Summer Travels to Hong Kong

Firstly apologies for a very pic heavy post that's sort of on a tangent.

This summer I had a good excuse to visit the city of my birth: Hong Kong. I haven't visited in almost 3 years and had been hankering to for quite some time. I love the city but for me its far too commercial. Yes the shopping is great and a very different scene to New York and London. However in Hong Kong the belief is that it really will fill your soul. Enough of the negatives though! Lets take a look at some of the food I ate! I really wanted to be able to order dim sum here in NY (its supposed to be pretty good) so I wrote down all the phonetically spelled Cantonese names. Here goes:

Shang Palace Restaurant in the Shangri-La hotel, Kowloon:

This restaurant is my all time favourite place to do dim sum. I've been coming here since I could first eat solids and the staff still recognize us when we come for lunch. The place is gorgeously decorated and almost always packed (the best sign of a good Chinese restaurant is business). The food is divine, it's where I learned to eat a lot of interesting things and very much decided vegetarianism wasn't my cup of jasmine tea. The first round is from an initial incredibly jetlagged visit:

Pork belly YUM!



Spring rolls (never had better yet!)



I didn't write down the name of this dish but it was highly recommended so we gave it a try. It was a birdnest vegetable dish and was DELISH!



DUCK PANCAKES!



accompanying pu erh tea



Some yummy dessert



The second round was real dim sum experience:

Pork Siu Mei - looks disgusting but boy is it tasty!



Mouth watering Char Siu So which is a baked pork pastry topped with sesame seeds dieing for this right now.



Siu Lam Bau - a pork and shredded crab dumpling. It was not really for me more my dads sort of thing. still tried one though. Its very important to try everything especially when you're being taken to a restaurant by someone in Hong Kong. It's incredibly rude not to.



My all time favourite: Char siu bau: this is a very traditional steamed pork bun and it is soooooooo good! I think this may have been the first dim sum I ever ate.



Har Gau - steamed shrimp dumplings. If you like shrimp you'll probably like some har gau. I like my shrimp more western styled I.E. seasoned. in chinese cuisine (the shrimp I've eaten) tends to be too subtle for my taste buds and the texture is a little off putting.



Another pic of a more busy Shang Palace



Here are pictures from other random dim sum experiences:

Lau sa bau - its like a very sweet egg bun (I think can't remember too well) but it was lush.



Lo bat - this means raddish strips and its sort of like a radishy version of char siu bau



Prawn cheung fan which is a vermicilli roll filled with prawn and covered in soy sauce and its a much yummier dish then the har gau in my opinion.



Glutinous rice roll with peanuts - very filling and surprisingly salty. This I would eat more as a snack but somehow it always ends up weaseling its way into my already heavy dim sum experience.



Overall picture of a dim sum table: pot of jasmine tea this time, the gluttonous rice rolls and char siu bau in the foreground.



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After all that dim sum here are some examples of what I ate for a more traditional Cantonese dinner with some family friends.

Ling mung gai - Lemon chicken which really is a dish you can't go wrong with.



This is some Char siu (roast pork) with bun fay sou (which means half lean meat and half fat meat)



Goolow ban peen which is a sweet and sour Garupa fish dish also pretty tasty



Don't remember what Chin Chan Gko could mean but heres a photo anyway



And a trip to HK wouldn't be complete without eating some really old egg. in this case it's in a dessert called Leen yong bau. Tastes a little like peanut butter and very similar to a mooncake.



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For my dads birthday we went to a random Japanese restaurant in Lang Kwai Fong

Miso soup



random assortment of sushi



Bacon asparagus yakitori



Deep fried shrimp dish



sweet beef yakitori



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For a farewell dinner to Hong Kong we couldn't have chosen on a more fitting setting. The Compass room at The Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club aka the place I grew up learning to swim in.

very difficult to make it out but there is beautiful bronze chandelier which looks like a bottom looking up view of bubbles floating to the top of the ocean.



You can't go here and not order the lobster!



or the unfortunate looking but subsequently divine Crepe Suzette


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I also couldn't resist taking photos of the meals on the 16 hour flights going to:





and coming back:



On Cathay Pacific they kept the food coming throughout the flight. The service was efficient yet attentive and I felt incredibly nostalgic flying the airline I used to fly every year as a kid and returning to it after more then a decades absence. Hopefully I'll get to fly them again next time I go back to HK.

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More randoms this time non-food shots:

the ubiquitous Rolls Royce shot



A trip to Launtau to see the Buddha and Tai O fishing village









Dogs!





How spirited away is this?



a bridge



My lovely dad in his trade mark Panama hat



Who knew Hong Kong had so much greenery?







While we were in Tai O an old man showed us around the houses that were on stilts. We knew he really just wanted to sell us something but both of us were too polite to do something about it. We also got to take the new crystal cable car to the top of Launtau which was pretty amazing the whole car is made of clear plastic so you have 360* views!

I was there for two weeks and stayed with my wonderful father. It was fantastic to spend so much time with him and by the end I felt pretty sad that I was leaving. I guess New York is really a great place to live and all but having a family an expensive plane ride away sort of sucks. Most of my friends here can take a domestic flight and they'll be home. For me I have to take into consideration jetlag and price. There is no point travelling half way around the world for only a couple of days (last Christmas I was home in London for a grand total of 5 days and adjusted to London time on the 5th day). All I can say on this subject is thank god for built in webcam and skype.

I'd also like to apologies for the quality of the photography all I had was my blackberry camera so considering that aren't blackberry cameras pretty great?!