Le Breeza, Tai Hang, Causeway Bay HK

 Thought about if I should write on this restaurant as I was invited to a dinner at this place.  Sometimes it's hard to control how the dinner will be either on the food or the service quality, just like I brought some of my friends to places that dropped the quality and services.  So don't feel bad for such a quality drop when we try to share something nice with the others.  The food is just only there for an hour and gone in minutes, but friendship doesn't.
Overall, this place is quite cozy and serves some lunch and dinner set (at the price range of HK$100 for lunch and 200 for dinner), including a salad or soup, main course and coffee or tea.  The food is at average but as we wanted to get some bread, we got told we had to order it.  Then during the dinner, we got smoked from their pan frying oil fume due to their ventilator's failure.  However, no apologetic gesture was given from the shop and even those waiters smoked outside of the shop for a break.  I tried not to label Tin Hau but 10 out of 10 shops have been pretty disappointing to me.  One more to be posted later.

An hour for a meal but a day of suffering, at Piccolo Pizza & Bar, Tin Hau, HK

Some areas in HK, like Tin Hau, Soho or Kowloon City are not what I prefer to visit. Restaurants are mostly on the surface and charging higher than normal, and with many human-like scanners. For those who wanna show off, these 3 areas are the choices. With this pressure, I tried not to have any prejudice in judging the food in restaurants I tried in these areas. However, not only me but also my friends have the same feeling.

Got attracted to this place due to its fireplace for baking pizza. Thought it's a good one. The pizza is just average. The sauce is too thin and the cheese too, but it's charged at HK$135. The important dough isn't that appealing either. The house salad (HK$68) is in a very small portion. It's interestingly put on a small plate for a coffee cup, not a decent plate. The veggie was tossed with some cheap olive oil and lemon juice. Supposed it's a correct making but the cheap olive oil destroyed the whole dish. This is worse than a fast shop indeed. Tried their so-called signature calamari (HK$68). The squid wasn't fresh and the coating didn't cover up that. A disastrous dish! See the shop entrance. Click to enlarge to see how they treat customers. Besides the table where 2 customers are there, there is one more table on the other side at the entrance. So the entrance is only 1 foot wide. We needed to walk pass it like a snake. Most of all, they are not charging street stall prices when they are giving services worse than street stall. BTW, they reminded every customer to return the table in an hour time.

Xiao Tian Gu 小甜谷, Tai Hang, Causeway Bay HK

This dessert has been getting more and more popular over the past few years. I tried visiting this place several times but so crowded. Finally I could get a table when passing by this place. My friends and I tried the below dessert (red bean pudding/double steamed milk/sesame walnut sweet/almond egg white). The red bean is a very selected one and cooked to a perfect texture. Walnut and sesame sweet is very smooth and aromatic, so is the almond egg white. However, just like most other shops, some important thing seem to be minor but to me it's very important. It's the use of salt, sugar, sauce and seasoning. If this is just a common dessert at HK$10-12, I wouldn't bother what sugar they use. Since the chef do have quite some effort and time on all these desserts, they should pay attention to getting some better fine sugar for all these desserts.

Part 3, the 46th HK brands and products expo. 維園工展會

Eating is definitely the most important part of the Expo. Lots of booths are here offering a very wide variety of food, from dim sum, abalone, seafood, congee...even Taiwanese drinks and snacks. That was the 2nd last day on my visit and I noticed quite many booths taking the most common HK style slogan "want money, don't want the products" (photo 5). *check the last photo. Some coach tours (for those elderly from the New Territories - northern part of HK) were arranged and some courier services were there too. Quite many booths offer free delivery services for expenses over a few hundred HK$. *my photos for the 3 parts of this expo is just about 1/4th of the whole area.

Part 2, the 46th HK brands and products expo. 維園工展會

Some names we may forget but they are still in the market (photo 2-4).

Sampling eating is a very delightful thing here in this expo. You wouldn't feel hungry even after a few hours of checking around. There are so many things for you to sample, from soup, drinks to various snacks. Among those, the best sampling is "Tung Chun" black vinegar (photo 9). They put a diced hard boiled egg soaked in the black vinegar. So good and aromatic. I took a few of it. Some brands like "Lion head" oil (photo 10) has a package deal for free home delivery of 3-4 bottles of oil and 3-4 packs of "Golden Elephant" fragrant rice (about 20-30% cheaper than what you paid in Supermarket). Many booths offer a free trolley if you spend like HK$100-200, like the "Longevity Peach" 壽桃牌 offering a free trolley at the expenses of HK$80 (the right corner of the last 4th photo). At last, I like how Garden has their signature pattern bag. How can we forget this blue/white pattern :)