Archive for category: Hong Kong, China

I wrote about what a dai pai dong is in my post about on Leaf Dessert, which you can see here.  Dai pai dong are a dying breed and I’m sure in 10 years from now there will be very few if any still around, so on my more recent trips I’ve been trying to go eat at them (there are only 28 left, so it’s not a crazy idea to be able to eat at many of them).  I feel like it would be a shame not to at least have tried these places and more importantly many of them are known for having good food.

Oddly enough, Stanley Street in Central is where many of the remaining dai pai dong are located.  This is in stark contrast to most of Central, which is a very modern business district (in case you are not familiar with Hong Kong).  On this street you’ll find a row of metal hawker stands set up with plastic tables and chairs.  While things like this are common in the rest of Asia, they are becoming increasingly very rare in Hong Kong, so it is cool to see it.

The service was pretty good; they were very nice and friendly.  I’m not sure how much English they spoke, but their Mandarin was surprisingly good as I expect most places like this to speak heavily accented Mandarin.  The menu is translated into English, so even if you don’t speak any Chinese you should be fine.

Here’s what we got:

Clams in Black Bean Sauce (Chi Zhi Chao Xian 豉汁炒蜆):

The waiter recommended this.  However, it was a lot different than I thought, I was expecting it would come in the typical black bean sauce, but instead while it had some black beans in it, it was in this much lighter thinner sauce that was slightly sweet with onions and peppers.  The clams were good quality, but I prefer the regular black bean sauce to this version.  7.75/10

Stuffed Peppers and Eggplant (Qian Rang San Gui 煎讓三寶):

This was typical stuff spicy green peppers and eggplant stuffed with a fish paste and then sauteed in some black bean sauce.  It has pretty good although wasn’t anything of the ordinary.  8/10

Eggplant with Garlic (Suan Xiang Qie Zi 蒜香茄子):

The waiter recommended this.  It was sautéed eggplant topped with minced garlic and diced green onions.  The eggplant was cooked perfectly and while I thought it might be too much the minced garlic it went perfectly with this.  Overall, I thought this was a really nice dish.  8.5/10

Fresh Scallops with Garlic and Vermicelli (蒜茸粉絲蒸扇貝):

This is a dish of fresh scallops served in the shell that are steamed with minced garlic and clear vermicelli.  I really like this dish when it’s done well as the juices from the scallop mix with the garlic and its tastes really great.  The version here was pretty good, but I had just had one of the best version I’ve ever had Qiao Tei (Under The Bridge Chili Crab) two days before, so it was a bit hard to match that.  8.25/10

Overall, I thought the food was good although not amazing by Hong Kong standards, but it was a fun experience and I’d recommend checking out this dinosaur before it’s gone.

Address:
9-10 Stanley Street, Central
中環士丹利街9-10號舖
Phone: 2541 5678

Ser Wong Fun (蛇王芬) and Se Wong Yee (蛇王二) are two well-known snake soup restaurants in Hong Kong.  There are others, but I heard about these restaurants when I first started coming to Hong Kong a long time ago.  I’m not sure if they’re related, but their names (Ser Wong Fun means Snake King Fragrance and Se Wong Yee means Snake King 2) and menus are very similar, so maybe they are or were related.  Anyhow, I’ve been to both of them, but a long time ago far before I started blogging.  So, I decided that it would be a good time to re-visit them and write one of them up and I happened to be meeting some friends who live in Mid-Levels, so Ser Wong Fun got the nod.

Ser Wong Fun is located in Central at the bottom of Mid-Levels.  The exterior of the restaurant looks a bit out of place because most of the stores around there are reasonably modern and Western whereas Ser Wong Fun is old school and Chinese.  The interior of the restaurant is plain, but kept clean.  All the menus are in Chinese only, their Mandarin is heavily accented and I highly doubt they speak English.  If you come here you should definitely bring someone who speaks Chinese or at least write down what you want ahead of time because you’ll probably have communication problems otherwise.

Here’s what we got:

Chinese Sausage Over Rice (Run Chang 潤腸 La Chang 臘腸):

One of the things they are known for are their Chinese sausage.  The reddish sausage (la chang 臘腸) is the typical Cantonese style sausage; its pretty fatty and has a sweet taste to it (I absolutely love these).  The dark brown sausage (run chang 潤腸) is a liver sausage that isn’t sweet, has a slight liver flavor to it (although it’s not strong at all) and is a little drier than the la chang.  The sausages here are well made and have good flavor and texture.  You eat them over rice with a slightly sweet thicker soy sauce (probably homemade) poured over it.  Chinese sausage with rice is true comfort food for me and these were really satisfying for me.  8.75/10

Snake Soup (She Geng 蛇羹):

Snake soup is actually supposed to be a winter soup, but they serve it all year round here.  It’s a thicker soup with a lot of snake meat in it and they also put in these big crunchy fried wonton skins.  The soup is savory, but reasonably mild tasting.  So, how is snake meat? Does it taste like chicken?  Well, it kind of does.  Texturally it shreds up like chicken although maybe a little more tender.  Flavor-wise, the meat is mild and clean tasting and isn’t gamey whatsoever.  It’s sort of surprising because I always imagine reptile meat as having some strong gamey flavor, but this doesn’t.  I also really like the crunchiness of the fried wonton skins in contrast with the thickness of the soup.  Overall, it’s a pretty tasty soup and definitely worth trying even for the less adventurous.  8.5/10

Sweet & Sour Pork:

We wanted a dish for the table and I saw this on a few tables, so we ordered this.  It was typical sweet and sour pork, but cooked well.  The sauce wasn’t overly sweet or gloppy and the meat was fried nicely, not too greasy or over-battered.  It’s not a revelation, but it was solidly good.  8/10

Overall, this is an enjoyable place to eat at and probably the type of place I would stop by a lot for a quick meal if I lived in Hong Kong.  I definitely want to come back next time for their double boiled soup as my friend told me they do a good job on those here as well.

Address:
G/F, 30 Cochrane Street, Central
中環閣麟街30號地下
Phone: 2543 1032

Kwan Kee Claypot Rice 坤記煲仔小菜 is a famous claypot rice (bao zai fan / bo zai fan 煲仔飯) restaurant located in Western District in Hong Kong. My friends have been raving to me about it for years, so on this trip I finally got to try it although it happens that I actually came here many years ago, but it was well before my blogging days so I never used to keep track of where I was going back then.

Bo zai fan (claypot rice) is one of my favorite Cantonese dishes so that’s what I came here for, but when I told my friend that I wanted to go she told me that she actually doesn’t even really like bo zai fan as it’s too much rice, but she really likes the other dishes a lot, so that piqued my interest as I hadn’t really thought about their other dishes.

The restaurant is located in an alley right off Queen’s Road West. There is an indoor section and an outside area with picnic tables and plastic chairs; it’s on the border of being a dai pai dong based on the way it’s laid out and the general atmosphere. The restaurant is fairly cramped with an open kitchen and there are specials written all over the walls. The open kitchen is interesting as you can see they cook the rice using both a regular grill and a charcoal grill; I believe they switch the claypot rice from the regular grill to the charcoal grill or vice versa at some point during the cooking process although I didn’t ask them about their technique. Traditionally charcoal fire is the way of cooking claypot rice although I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between using a regular versus charcoal grill.

The service was fine as it was fairly quick and efficient. I’m not sure if they speak English or not, but it’s likely that they don’t or if they do not very well. Also note that you need to make a reservation here; you can walk in, but it’s a crap shoot as to how bad the wait will be.

Here’s what we got:

Imperial Chicken (Gui Fei Ji / Ba Wang Ji 貴妃雞 / 霸王雞):

This was boiled chicken served with minced ginger, garlic and scallion oil. The meat was nicely tender and had a great chicken flavor that you don’t get from most chickens in the U.S. The skin was really nice as well and was fairly similar to Hainan chicken although it wasn’t served quite as cool as Hainan chicken is and the skin doesn’t separate from the meat as easily. I thought it was great, but my friends said that normally it’s even more tender and that the skin is more yellow as opposed to the slightly off yellow color of the chicken we had. The waiter said that they used a different chicken that day, but that it was the same quality. I’d love to try it when it’s on because I thought it was great on an off day. 8.75/10

Lamb Belly and Bamboo Pot (Zhi Zhu Yang Nan Bao 枝竹羊腩煲):

This was a big hot pot with chunks of lamb belly, bamboo, fried tofu skin, corn and green vegetables. My friend told me it’s one of their specialties. The broth was light and clean tasting and it got heavier as the lamb cooked longer and the fat was rendered into the broth. The lamb was really nice; it was fall apart tender and not gamey at all. While it was a simple dish I thought it was excellent. It was definitely a surprise dish for me especially since lamb is not used very often in Cantonese cuisine. 9/10

Beef in Satay Sauce Over Chinese Broccoli (Sha Die Niu Rou Chao Jie Lan 沙嗲牛肉炒芥蘭):

This was strips of beef stir-fried with sliced bamboo shoots and peppers in satay sauce over boiled kai lan (Chinese kale). The beef was stir fried nicely; it was silky and tender. It had decent wok hay, which is the flavor you get from cooking stuff at a high heat in a wok effectively smoking it. The satay sauce was a light flavored brown sauce, which was pretty good although I thought it could’ve been a little more flavorful. Overall, this was good although not amazing. 8.25/10

Salt and Pepper Fish and Squid (Jiao Yen Jiu Du Yu Xian You 椒鹽九肚魚鮮魷):

You can get the squid or fish separately, but we got the combination. It’s the typical salt and pepper batter, but it was very nicely executed. The exterior was crispy without being oily and had a good salty flavor without being overly salty. The squid and fish meat was very tender which was great. This is one of the better version’s I’ve had in a while, I especially liked the fish which was called “nine stomach fish” in Chinese (no idea what it’s called in English). 8.75/10

Eel, Spare Rib And Liver Sausage Clay Pot (Bai Shan Pai Gu Run Chang Bao Zai Fan 白鱔 排骨潤腸煲仔飯):

Bo zai fan (claypot rice) is rice that is cooked in a claypot, various meats are added on top and the flavor from those meats runs into the rice while the bottom of the rice is very crispy from being cooked in a claypot over a hot fire then a special soy sauce that is darker, thicker and sweeter is poured on the top and you mix it all together. We got the eel, spare rib and liver sausage as toppings. My friends said they are known for their eel here. The eel was really good, very tender and clean tasting; even though I love eel I normally only like Japanese style eel, but this eel was definitely a pleasant exception. They also add some black bean sauce onto the eel, which was a nice touch. The spare ribs were really tender, but weren’t overly fatty like some places and the liver sausage was really nice, which I guess tastes somewhat similar to a blood sausage, but a little more firm if you’ve never had it before (it’s not metallic-y or very liver-y in case you’re wondering). The bottom of the rice was the best crust I’ve ever had, it was literally perfectly crispy all throughout the claypot and while it was crispy none of the rice was burnt. Having tried to make bo zai fan at home, I’m amazed at how they could get such a perfect crust. The soy sauce was great too, very flavorful and a bit on the sweet side; it complemented everything very well. As a side note their claypot rice comes in somewhat of a small bowl, so I found the best way to eat it is to take all the toppings off, scoop up the bottom of the rice to break up the bottom crispy parts and then put the toppings back in, pour the soy sauce on top and mix it all up. Overall, this was definitely the best claypot rice I’ve ever had. I don’t know if this is the right word to describe it, but I found it to be more refined than other versions as everything was so perfectly cooked and nothing seemed overly heavy or oily. 9.25/10

Eel, Chicken and Chinese Sausage (Bai Shan Hua Ji La Chang Bao Zai Fan 白鱔滑雞臘腸煲仔飯):

This was the same as the other bo zai fan, but had chunks of perfectly tender white chicken meat and regular Chinese sausage, which is slightly sweet and is one of my favorite things to have in bo zai fan because the combination of the sweetness of the sausage combined with the salt from the soy sauce and the rice has to be one of the best combinations ever. Overall this was unbelievably good just like the other one. 9.25/10

Chinese Kale Sauteed With Garlic (Suan Rong Chan Jie Lan 蒜蓉炒芥蘭):

This was kai lan (Chinese kale) that was sautéed with garlic, oil, fermented black beans and salted fish. It was nicely stir-fried and I liked the extra flavor that the black bean and salted fish gave the dish; very good version of this dish. 8.75/10

Overall, this was a wonderful meal and probably one of the most enjoyable meals I’ve had in Hong Kong as I love simple comfort food like this. I was also pleasantly surprised at how good the non-bo zai fan dishes were; I’d come here even if I didn’t want claypot rice. I highly recommend this restaurant.

Address:
Shop 1, Wo Yick Mansion, 263 Queen’s Road West, Western District 西環皇后大道西263號和益大廈地下1號舖
Phone: 2803 7209