[Review 617] Plenty of sauce @ 英記茶餐廳

英記茶餐廳 13/01/2010
灣仔軒尼詩道225號駱克道市政大廈街市熟食中心2樓
2/F, Lockhart Road Market, 225 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai
https://www.openrice.com/zh/hongkong/review/plenty-of-sauce-e2056650

Due to this keen waitress adjacent to this restaurant, we sat down in the wrong restaurant, but then luckily realized and quickly left and went to Ying Kee.

Was looking at the menu and the waitress asked us to hurry up and order because their kitchen was closing at 7pm, luckily had in mind on what to order so ordered that.

That waitress gave us soup for free, most probably they had some left at the end of the day, since she gave us free soup, she felt obliged to offer the people opposite us soup as well, but they rejected it.

As expected, the male staffs that serve food are very grubby and have black fingernails, but I pretended to not see that!
Same with the food, I did see some hair, but just let it pass by for this occasion.

Tomato and beef spaghetti:
There was generous tomato sauce, and it was not too sour either.
The spaghetti was firm, but not in long strands, so had to use a spoon.
Reminded me of heinz spaghetti.

E-noodles with chicken, enoki mushrooms in abalone sauce:
Also generous sauce with this dish, and the taste was just right, and there was plenty of chicken and mushrooms too.

Free papaya and chicken feet soup:
Just the usual soup taste

After dinner, started taking pictures of the menu, one of the cleaner staffs noticed that and gave us a photocopied menu (the young one who was practicing Thai boxing when there were not much customers around).

Bit weird, as I did ask for a menu the previous day, but the waitress said there was none left.

[Review 616] Dessert at Tai Hang Part 1 @ 小白屋 Cherry Garden

小白屋 Cherry Garden 12/01/2010
大坑浣紗街7號 7 Wun Sha Street, Tai Hang
https://www.openrice.com/zh/hongkong/review/dessert-at-tai-hang-part-1-e2056425

After dinner, was still hungry, so came here for dessert, this restaurant had nice high ceilings and the tables were nicely spaced out. There was a clear pathway with carriage tables on both sides.

Anyway ordered White wine jelly with fruit, and Earl grey pudding with fruit and Sabayon sauce.

White wine jelly with diced fruit:
It was presented effectively in a clear glass cup, the Jelly looked nice with the colourful pieces of fruit.
This needs to be tried first, because the taste is very light and gentle. There was a slight taste of white wine, and the fruits went well with it.

Earl grey pudding with fruit and Sabayon sauce:
Personally I didn’t like the fruits with Sabayon sauce, the sauce was good, light and foamy, it tasted like frothed up milk. If they had used other fruits it would have matched better, the watermelon, cantaloupe and papaya didn’t go well with the creamy sauce. If strawberries, banana’s, berries were used it would taste better, as the creaminess goes well with the tartness of the fruits.
As for the earl grey pudding, it was excellent, the texture was not like pudding, but mousse like, and the earl grey taste was strong too.

There was another one I should have tried too, the hazelnut crème brulee, but will have to try it next time.
Strangely enough the restaurant is called Cherry Garden in English, but in chinese it is “Little white house”.

[Review 615] Pita bread and salmon @ CEO Neway

12/01/2010 CEO Neway (銅鑼灣)
銅鑼灣糖街2-8號 2-8 Sugar Street, Causeway Bay
https://www.openrice.com/zh/hongkong/review/pita-bread-and-salmon-e2056397

As always, the food is always good at CEO, this time had the tea set, the Chinese description for it was "bock beng" so i assumed it was pizza, as most Chinese translate bock beng as pizza.

In the end it was pita bread, which was even better, there was a lovely dip to go with it, vinaigrette and olive oil and herbs.

[Review 614] Cakes @ Jam Bakery

Jam Bakery
12/01/2010
大坑施弼街28號 G/F, 28 Shepherd Street, Tai Hanghttps://www.openrice.com/zh/hongkong/review/asdfsadf-e2056396

Since I saw photos of the lychee mousse cake, and the apple passionfruit cake, I have been wanting to come here.
I finally did, and got the apple and passionfruit mousse cake, there were other ones I wanted to try too such as raspberry mousse, baileys, and hazelnut cake.

But with those ones, you can usually imagine how it will taste, so I got another German cheesecake to try too.

For the apple and passionfruit cake, it was two layers, one layer of apple mousse, and one layer of passionfruit mousse, overall it tasted refreshing, with thin apple slices on top and a raspberry.

As for the cheesecake, it reminded me of the cheesecakes at Marks and Spencers with with sultana's in it. The cheese was not too over powering.

[Review 613] Literally it was nice sushi and thai buffet @

08/01/2010
Nice Sushi + Thai Buffet

銅鑼灣京士頓街9號名店坊地下6號舖

Shop 6, G/F, Fashion Walk, 9 Kingston Street, Causeway Bay

https://www.openrice.com/zh/hongkong/review/literally-it-was-nice-sushi-and-thai-buffet-e2055488

When I read the review for this place, I didn’t realise the name of this place was Nice Sushi + Thai Buffet until I clicked into it, the name itself just looked like one of those captions. I would never have associated a buffet focusing on Japanese food and Thai food.

I tried, because from the photos, the scenery, and concept sounded fresh.

I booked a table for two and arrived at the designated time, when I arrived, there was only one table that was seated with people, and the waitress led us to a table right next to it.
I couldn’t help but feel the staff wanted to group the people together, so plate collection would be convenient.

Initially, I didn’t feel at ease because we sat down, this Thai looking waitress was standing two metres from our table, and she just stood there like a statue looking in our direction, even after we got food and sat back down she was standing there and still looking in our direction.

The restaurant was like 80% empty that time, and there was plenty of space, but she had to stand so close to our table and stare at us! I don’t think anyone would like people to stare at them while they eat!!

Anyway back to the food, started with the tempura’s first, there was quite a range, tempura prawn as well as breaded prawn, various Japanese grilled items, various curries, my favourite was the poached egg. There were baby whelks in chili sauce, these were very soft, probably people they were baby ones.

After a plate of fried items, I made my way to the sushi bar, at that time, we were quite early, so there should have been a lot of different sushi’s available, however I got the last of the flame grilled ones, which were not replaced. There were quite a few that I got which were not replaced as well, there was an interesting squid and seaweed roll (no rice in it).

The Wasabi was shaped into balls in the Wasabi bowl
All the sushi were very small in size, about 2/3’s the size of a normal sushi, the rice in the sushi was very compacted and hard.

In fact quite a lot of the items were so dinky in size, especially the desserts, they are small enough to fit on a table spoon (see picture). Visually they look cute, and secondly the servings were so small it was hard to waste the food.

The sashimi bar was quite good too, the range was ok too, including prawns, scallop, arkshell clam.

The salad was impressive too, there was green papaya salad, asian grapefruit salad, thai chicken feet salad, and there soup too.

[Review 612] Laid back dining @ Oven Kitchen & Sweet

Oven Kitchen & Sweet 07/01/2010 

銅鑼灣謝斐道392-402號維新大廈G及H號舖地下
Shop G & H, G/F Wai Sun Building, 392-402 Jaffe Road, Causeway Bay
https://www.openrice.com/zh/hongkong/review/laid-back-dining-e2055172

This newly opened restaurant is quietly located in the back streets of Causeway bay bordering the outskirts of Wan chai, the evening I visited there were only 2-3 occupied tables including ours.

Although it looked quiet with only 3 occupied tables, I felt the music was slightly too loud to engage in a relaxed conversation.

Apart from lacking the social involvement, the whole process of food was good, its starters and desserts were semi buffet, firstly started off with the salad bar, picked whelks, prawns, ham, pastas.

The salad tongs were a bit weak at picking food, and easy to lose grip.

Anyway the prawns were ok, and the whelks were ok, after we were about finished with the starters, they asked us if we wanted the soup to be served. I felt the service was quite appropriate, they did not rush us to have the soup served. We opted for mushroom soup, the mushroom soup was slightly bland and watery, but had bits of dried mushroom in it, and a few drops of truffle oil on top, which matched really well with the soup.

After the soup was finished, the mains were served, fish with grapefruit sauce and escargots with mashed potato. The fish had a few bones in it, but was well complimented by the fragrant grapefruit sauce. As for the escargots, it is usually a starter so it was a bit weird as a main dish, the mash was better than expected because there were big bits of potato in it, and slices of mushroom too, I would have preferred button or western type of mushrooms to be used, and there was also a fair amount of bacon in it too. Comparing the escargots to the ones previously served, the one we had looked a bit over baked.

Finally, it was dessert time, there was ice cream and soufflé included, the soufflé tasted quite powdery, but otherwise it was ok, after that went to the dessert bar got this roll, which is basic like a jelly roll with cream inside (cheung fun).

There was crème brulee, which was of nice thick texture, and baked apple tart containing raisins.

The tofu pudding was like firm mousse and not too sweet.

Overall the meal was quite relaxed and good.

[Review 611] Oh crumbs! Oh dear! Oh my! @ Crumbs

Crumbs
銅鑼灣景隆街8號中央樓地下1C號舖
Shop 1C, G/F, Central Mansion, 8 Cannon Street, Causeway Bay
https://www.openrice.com/zh/hongkong/review/oh-crumbs-oh-dear-oh-my-e2054878

Don’t be mislead, I actually think crumbs is a good place for crumbly scones, the name just reminded of the saying when things so wrong, “oh crumbs” is said.

Anyway, I came here especially for scones and frozen yoghurt froyo, I had the yoghurt first, comparing it to other frozen yoghurt, it is not as sour as the other places. This one is rather like soft ice-cream with yoghurt flavour. For their yoghurt toppings, the choice in general is the same as other places such as diced strawberries, mochi bits, oreo bits etc.
The only one that was not available in the other places was the meringue tops, they were elegantly stored in a glass jar, and the meringues were in different colours too, normal colours such as brown, white, pink rather than the artificial rainbow colours.

The scones sold here were square shaped, best for take-out as there is not a place to sit down to enjoy them, also there is no tea, butter or clotted cream to go with it, having said that, they taste quite nice on their own.
The raisin one tasted ok, however the cheese was much better, both were very buttery and crumbly in texture. The cheese in the cheese scone had a nice oven cooked taste, and there was a slight mellow cheddar colour to it too.

Next time, I actually want to slice the sweet scone in half and spread it thickly with froyo to mimick cream, I reckon the coldness of the froyo with the crumbling raisin scone would go well together.