Well Friday morning dawns and it is penultimate day in Hong Kong. I head for Jordan to do some last minute shopping and to sample some more traditional breakfast food and a Café de Coral fusion breakfast set.
Here is a piccie of a standard MTR scene
First up it was back to my favourite 24/7 Congee shop for a spot of sliced fish juk and one of their freshly cooked doughsticks – sorry but in my eagerness to eat my breakfast I forgot to take any piccies. However, walking up Nathan Rd I had spotted a traditional street food vendor squashed into the tiniest of spaces.
She and her colleague were doing a roaring trade in fried spam and omelette sandwiches, along with the usual selection of fish balls, beef ball and sui mai plus tubs of plain cheung fun – which is what I had – strips of steamed rice roll in a polystyrene tub slathered in soy sauce, sesame sauce, hoi sin sauce and topped with crunchy sesame seeds - at the astonishing price of 40p sterling/HK$6 – this was a breakfast snack fit for a king but affordable by a beggar.
In the interests research I finished this mornings eating with a Café de Coral fusion breakfast. At around HK$20 I got a bowl of vermicelli soup noodles topped with Satay beef, a glass of HK Milk Tea and a plate filled with a fried egg, mixed veg, sausage in sauce, fried luncheon meat slice and a slice of lor bak go (turnip pudding) – truly amazing and amazing value.
Canteen Serving Counter Cafe de Coral style
In between I bought a suitcase at Yue Wah – the China Products stall – I needed it for all the goodies I had bought to take home with me – tins of Yunnan Ham, bags of beef and pork jerky and dried shredded cuttlefish from Aji Ichiban and of course the wonderful Isoyaki Scallops which are so nice but so expensive. I also ended up with a pile of Isoyaki Chicken Wings, Chickens Feet and Duck Kidney’s. The selection of suitcases at Yue Wah was surprisingly good and VFM – not expensive as the Babila chain but comparable in quality. I had thought of getting one from the markets at Mong Kok but when I daw the quality of the ones here and the fact they were cabin luggage compatible I decided to spend a bit more money on something I could use more than once.
The contrast of the buildings in Hong Kong never cease to amaze me - turn in one direction you see this gleaming tower of glass and steel -
turn in another direction and the contrast could not be greater -
Anyway after all that shopping it was back to the hotel for a brief rest before heading out for the rest of the day/night.
Spent most of the afternoon and early part of the evening just mooching around Wanchai and Causeway Bay – areas I had not spent any time during this holiday. Found a great street food stall near to Times Sq. Had some skewers of seafood balls and pigs large intestine. Had a late lunch of Ngau Jap Lo Mein – mixed beef offal on a bed of noodles – stunning. Also in some healthy fresh fruit dessert as well.
A specialist Ngau Jap (beef offal) cafe - great stuff for those with a truely adventurous plate - its all about the textures
Some nice fresh fruit with coconut noodles and mango pudding
I met up with my brother-in-law Anthony’s sister – Sophia, whom I met a couple of months ago in the UK and found out she was a die hard foodie like me. Anyway we went for a good mooch around the street markets and food stalls around the Wanchai locality and we stopped off to sample various bits and pieces before the main meal later in the evening. We had a plate of very authentic Pad Thai in a little café which was just a room at the back of a Thai grocery shop – it didn’t even have a name and some of the staff didn’t speak Cantonese. A real local dive that you couldn’t just chance upon, unless you were very, very lucky and quite observant.
Thai Shop Front
Backroom Cafe
Serving Counter filled with Thai goodies
Menu
Pad Thai
A visit to allegedly one of the best congee shops in HK was next on the agenda and whilst I had wanted to sample the legendary crab congee – it wasn’t available – we ended up sharing a bowl of teng jai juk – little boat congee – which was a good selection of fish and seafood plus some slivers of Cantonese roast duck – all good stuff. A slow walk towards Causeway Bay revealed more scrummy looking street food.
Congee Cafe
Teng Jai Juk
Lo Siu Yue Gup - Marinated Pigeon
A selection of claypots
Wind Dried Meat Stall
Butcher - Wanchai Style
Guess this must belong to some super fit delivery boy!!!!
And so to the main culinary event of the evening – Mori Hachi Yakiniku -
Japanese table top smokeless BBQ restaurant that is currently one of the hippest places to eat in Hong Kong.
It appears the speciality is the beef – specifically Wagyu Beef – the holy grail of all carnivores, along with other lesser mortal beef but still of the highest quality. We had thick cut marbles short rib, thin cut marbled short rib, thin cut ox tongue with finely diced shallots, spicy marinated chunks of pig colon and of course pieces of the legendary Wagyu. And just for good measure we had a bowl of seafood noodle soup which had some really tasty clams in it.
The legendary Wagyu Kobe Beef
Thick Cut Fresh Ox Tongue
Thin Sliced Ox Tongue with Finely Diced Shallots
Spicy Pigs Intestine
The meat is simply cooked over a smokeless grill in the centre of the table and when done to the amount you require, dipped in the provided plate of condiments and eaten. Simply, healthy and delicious – the basic raw ingredients have to be of a very high quality for this this type of cuisine to work. The quality was high an it did work very well. We were joined by Sophia’s boyfriend, her sister Catherine and also my cousin Philip, who turned up towards the later stages of the evening.
Seafood Noodle Soup with Clams
We all went for desert at one of the specialist milk desert places in Causeway Bay, and full though I was I had the double cooked milk pudding plus a spoon full of Sophia’s chilled egg custard pudding. What a day of eating and tomorrow I will have to head for home………
