”. Some even consider it to be the very first one.

Tai Ping Koon Restaurant. Established in Guangzhou in 1860.

The restaurant wears its history proudly, and the first page of the menu tells its story in three languages.

First page of Tai Ping Koon’s menu. The gist of their history: Founded in Guangzhou in 1860 by a guy who was a chef in a western trading company. Boasted a stable of customers who were famous in Chinese history. Moved to Hong Kong in the 1930s and still managed by the same family today. Famous dishes include: roast squab, smoked pomfret, Portuguese style baked chicken, and Swiss sauce chicken wings.

Because we already had so much to eat in the afternoon, we really weren’t feeling very hungry at all. However, that didn’t prevent us from trying out some of their specialities…

Fried Beef hor-fun or “乾炒牛河”. Look at the color and caramelization on the hor fun; it’s perfect – the cook really did an excellent job of controlling the wok-hei when frying up the noodles. This was easily the best beef hor-fun I’ve had. Although I wasn’t hungry, I wolfed down more than my fair share of this.

Swiss sauce chicken wings, a HK-style café standard. These were very good – plump chicken wings with a good balance of sweet and savory in the sauce. There was a small blurb in the menu about the history of this dish. Apparently, this started off as a chicken dish prepared with a sweet soy sauce. Upon trying it, western guests gushed about it, and kept saying “sweet sauce, sweet sauce!”. Since the chef back in the day wasn’t conversant in English, he adopted that description as the name for this dish – except he mispronounced it as “Swiss sauce”. So there you go – Swiss sauce chicken doesn’t have anything to do with Switzerland.

Roasted squab. My wife loves squab, and she really knows a good one when she tastes it. She really liked Tai Ping Koon’s version – the meat was tender and succulent, and the flavors were very good. The sauce was excellent. The only downside, if you could consider it that, is that the skin wasn’t crispy because of the method of preparation. Most other restaurants deep fry the bird instead of roasting it. Note the contraption for squeezing the lemon wedge – you don’t see this in other HK style places.

GIANT soufflé. We saw this at quite a few tables, and we had to order it. I’m not sure if the perspective comes through in the photo, but this soufflé is the size of a human head. There’s no fancy preparation here – just a giant soufflé that was perfectly baked. It didn’t come with any sauces or accompaniments, which was ok because it tasted fine by itself.

I ordered some tea to finish off the meal and expected the regular HK-style milk tea. But the above was what I got instead – loose-leaf tea, steeping in a pot. A tea strainer was provided, along with a small pot of evaporated milk.

Tai Ping Koon was a really interesting experience. It serves HK-style café dishes, but in an environment that isn’t quite HK-style café. The waiters wear buttoned-down shirts under waistcoats, and go about their work in a professional demeanor. As you can see from the way tea is served, some vestiges of traditional western dining are preserved, yet there are no real “western” dishes served. Suffice it to say, we really liked the food at Tai Ping Koon, and we’ll be back the next time we’re in Hong Kong.

Next post – our visit to the one and only Michelin three-starred Chinese restaurant in the world.

Location: Hong Kong

Author: My Husband

On the day we travelled to Hong Kong, we woke up at 5:30am to catch the 8:45am SIA flight. 5:30am is waaay earlier than when we wake up on work days, so we were really kicking ourselves for not selecting a later flight. At the time of booking, it seemed like a really good idea to get into Hong Kong earlier in the day…

We checked out of the Pan Pacific at 6:15am, and were pleasantly surprised to see a line of cabs already parked at the hotel’s taxi stand. We jumped into the first one, which turned out to be driven by a Michael Schumacher wannabe; as soon as he got onto the East Coast Parkway, he kept the taxi well above 100 km/h while expertly weaving around slower-moving traffic. I considered asking him to slow down, but he was doing such a good job driving that I decided to leave him be. Had he been like the cabbie who took me to the airport on a previous trip – a guy who seemed to think a car should be driven on the lane-markers instead of between them – I would have told him to drop us off on the shoulder of the expressway. The cabbie got us to Changi Terminal 3 at 6:35am, which was quite a bit earlier than expected. Had I known, we would have slept in until 6:00am…

My aunt and uncle were already waiting for us at the airport, and it wasn’t long before we were checked in and getting some breakfast in the Star Alliance lounge. My first visit to Hong Kong in two years had begun.

Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok Airport is located quite a distance away from the city centre, and there are really only four major modes of transportation available to get you downtown: Taxis, the MTR subway, public buses, and shared hotel coaches. If Christina and I were travelling by ourselves, we would typically use the hotel coaches for our transfers to the hotel. However, if you are travelling in a larger group, and your luggage can fit in the trunk of a cab, it is more economical to cab it. In HK, all the cabs are Toyota Comforts, which offer lots of room in the cabin and lots of room in the trunk (way better than those little Corollas being used in Vancouver now). Our cab took the four of us, plus our luggage, to the Park Lane Hotel on HK Island for about HKD $380.

The Park Lane is one of the grand dames in the Hong Kong hotel scene; it’s been around forever, and while very clean and well-maintained, could use a round of updating. As it stands, the hotel has this old world luxury vibe that’s about 20 years out of fashion… Having said that, the staff was helpful, housekeeping was great, and the location couldn’t be beat. Situated right in the heart of Causeway bay, it was only a few minutes walk to places like Time Square, Sogo, and a whole lot of shopping and eating places. One feature of the hotel that all of us found funny was this:

A glass-walled bathroom. Thank goodness for the curtain.

After dropping our stuff in the rooms, the first order of business was to go and get lunch. 10 minutes after checking in, we were out and about, making a beeline for one of Hong Kong’s most famous “Kees” – Mak Un Kee (or simply Mak’s). Mak’s is renowned for its wonton noodles, and rightly so. It’s the best that I’ve had in a long while.

The most popular Mak’s is located on Wellington Street in Central, but they have another branch that is just across the street from Sogo, on Jardine’s Bazaar. It’s slightly more than a hole in the way, but it was at least a pretty clean hole.

Menus are mostly in Chinese, and are displayed under a pane of glass on the tables.

Wontons are made in house, which explains why they are so good. Unlike the prawn fetish that many other places seem to have, Mak’s wontons have prawns and ground pork in them. We much prefer this over the all-prawn wonton.

For us, a bowl of wonton noodle can be judged on several things: the noodles themselves, the broth, and the wontons. Imho, Mak’s overachieves in all three areas.

The broth is clean, loaded with umami, and has a hint of smokiness/spiciness. This is one of my all time favourite. Unfortunately, none of the wonton places in Vancouver even comes close.

The noodles are very thin, has very little lye water in them, and cooked to just before al-dente. Because the noodles are thin, they crunch in your mouth. In the top photo, we have “zha jiang” noodles. Bits of pork mixed with a wonderfully flavourful sauce, this was great. In the bottom photo, we have prawn-roe noodles, which is my favourite. The prawn-roe gives the noodles a wonderful pungency, and a strong prawn-y taste. You can also see that the serving sizes are extremely small; at almost CAD $6 per plate, the noodles aren’t cheap.

A bowl of mixed dumplings. Wonton and 水饺. Each was bite-sized, and wonderfully textured. The meat and prawn filling were seasoned well, and in the case of the 水饺, some crunchy “cloud ear” mushrooms were added.

A plate of wonderfully tender gailan. Not stringy at all.

A plate of blanched pork liver, served with lots of ginger and scallions. A spicy soy sauce (soy with little chilli padi in it) accompanied this dish. Very old school Chinese. It was cooked just right, and was very rich.

After lunch, we went for a little shopping therapy. But in Hong Kong, because of the number and VARIETY of shops, a little shopping actually took a long time. I actually enjoyed myself, unlike in Vancouver (where you have the same shops carrying the same products, just in different locations). Before we knew it, the sun had set, and we were feeling peckish again. So we went looking for a snack before dinner. As all of us really like Hong Kong style sweet soups (糖水), we decided to step into the nearest Hung Fa Lau for a little sweet indulgence.

Yin-yang mix of Sesame and Almond soup. Strong sesame and almond flavours, with just the right amount of sweetness. This could be ordered in hot or cold versions.

Baked sago pudding with red bean paste in the middle. This is one of my favourite Chinese desserts. The pudding part is very rich and buttery, and the sago gives it an interesting texture. The sweet red bean paste provides a sweet counterpoint for the pudding.

Double-boiled double-skin milk. The milk turns into a panna-cotta like state after the double boiling; this was less dense than panna cotta, and had a very strong aroma of milk. Very nice.

It wasn’t all sweets that we had at Hung Fa Lau. Their pan-fried rice rolls are also pretty popular, and we had a serving as well.

The caramelized bits, and a crisp outer layer, provided a good textural contrast for this dish.

After snacks, we went next door for dinner – at possibly the world’s first HK-style western restaurant. Watch out for it in my next post…

To finish off this post, I’d like to write about a restaurant in Metro Vancouver that is related to HK’s Mak’s. It is called Michigan, and is located in a strip mall along Richmond’s Alexandra Road. Christina and I went for a quick lunch there recently…

This text describes Michigan as the only restaurant in North America managed by HK’s Mak Un family. The guy who owns Michigan is the son of the guy who owns Mak Un in HK apparently.

Braised beef brisket. This was very nice – the beef was tender, and very flavourful.

Prawn-roe noodle. The noodles were very good – thin and crunchy like the HK Mak Un noodles. However, there wasn’t enough prawn-roe, and what was there wasn’t very strong in taste. Not even close to the HK version…

Wonton noodles. Prawn fetish again – only prawns in the wonton, no pork. Noodles were good, but broth was disappointing. Again, not a patch on the HK version…

So while Michigan might do in a pinch (especially for prawn-roe noodles – do any readers of this blog know where else we can find prawn-roe noodles in Vancouver??), it is but a shadow of Mak Un Kee in Hong Kong.