Sunday, May 16, 2010

Shanghai Garden 紫玉蘭, Hutchison's House, Central, HK

In seeing the English name of this restaurant, it reminds me of my most favourite Shanghai restaurant in Chatham Road, but it's not that Shanghai Garden. Nonetheless, this Shanghai Garden will be my alternate choice.

1. the table setting. 2. Shred chicken on flat rice noodle HK$68. See how thinly sliced of the cucumber and shred chicken. The portion of this restaurant is generally 30% bigger than other similar restaurants.

3. Jelly Fish (top part) 海蜇頭 HK$68. Rinsed very thoroughly and cooked to a nice texture - not under cooked nor too chewy. Again the portion is pretty big. Both this one and the above no. 2 are very chilled. Good to stimulate your appetite, with some mustard sauce! 4. Haven't tried this Hang Chow renowned soup Madam Soong Fish Soup 宋嫂鱼羹 for a long long time. HK$88 good for 6 bowls. Nice and fresh fish chunks. Again very nicely thin slices of bamboo shoot, soaked dried mushroom and ginger. Very nice aged vinegar was used! I took 3 bowls. So yummy!
5. pan fried dumplings HK$48. Pretty good as least they were freshly made to the order. 6. Shanghai veggie with tofu sheet HK$68. Almost double sized to a normal order. The tofu sheet is very fresh and very light chicken stock sauce to seal the whole dish didn't cover the fragrance of the veggie.

7/8. Preserved veggie with hot burnt pork 梅干菜紅燒肉 HK$68. A relative to the renowned Hakka's one, but I prefer the Hakka style. Well, the menu says it right on 梅干菜, not 梅菜. These are 2 different preserved veggie. The latter one is more 惠洲 and the former one is the original Hakka (see the photo of this 梅干菜).
9. Lotus seed, lily's bulb and red date sweet HK$20. Selected ingredients gave a refined flavour of this light sweet. All 3 of these can be easily sour if they are not kept well and not of a good quality. So it's easy to notice the flaw if either of these is not good. 10. My must try for a new trying of a Shanghai restaurant - mini sticky rice dumplings in wined broken rice 酒釀丸子 HK$20. Quite impressive they used very light egg fluid 蛋花 to bring out the wined broken rice flavour.
11. the restaurant. Hutchison's house is not in a convenient location but you would see it's almost full house. Such a contrast to Hunan Garden which is in a prime location but less than 1/10th customers' flow. This restaurant is of no xxx grading but Hunan Garden is of some int'l grading. 12. the entrance.

3 comments:

Stella said...

That means people are smart and they can tell what food is food and what restaurant is worth going, either when its location is not convenient.
Also, good food and good restaurants not necessary to be Michelin rated.
Audience's eyes are snow bright.
Gourmet's taste are sharp.

in the sea said...

I think locals go locals and int'l go int'l. I was told by my business fellows for staying away from Cuisine Cusine (another xxxx rating) as I often asked for a business meal over there.

Stella said...

That is the so called "brand name effect".:)