Monday, November 02, 2009

Full Moon(月滿坊), Elements, West Kowloon, Hong Kong

It's about 5pm. This restaurant is still pretty crowded as compared to the others. That told something about it. In taking a look at the style and the decoration of this restaurant, it looks like it's a medium price fashionable restaurant for noodle/rice/congee/common Cantonese stir fried dishes. When I saw the packed wet napkin, it showed it's under the United restaurant group (聯邦). So I was a bit hesitant due to the negative impression from my last visit at United restaurant. So as in a Chinese saying "good is one meal, bad is another meal". It turned out it's quite a pleasant surprise or I lowered my expectation.
1. When I opened the jar of the "Yue Kwan Yik" style chili sauce, I already smelled a nice chili aroma. I don't eat hot and spicy food often but I often like to try this kind of chili sauce or Chiu Chow style chili oil - they go so well with beef brisket noodle soup. 2. This iced coffee is excellent and I can tell it's a freshly made coffee from the bean aroma. My guess is correct when I checked back on the menu about their house coffee. 3. Wow, this one is even more surprising. In some way, it is even better than the "cold" milk tea by Kam Fung in Wanchai 灣仔金鳳茶餐廳. Yes, just like MO BKK, they serve "cold" drink which is very chilled but not iced. So the taste stays as it is. The tea leaves are pretty good and not dry/bitter but with a strong tea aroma. The sweetness is just at a normal to less sweet level. Highly recommended.

4. a bucket of chicken over rice - the chicken was cooked to a balanced texture and hot steamy. The chicken tasted good too. 5. preserved radish - this is also nice, not too sweet and not too salty and quite juicy. Good to get you appetite as a pre-meal snack.

6. mini wonton soup. The soup base is very nice with strong aroma of burnt square fish chunks and dried shrimp roe. Reminded me of the old day for those original wonton soup base. However, it's not salty at all. That's good about it as less salty would bring out the original soup taste, though it may not be the original Cantonese style. OK, at this time, you may think why I ordered this mini wonton soup with just 2 wontons. From the drink to this wonton soup, it's the shop recommended set meal at just HK$60. If you order the iced coffee/cold milk tea, the single price is HK$24 and a plate of BBQ pork or chicken over rice, it would be HK$38. Those 2 are already over HK$60, but this set offers a very nice mini-wonton soup which is very good to go with the chicken rice and a very nice snack. 7. Based on the nice food I tried, I further ordered a dish of boiled fish ball over lettuce. I really like the way they hand-made this fish ball. They didn't use any flour or cornstarch to thicken the texture. All fish meat plus the dried tangerine peel which is a perfect combination. The fish ball texture is perfect - firm but not hard to chew. HK$48 is worth it as they used some very nice dried tangerine peel. Very fragrant and not bitter at all. Cheap dried tangerine peel would be quite bitter and sometimes smelly. I'll show some nice home made sunny dried tangerine peel under separate post.
8. the shop entrance. 9. The shop is together with another Thai restaurant but separated by a corridor.

5 comments:

Stella said...

The food looks very good to me.
So you mean United Restaurant Group did not pass your expectation before for some reason right?

in the sea said...

Yes, the one on Kowloon side. They used river fish 鯇魚 as garoupa and denied my claim when I tried to pack those, they stopped me. The one used to be at Admiralty was once pretty good.

Anonymous said...

I can see the ice on the bottom of the milk tea glass. very cold.

Stella said...

So the one at Kowloon side is not that honest and the service not that good then.

in the sea said...

Actually if it's not my colleagues stopping me from packing that congee, they should have been fined in the court!