Phoenix City restaurant 鳳城酒家, Sheung Wan, HK

Influened by the last trip to Hoi Choi restaurant in Sheung Wan, I needed to try the other 3 restaurants at this corner end of Sheung Wan at the Western market place. 2nd try is at this Phoenix City Sheung Wan branch.

1. the table and with some pickled. The pickled is a bit sweet. 2. fish tank for various seafood.

3. Deep fried chicken (half at HK$90 and whole at $168). This one is pretty good but still the one in Prince Edward (Mongkok) is the best. 4. Sweet and sour pork HK$68. Check it's not that red color. It's not with any tomato sauce actually. It's made of the Chinese pickled and the red chili with vinegar, haw sauce mix. This is one of the classic way of the sauce mix and this one is a bit close to the sauce mix of "five pickled" (五柳). The pork is very nice deep fried and the 20%-fat tenderloin 柳梅 was used.

5. Mixed veggie casserole HK$56. Pretty good and quite classic. 6. Baked sago with lotus seed paste HK$60. Anyone who knows me well should know that I don't prefer sago sweet. No I don't but except for this one by Phoenix City. It's super good, and I often take 2-3 full bowls! The aroma of lotus seed paste and the sago custard!

7. Again I noticed quite many business men from the dried seafood/ginseng business. 8. the shop is at the tram way turning out to the Sheung Wan coast.

Chocolate buffet, Clipper's Lounge, Mandarin Oriental HK

HK$228 for one and $388 for two. Why don't you bring one more friend to enjoy a Sunday Chocolate tea buffet at the Clipper's Lounge. Starts from 3pm til 5:30pm every Sunday.

1. the table. 2. the array of chocolate, chocolate cakes and other chocolate delicacies.

3. Pretty nice presentation. 4. Choco drink station with something more to spice up your mix.

5. Mandarin's flower tea - quite fragrant. 6. I would love to have an Earl Grey to go with choco.

7. First round. I forgot each name of it but in general all are good though a bit too sweet to me. 8. Other than choco., some sandwiches are served. Didn't expect the sandwiches are so good. The most fascinating one is the egg and cucumber. Even the filling varies on the outside flavour. Much detailed!

9. it's a nice tray. 10. raspberry sweet - good to have something as a break. This one is with some fruity wine. Quite a match to the choco. mood. 11. More Earl Grey.

12. Freshly baked scones. Perfect and on the side, it's the renowned MO's rose petal preserve! Wow, the rose fragrance is superb! Highly recommended. 13. More more choco... On the left, it's the choco. pie with refined sea salt. This is somewhat challenging. If the sea salt is not nice, so easy to taste that from the contrast of dark choco. So the Chef simply chose this way to let the guests taste the best refined sea salt. Very clever and confident.

14. My mix of spicy hot choco. drink with a choco. spoon. Lovely and my taste buds were drunk already. 15. The final one - another delight to make the nuts stand out from the choco. mousse.

Harbour Grand Heen 君綽軒, Harbour Grand HK, Oil St., HK

The Chinese restaurants in Harbour Plaza Hung Hom and North Point are so outstanding that I gotta try this Harbour Grand Heen on Oil Street (Fortress Hill). However, it turned out the prefix "Grand" is just a prefix. In general, it is much lower than their fellow twins.

1. the menu. 2. BBQ pork buns HK$48. The BBQ pork is a bit dry though the sauce is very thick. It's due to their using some very dried out BBQ pork. Their dim sum ranges from at least $48 to $88.

3. Shrimp dumpling HK$88. The shrimp itself is pretty nice but the wrapping is a bit too mashy. It's due to the "reverse steamed drop" (倒汗水), as a result of a sudden high temperature drop and uncovered from from turning off the heat first. 4. steamed rice roll HK$68. Quite pitiful to see the choy sum which was tried so hard to trimmed but didn't turn out to be a nice veggie. This baby choy sum wasn't supposed to be trimmed, but the bigger one was.

5. Steamed veggie roll HK$48. The fish maw is pretty nice. 6. stir fried morning glory with preserved tofu sauce HK$88. When ordering this, I had a gentle arguement with the captain as he claimed only morning glory is now in season while I rectified with him both 莧菜 & 通菜 are summer veggie but he even didn't appeared to be compromising. The captain really needed to go to the food market and see what's happening out there. Anyway, though he claimed and suggested for morning glory, I found out quite some rotten leaves. Apparently the kitchen want the morning glory to go first. Excuse us - we are not dining at a local tea room restaurant!

7. Ginger juice crashing into Hokkaido milk HK$48. Well, it's just out of my curiosity. Texture-wise, UHT milk (in fact so far only Hokkaido UHT milk can be found in HK due to the transportation problem). UHT milk isn't the right milk for this renowned Pun Yue dessert. It should be with the milk from "water" cow as it's thicker and more aromatic. UHT is a high heat processing milk and no matter how good the milk is, after UHT, the aroma, texture and nutrients wouldn't be the same. The Chef may be looking for something to attract customers rather than looking into this magical invention by the noble families in Pun Yue.

My National Geographic Childhood part 2

An apt. of 400 square feet housed more than 10 people. More than these 10 people, many various pets were also housed, including some wild animals like snake and pangolin (穿山甲)...

1. Wang Mao often stayed behind the fish tank. Don't get it wrong. He just wanted something cool (from the glass). He never played with the gold fishes. After seeing those gold fishes, I recalled we once had some rare species like piranha and big fishes like sea bass of 3-4 feet long and garoupa. Yes, I remember I needed to buy beef to feed those piranhas. 2. ok, something more gentle. This lovely yellow sparrow flew in by itself and sang very nice!

3. Mimi again. See we treated pets like friends. Never put a chain on their feet. We just let them run around in the apt. Mimi stood on the stairs of my double decker bed. 4. This cat is my most favourite cat called Junior. He never bothered for food as he knew I was very punctual in making lunch/dinner for him. He never hurted the other pets. He even put this parrot Mr. Sor Lo in his nap in the winter time and slept. It's a real Disney movie! 3 days after Mr. Sau Lo was scared to fly away, Junior disappeared. That was the saddest day in my life! BTW, Junior appeared on one TV ad. of Kleenex when he was a baby. Junior went to toilet like human being. What an incredible cat! As for Mr. Sau Lo, he could sing the song Tycoon (大亨) by Paula Tsui and all the time repeated 何必呢. Mr. Sau Lo often stood on my father's shoulder asking for petting.

5. Madam Hamster Ms. piggy. She raised a family of 50 kids. One night, they used their sharp teeth to break the cage. There it came a show of Midnight Express! We needed to carefully hunt for each "fugitive" back to their home with more iron bars. 6. Cat in the mirror. See how Wang Mao could strike a pose - VOGUE... Vogue.... with the Queen on the dance floor.

My cooking - green bean sweet with fragrant grass 臭草綠荳沙

Passed by the market and there came a very nice fragrance of this green green grass. Time for a green bean sweet and it's good to clear up those accumulated hot wet from eating too much in the winter time.

1. At a portion of 3-4 litre of green bean sweet, use only 2 branches of it, leaving the rest as a room fragrance if you like it. Too much of this would be a bit too bitter. 2. Cooking this one is not like cooking red bean sweet. Use only 1/2 portion or not more than 3/5 of the red bean portion for the same amount of water. Green bean can be quite swelling; so it had better not be too much. Put one soup spoon of rice to make it in more texture. I would put the fragrant grass together with the beans when the water is boiling, but leave a small amount of younger leaves (maybe 1/10th). Boil for 1.5 hour something to 2 hours. Then put the younger leaves and boil for 10 minutes and put cane bar sugar to sweet. This way the fragrance would be at more levels - a bit subtly burnt and a bit fresh.

Jade Garden, Star House, TST, Hong Kong

After the visit of the Heritage 1881, I passed by Star House and realised Jade Garden is still there on the 4th floor of Star House. Despite the previous various trying at the other Jade Garden, I really wanted to find out more.

1. Roasted pork HK$58 - this one is pretty good and at least it's a five belly one. 2. Tangy sweet and sour pork HK$78 - why tangy as it claimed on the menu. It's the sauce. They made the sauce thicker and likely with some malt sugar. It's a bit too sweet to me. This time pork is pork, not just fat and fat.

3. Mixed mushroom on veggie HK$78. Mushroom should have been stir fried a bit longer and better with some ginger slices (to take out the "wood wet" smell of mushroom). The oyster sauce should have been put a bit more sesame oil. 4. Steamed fish slices with 3 beans HK$78. 3 beans are black beans, preserved beans 麵豉 but I don't know why the remaining one is preserved olive 欖菜. Anyway, this one is pretty nice, as each one has its own characteristic. It's quite a nice creation and there is a bed of sticky rice to absorb the fish juice and the bean flavour.

5. The restaurant does still keep its original green color and the deco. 6. the entrance on the 4th floor of Star House.

Heritage 1881, TST, Hong Kong

The old Marine Police Headquarters is now a tourist attraction in Tsimshatsui with a new name Heritage 1881.

1. Probably due to preserving the big old tree, a tower with stairs was built to cover it. 2. Walking up and down.

3. View to the Cultural Center. 4. I guess this is the hotel behind this Heritage.

5. Kind of colonial. 6. Something like a clock tower or related to physics.

7. a boarder view to the Heritage. 8. Our old time typhoon signal stand in TST.

9. a map of the west of Pearl River Delta. 10. Star House, Hong Kong Hotel and Harbour City.