Old School Chiu Chow in Tsim Sha Tsui

Smoked duck with sugar cane topped with peppers and garlic

 

Last night my relatives took me to a Chiu Chow restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui that they said was over 30 years old. The current location is not the original location, but the fact that it has been going for over three decades is an achievement in itself.

Delicious stir-fried ribs in plum sauce

It's on the second floor of a nondescript building along Peking Road and inside the decor isn't much to look at, quite tired, and even the table cloth doesn't cover the table. It's quite a long narrow dining area with booths and a private room near the kitchen.

The menu has lots of pictures, though the dishes don't look exactly like them, and in some cases the actual plates of food look better than the ones in the menu!

We ate a few signature dishes, like the Chao Yang smoked duck in sugar cane, and it looked much more colourful than what was pictured in the menu, topped with chopped peppers and garlic. It indeed had a smoky flavour, and quite sweet, though not much meat on the bones. 

Another delicious dish is the spring vegetables with spare ribs in hot pot, the vegetables were very tender, the stalks similar to choi sum, and they had absorbed the pork-flavoured broth along with very meaty mushrooms.

Interesting pork head terrine with glutinous rice

We also quite liked the stir-fried ribs in plum sauce that came out very hot temperature-wise and was meaty and tender. An unusual dish is the pig's head terrine. It is apparently made chopping up the pig head and mixing it with glutinous rice before being pressed into a terrine and then cut up into numerous thing slices. One plate is plenty for four people.

Finally the oyster omelette was a highlight and looked much better than the picture in the menu! The oysters are typically small, but here they were quite large and apparently duck eggs were used in the omelette. 

Two of the desserts we wanted to try were not available -- they didn't have the ingredients for them, not because they were sold out so we had two bowls of the green bean soup to share.

We were quite full otherwise I would have liked to try the fried e-fu noodles with sugar and vinegar. Haven't had that in ages...

Impressively large oysters in this omelette

Wah Yuen Chiu Chow Restaurant

2/F, Metropole Building

57 Peking Road

Tsim Sha Tsui

2114 0889

Old School Chiu Chow Cuisine

The decor in Lok Hau Fook hasn't changed in over six decades!

This evening my relatives and I headed to Kowloon City to eat at one of their favourite haunts, Lok Hau Fook, a Chiu Chow restaurant that dates back 65 years. The decor inside has hardly changed, one of the walls features a giant dragon and phoenix, with a double happiness sign in between them for weddings, though probably no one celebrates their nuptials here anymore.

I heard some Hong Kong films have used this restaurant as a setting for scenes involving triads -- who knew they liked to hang out in old school Chiu Chow restaurants?

In front deep-fried crab mousse and shrimp balls in rear

On a Friday night, the restaurant is almost full and we take our seat -- we get cold very fast from the air conditioning and the fans blowing the cold air.

There's a lot of dishes to choose from, and my uncle already has in mind what he'd like to eat. He hasn't been here for many years and reels off some of his favourites to the waiter.

Pretty soon the lo sui duck arrives with some vinegar and it looks overcooked by it's not -- very tender and juicy, and flavourful from the master sauce. Underneath the thin slices of marinated duck are pieces of tofu that are equally delicious.

We also order some seasonal vegetables and choose chun choi, a Chiu Chow vegetable that is a skinny version of choi sum that was cooked in a broth together with chunks of radish and pork rib bits and ginger for flavour.

Super plump baby oysters in a rice soup with pork

Then came some deep-fried items -- a ball that was a combination of shrimp mousse mixed with finely diced water chestnut, and the a rectangular package of crab meat mousse. Both were so lightly deep-fried that their texture was very soft inside, the hot oil obviously fresh.

Probably one of my favourites is the baby oyster congee. The plump oysters are practically poached in the rice soup along with chunks of minced pork, Chinese ham and mushroom. We each had seconds of this giant tureen.

Another interesting Chiu Chow specialty are dumplings where the wrapper is actually made of a very thin fried egg white, and inside the filling is diced chicken, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, and tied  together by a thin piece of chive topped with shrimp roe. This is such an interesting dish especially in terms of execution; interestingly it tastes of butter, and the bamboo shoots inside are a nice textural highlight.

Dumpling wrappers made of fried egg white are impressive

We were almost full -- but not before we tried some desserts. First up was wok-fried taro covered in sugar -- this is very difficult to execute, as the taro needs to be constantly moving in the hot wok otherwise the sugar on top will burn. Here the slices of taro were practically white with some scallion bits.

Another was a soup of green beans with some translucent jelly cubes. Not a favourite, but a fantastic finish was a taro pudding, again constantly stirred in the wok which is challenging because the grounded taro is so sticky. The end result is a very smooth and sweet hot pudding that's practically screaming to be called comfort food. The small bowl looks deceiving, but really one or two spoonfuls are all you need to satisfy your sweet tooth.

In the end our bill came to just under HK$1,000 for four. We will surely be back again as my uncle already began thinking about what to order next time...

Stir-fried slices of taro covered in sugar is difficult to make

Lok Hau Fook
1-3 Hau Wong Road
Kowloon City
2382 7408

Eat Like a Gourmand

Fine Chinese dining in a very classic English environment

Howard's Gourmet opened in Central last November and it has generated positive and negative buzz. While many rave about the food, there are critics who scoff at the high prices for the set lunch and dinner menus. But I have been entranced by the dishes here, and find them innovative and above all, delicious.

Stewed sea cucumber was the highlight of the meal

Howard Cai is the restaurateur behind it, having opened Howard's Gourmet in Guangzhou for 10 years. He quit his job as a civil servant and studied in the United States. While he was there he didn't like the food he ate in restaurants and began cooking his own.

For him the temperature of the food is very important and even calculates the amount of time it would take for the dish to go from the kitchen to the diners' table, because the food is still technically cooking on the way there.

Not only that, Cai tries to create interesting flavours with a dish. He doesn't want to cook, say abalone in the typical Chinese way; he decides how he wants the ingredient to taste and the figures out how it should be cooked, mainly to bring out the natural flavours and not hide it under heavy sauces.

Deep-fried crab meat cake with seaweed was creative

The end result is modern Chinese cuisine that has a more scientific basis, and also rooted in traditional culture in terms of the quality of the ingredients and how to balance them in a dish.

I took my mom and aunt to try the set lunch menu because they would not be able to taste anything like this in Vancouver.

We started with small appetizers in small bowls. One was fish cakes sliced into mini diamond shapes with also miniaturized beans, the other mountain yam with wood ear fungus, and a small cup of full-flavoured vegetable broth .

Delicate simmered seasonal vegetables in bouillon

Next came two relatively small slices of mackerel cooked and marinated Chiu Chow style with a dab of a miso sauce that was very refreshing and delicate.

Stewed sea cucumber was next and was the highlight of the meal. It was braised for such a long time that the pieces practically melted in the mouth they were so smooth. The thick broth they came in was fantastic and full of flavour too that we finished it to the last drop.

An intriguing dish came next -- deep-fried crab meat cake with seaweed. Perhaps it was meant to emulate home-style steamed meat cakes, but with a crunchy outer layer, in this case made from seaweed. The result was a slight crunch and soft on the inside, with a hint of crab taste in the middle. Again the broth here was cleaned up.

The slice of braised pork belly was good, though we preferred the accompanying large piece of bitter melon, while simmered golgi berry leaves in bouillon were so delicate and had subtle flavours from the garlic.

Homemade noodles are in this hot and sour soup

A signature dish is the hot and sour noodles, and we were forewarned they could be spicy. The noodles are homemade and have a bouncy texture, while the sauce is a slow-burn spicy with a strong sour taste. The spiciness is such that it entices diners to whet their appetites and eat more.

Finally to balance things out, dessert was almond soup with lotus seeds, but not what one would expect. Instead they were cooked to the point of melting into a kind of jelly that we found at the bottom of the bowl.

At the end of the meal I was just full, and this is the point Cai wants his diners to be at -- not too full and their taste buds sated.

It was such an elegant treat to be eating such a fine meal in a traditional English-style surroundings designed by David Tang. Who knew he could be such a great interior decorator?

For dessert, almond soup with lotus seeds that are like jelly

Howard's Gourmet

5/F, CCB Tower

3 Connaught Road Central

Central
2115 3388

howardsgourmet.com