Last Dinner of 2020

The Red Pepper Restaurant closed its doors December 31

 

One of the South China Morning Post's most loyal advertising clients is The Red Pepper Restaurant which serves Sichuan cuisine in Causeway Bay.

Practically every day it had a small ad in the paper with a picture of its signature sizzling prawns in chilli sauce.

However a few days ago I found out it was closing on December 31 because of the pandemic and decided my last meal for 2020 would be from this restaurant.

What's left of the dining area of the restaurant

Many other places have closed this year and admittedly I only know of the more expensive ones, like Pierre, Cafe Gray Deluxe, Nectar, John Anthony, Brickhouse, Craftsteak, Olive, Old Bailey, Jimmy's Kitchen, and Boathouse in Stanley.

Some of the above spaces are being changed into new concepts, or have already changed, in a way signalling the evolution of Hong Kong's dining scene.

I also went to Kwun Tong to see Hop Hing Noodle's customers line up to get their last fill of braised beef brisket and noodles, and now The Red Pepper Restaurant that admittedly catered more to non-Chinese diners, but had pretty authentic Sichuan dishes.

While the owner owns the restaurant space, the social-distancing restrictions does not make it financially viable to keep the place open, hiring many staff and cooks even though they have been there for years. 

The sad thing is that the restaurant has been around since 1971, when there were only a handful of norther Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong and the owner's father decided to bet his money there was a market for spicy Chinese food.

Mapo tofu, sizzling prawns, pea shoots and rice

The outside facade of The Red Pepper Restaurant is so striking -- you can't miss it. It looks like a kitsch Chinese place, the facade complete with red columns, turquoise Chinese-tiled roof, and green tiled "windows".

Inside the orange table cloths were gone with chairs around them with no one sitting in them, but the Chinese lantern light fixtures are still hanging from the ornate ceiling.

We ordered a few things for our takeaway dinner since no dining in restaurants is allowed after 6pm: those best-selling prawns, along with ma po tofu, and stirfried pea shoots with garlic, and some rice.

Not long after the order was filled and we took the food back to our office nearby to eat. The prawns were huge, and admittedly would have been better on a hot platter, but they were still meaty and delicious.

The mapo tofu was as I remembered it -- silky tofu cubes in a chilli sauce that had a touch of Sichuan peppercorns for a mildly numbing sensation. That's what makes this dish so addictive. It goes perfectly with rice.

And to balance things out the pea shoots were delicious, punctuated by the finely diced garlic.

The restaurant's old school menu

Depending on the pandemic, the owner may reopen the restaurant in six months, but most of the time when they say the closure is temporary, it usually is permanent.

For example, Jimmy's Kitchen closed earlier in the year with the promise of opening by summer and it still hasn't happened.

However, the owner of The Red Pepper Restaurant hinted that perhaps he would only focus on online orders for takeaway, but unless that happens, that may have been the last time eating those crunchy prawns and smooth but spicy tofu. 

The other interesting famous trivia about this restaurant was that it was one of the places Bruce Lee shot a film he directed, starred and produced called Game of Death. A fight scene with NBA basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar was shot in there in 1972, but the film was never completed because Lee died the following year.

 

 

Playing the Tango

The members getting a standing ovation from some audience members

Over the Christmas holidays my friend YTSL asked me to go see a Tango-themed music concert in January. I said sure, as I like Tango music. We went this evening to see Viva Tango! The music of Schifrin and Piazzolla at the City Hall Concert Hall and weren't disappointed.

It was put on by the Beare's Premiere Music Festival, formerly known as the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, with Beare being a well known violin dealer based in London that specializes in antique stringed instruments.

The ensemble of musicians was diverse -- Cho-Liang Lin from Taiwan, who is also artistic director of the music festival, Argentine-born cellist Pablo Aslan who lives in New York, Alex Brown also from the US, Hector del Curto from Argentina and plays the bandoneon, kind of like an accordion, clarinetist David Shifrin from New York, and Satoshi Takeishi from Japan on percussion.

The ensemble played very well together

It was nice having Aslan introducing the music because he gave some context about why a piece was composed or what the composer was like and he would tell it in a funny way.

Another interesting tidbit is that the clarinetist Shifrin is the second cousin twice removed of Lalo Schifrin, who not only composes tango music as he's from Buenos Aires, Argentina, but he is also know for composing music scores, including Mission Impossible, Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon, Dirty Harry, and wrote many arrangements for the Three Tenors concerts.

So the clarinetist and the composer, their grandfathers were brothers. One went to the America, the other to South America.

The first half of the concert was dedicated to Schirfrin's music starting with a classic tango style -- Tango del Atardecer, that set the tone for the evening. Perhaps it was just missing some dancers doing the tango on stage, but really the music was so engaging that it was fun to watch them play -- and play very well together.



The third piece, Tango Borealis was slow but had a wonderful soft, elegant finish. The pace picked up with Malambo de los Llanos. Apparently the Malambo is a dance and Hector the bandeoneon was asked to demonstrate a few steps for us which was fun to watch.

After the intermission we were then introduced to Astor Piazzolla's music that started with Michelangelo 70 that was not a tribute to the Renaissance artist, but to a bar that Piazzolla and his band played at.

Piazzolla was born in Argentina then moved to New York and was exposed to a variety of music that is what makes his so eclectic, but still very much in the style of tango.

We were particularly enamoured with the piece Oblivion that was so beautifully performed with a light touch at the end. Here's a sample of Piazzolla playing the piece himself on the bandoneon:



The audience was just as thrilled to hear the music as we were -- though it was not completely full -- and the ensemble were probably pleased to see Hong Kong enjoying the music too. It wasn't too hard to twist their arm to do an encore for us and cellist Aslan joked that we really came to the concert to hear the piece of music they were about to play -- Mission Impossible by Schifrin!

It was funny to hear a small six-piece band play the theme song on a violin, a clarinet, piano, bandoneon and a cello! But here's Schifrin himself performing it in 2011. By the way he received an honorary Oscar in November for his contribution to soundtracks over the decades.



What I enjoyed about the concert was that it was a fusion of tango, jazz, and a bit of classical all rolled up together that made for a memorable evening.

Viva Tango! The Music of Schifrin & Piazzolla
Concert Hall Hong Kong City Hall

Schifrin: Letters from Argentina
Tango del Atardecer
Pampas
Tango Borealis
Danza de los Montes
Tango a Borges
Malambo de los Llanos

Piazzolla: Selected Tangos
Michelangelo 70
Verano Porteno
Adios Nonino
La Muerte del Angel
Oblivion
Libertango

A Fun Wipe Out

Street artist Invader's quirky exhibition at PMQ

PMQ or Police Married Quarters in between Soho and Sheung Wan, has a fun art exhibition on until this Sunday called Wipe Out, featuring the fun creative mosaics of Invader, a French street artist.

A pixelated portrait of Invader

He has made tiled mosaics of the original video game Space Invaders as well as other things like Mario of Super Mario Brothers, and the Pink Panther in over 60 cities around the world.

In 2001 until last year, Invader created a number of mosaics that were placed around the city, but it's the Highways Department that has taken down some of them, which he finds amusing, but some diehard fans formed a group to try to recreate the mosaics.

And in the Hong Kong context Invader has created mosaics specific to the city, like Bruce Lee, Doraemon and of course Hong Kong Phooey.

The last time he was here he happened to be staying in Admiralty during the Occupy protests and made a few mosaics inspired by the movement.

One of his projects not related to Hong Kong is called Art4Space, where he and a partner created a tiled mosaic of a space invader and attached it to a mini video camera and a GPS locater sealed in a box which was then put at the end of a giant weather balloon that was filled with helium.

Can you see Bruce Lee in this mosaic?

The plan was to see how high the balloon could go -- higher than the height airplanes travel at and film the entire experience before the balloon pops and as the box and mosaic fall back to earth, a parachute would automatically open so that they would fall safely back to the ground. The GPS would allow the duo to find them.

They did this in Florida and covertly, wearing plastic white jumpsuits and covered their mouths, but the drawback was that because it was so hot there -- hello it's Florida! -- they were sweating profusely in their suits.

Their first attempt failed because the helium tank didn't have enough helium to fill the balloon and they had to retreat and wait a few days for the next good day. The second attempt was perfect and the balloon took off, and at one point they lose track of the balloon because it reached the stratosphere where there was no signal.

A cute slogan that kind of says it all, doesn't it?

Four hours later it came down and emitted its location, but it took them a while to find it. They realize that phone GPS systems put the location to the nearest road, not necessarily the exact point.

It was the next day after hours of walking through other people's private properties did they finally find the camera and mosaic intact and saw the video which they showed us speeded up in parts.

What an interesting exercise.

The mosaics are colourful and cute -- and strangely look better when you look through them in the camera of the smartphone. It all makes sense!

This is one of the more fun art shows that hopefully inspires others to create art that is city-specific, and also have fun or poke fun at things or yourself. Art is everywhere if you look.

Love Hong Kong Phooey here

Wipe Out: An explanatory guide through Invader's creative universe

May 2-17, 2015

2/F, PMQ

Pictures of the Day: Lego City

A tram stops in front of the Woo Cheong Pawn shop in Wan Chai

Lego frenzy has not abated in Hong Kong. Even before the hit film The Lego Movie arrived in cinemas here, there's a strong member base of the Hong Kong Lego Users Group (HKLUG).

The Lui Seng Chun building in Lai Chi Kok

I read one story about a father here who loved Lego as a kid, but stopped playing with it as he got older. However once he had a child, he started buying Lego again and is even more crazy about it than his boy!

Last night when I was trying to kill some time before dinner, I wandered into the Regal Kowloon Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui East and in the lobby were several Lego creatives by HKLUG members.

While there was one giant display that encouraged guests to guess how many Lego pieces were used to build the Easter-themed fantasy scene, the others were smaller, but nice interpretations of famous Hong Kong areas.

One was a Lego recreation of the Woo Cheong Pawn shop on Johnston Road in Wan Chai that is now known as The Pawn. The three-storey colonial-style building was fun to look at with the green tram in front.

Bruce Lee if he was made of Lego...

Another is a toy replica of the Lui Seng Chun building at the junction of Lai Chi Kok Road and Tong Mi Road. First owned by Lui Leung, he had a bone-setting business on the ground floor and then his family lived in the floors on top. The name Lui Seng Chun implied Lui's medicine could bring patients back to life.

The building was finally rescued in 2009 and was finally renovated and restored in 2012 to house a Chinese medicine practice run by Hong Kong Baptist University. It is a great example of restoring a building to its former glory.

Meanwhile the statue of Bruce Lee made of Lego doesn't really do the action hero much justice, but while we don't like the real Murray House in Stanley, the Lego version is cute, with a lot of action happening there, including a wedding party being filmed in the foreground.

Looking at the pieces used to make these amazing creations also made me realize how much Lego has evolved since I was a kid. The trees look pretty cool, and the figures have neat outfits and even bicycles!

A lot of action happening at Murray House in Stanley

Nowadays Lego creations are sophisticated, they are moving away from the simple bricks we used combined with our imaginations to make whatever we wanted...