Friday 10 June 2011

Hong Kong Part Deux

It's taken me so long to get round to writing this second post about Hong Kong's amazing food so i'm just going to summarise the best bits, rather than write about every meal we ate!

Korean Barbecue
This was my first time at a Korean BBQ and I loved it. It's down a pretty spooky back street (sadly I can't remember the name of the restaurant or the street) which is poorly lit and has no signs in English, so we were the only tourists in there, which was reassuring. The waiters found us very amusing to watch and came over to show us exactly how it was done (even though it was pretty obvious!).
Korean BBQ with the 20 different types of kimchi.
Korean BBQ comprises of deeply marinated chopped up meat or fish (we went for a mixed platter of both) which you cook yourself (or in our case the waiter cooked for us!) on a hot plate sunk into the centre of the table. They brought an incredible selection of around 20 different types of kimchi, delicious soy bean paste, chilli paste and lettuce leaves. Basically you fill the lettuce leaves with the meat, bean paste, chilli and kimchi (the cabbage one being my favourite), roll it up and munch. This is right up my street, being seriously satisfying in the flavour department and fairly healthy too...well, that's what I'm telling myself anyway! We loved it so much that when we came back to London we went straight to Koba, just off Charlotte Street, and had their Korean BBQ (which was very good too).

Peking Garden
Kenneth carving the duck
We were recommend a place to go for Peking duck that was tucked away in a shopping centre, up a back staircase that was nearly impossible to find. We obviously went for the Peking duck pancakes, being in a Peking duck restaurant and were very excited to try some ginuwine Peking duck. The theatrics of the place were in fact far more impressive than the food. Sadly the duck was very bland and the skin was totally under-seasoned so it didn't have that characteristic salty flavour, and the portion that came off a whole duck was so measly! You can see it in this photo. I know a whole duck doesn't really have that much meat on it but it was so sad to see him (let's call him Kenneth) walk away with all the flesh still on the legs. We assumed he was coming back to give us the rest once we'd finished the first plate, but alas no. However, two things really made our night: 1. having Kenneth carve the duck at the table which really got our tastebuds going and 2. the hand pulled noodles performance.

Duck pancakes
Unfortunately, we didn't have noodles, although I wish we had tried them, but I learned so much about them here. I had no idea how they were made before seeing this. The noodleman started with a ball of dough which he bashed out on the work surface, stretching and folding it as he went along. After a number of repetitions it started to separate into strands until the whole thing had perfect noodles. We were all gobsmacked this. How did we not know this before??

Noodleman making the noodles

Noodleman with his finished noodles
Peking Garden Restaurant
3/fl., Star House
3 Salisbury Road
Tsimshatsui
Tel. 852 2735 8211