Lux Bistro and Bar, D'Aguilar Street, Central HK

The white-collar people in Central seem to be not so interested in climbing up a bit in this section of D'Aguilar Street or the area commonly known as Lan Kwai Fong.  It was almost 1pm but this place wasn't too busy.  I wondered if this restaurant was worth trying.  Later on as I walked to Queen's Road and Pedder Street, the scene of people mountain people sea is still there.  That simply told how most of the HK people prefer not climbing up for about 30-40 feet in the day time.  Interesting they can climb up in the night time.
Back to this place, the food and service was quite unexpectedly good.  Nice potato leek soup, fresh chilled veggie on the salad, pan seared chicken thighs and charcoal grilled beef filet on a bed of lightly pan fried potato with a few drop of balsamic dressing.  The set lunch is at around HK$180-220.  Add HK$20 for a dessert.  Got a white choco cheese cake and double chocolate mousse. So good that it's bargain to pay just a little more.

Tsui Wah HK style tea room

 Friends in town and I must bring them to try the piggy buns by Tsui Wah.  One of them is a fan for herbal jelly.  Surprisingly he found a bat man shaped herbal jelly (photo 3).  So we had 2 orders of piggy buns and a French (HK style) toast with vanilla ice cream.  The drinks were awesome too.  We had lime gum-guat, lime mint frappe and fresh orange juice.   Today is the first day Tsui Wah has been put on IPO.  Wish her a further big success.

石山日本料理, Causeway Bay HK

On the bustling part of Lockhart Road behind Sogo Causeway Bay, I was brought to this home cooking place of Japanese food on the 2nd floor of a building.  The food is simple but delicious and very Japanese, from soaked tofu, radish, spinach in sesame sauce,  Grilled sticky rice cake, grilled salmon skin, and sticky rice roll.  Recommended if you wanna try some local Japanese food instead of overwhelming sashimi or tepanyaki.

Consistently worst at Ruby Tuesday, Taikooshing HK

There are times we might make some X-file mistake of going back to places where we had some horrible time.  Last weekend I did such a X-file return to this place.  A one trip salad bar at HK$88 for some canned fruits and veggie in no-frills salad dressing.  The beef burger (HK$128) can be the more eatable one, but only the burger.  The fries is warm and too wet and oily.  The fish fingers - forget it.  It's soaked in the oil not deep fried.  The waitress kept on asking me to join their membership (payment of HK$250 for 3 months and getting 50% discount).  I kept on replying "no need".

2012 Autumn Review: Maxim's Palace restaurant Taikooshing HK

 4-5 years ago Maxim's group was really a pain to me with those contemporary fusion food.  The situation has turned back with more classic Cantonese dishes and cooking style.  Though the first one   (deep fried pig's knuckle in preserved tofu sauce) isn't very Cantonese but the way it was made is quite Cantonese.  The 2nd one is a very home cooking - steamed chicken with preserved veggie 沖菜蒸鷄.  The 3rd one is braised garoupa fin in casserole 班翅煲 - a very nice one and a classic cooking with roasted pork, dried mushroom and Chinese lettuce.

Lisa Wong in her 45 years of artiste's career

I had to re-focus my eyes to check on this poster, and recall some of my friends asking me to take photos like who who who.  My answer for them "get a photoshop".  :

Fallen Dynasty - Sweet Dynasty, Hysan Place, Causeway Bay HK

Such so many bad lucks with all the branches in this new mall Hysan Place, including this one which used to be my favourite place (only the Happy Valley main shop but now no more).  The branch in Happy Valley reminds me of so much good old memory esp. with my very best friend that we often got their almond sweet and pork chop on rice.  Unfortunately, this new branch didn't even keep up to a standard of a decent Cantonese dessert shop.  The almond sweet is horrible like corn starch water.  The red bean herbal jelly is not chilled and the red bean is not cooked well.  The only half edible one is their sticky rice dumpling with Malteser (photo 2) because of Malteser.

BB1 Vietnamese Bistro, Hysan Place, Causeway Bay HK

 Finally found this restaurant in Hysan Place, but am disappointed with both the food and services.  The food isn't impressive though not too bad.  The beef broth isn't as nice as the other Vietnamese restaurants I tried, and it's quite salty. The chopped scallion is also very salty.  The common mistake is that all these aromatic ingredients were prepared for a long time that it lost much of the original aroma.  Service-wise, the waiters and waitresses often kept their heads down without caring for service.  Took a long time for checking the bill.  Couldn't help it and brought up these to the waiter who responded.

Hagen Daz, Windsor House, Causeway Bay, HK

 Hagen Daz still offers its tea set for a cake with ice cream and a coffee at around HK$70-80.  This time I chose a chico mouse cake with a green tea ice cream and a mocha.  The green tea ice cream isn't that sweet and I guess it's made in France.  So nice to go with the choco. cake and mocha.

2012 scene on Canton Road, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon