Tried: Cashew Ice Cream

Strawberry ice cream made from cashew milk!

Back in San Francisco, my cousin took us to a food court in Emeryville, and told us about a cashew ice cream place. I was so intrigued I had to try it.

It's called Mr. Dewie's Cashew Creamery that has ice cream that is dairy-free, gluten-free and soy-free. The shop was started by two Berkeley-native brothers, Ari and Andrew Cohen in 2011. They wanted to create an ice cream to meet their dietary requirements of having no dairy, soy or gluten, only use organic ingredients and not have any preservatives either.

The shop is in a converted shipping container

Sounds like a tall order, but they did it. The cashews are ground into a fine powder then mixed with water to create "milk" and then the other ingredients are added to create the flavour, then it is put in the freezer to set.

Mr. Dewie's Cashew Creamery have three locations and the shop we visited in the food court is actually in a repurposed shipping container which is cool. It has a refrigerator, the ice creams on display, and even marble countertops.

On display were many different flavours, like tumeric spice, roasted cashew, coffee, chocolate orange chip. What to try?

In the end I had the strawberry flavour, but the strawberry and cashew taste seemed to fight each other and so I mostly tasted a thick, dense ice cream with a hint of strawberry.

Meanwhile my mom had the tropical trio -- pineapple, mango and coconut -- and it worked very well, tasting very refreshing.

There are several interesting flavours including tumeric spice

Nevertheless it was fun and interesting to try ice cream made from cashews!

We sat at a communal table by the store and for the next few hours watched a steady trickle of customers, and at times a crowd waiting to buy the cashew-based ice cream (after dinner). It shows that this kind of ice cream appeals to men, women and children regardless of it being dairy free.

While we do have a brand of dairy-free ice cream in Hong Kong called Happy Cow, it would be good for pastry chefs and even entrepreneurs to come up with non-dairy ice creams as a healthy alternative.

Mr. Dewie's Cashew Creamery
Emeryville Public Market
5959 Shellmount Street
Emeryville, CA 94608
(510) 350 8171

Japanese Sweet Treat

Pineapple and coconut soft serve ice cream at I Cremeria

After dinner today in Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui, we decided to have some dessert and found I Cremeria, a Japanese ice cream shop that serves soft serve ice cream with various combinations. The most famous one is pairing vanilla ice cream with Japanese melon -- but we didn't see anyone order that.

The ultra decadent ice cream cone topped with gold foil

Instead there were a few people who had vanilla ice cream wrapped in gold foil -- apparently it's a thing -- for HK$98, while most people ordered plain vanilla, or matcha flavour soft serve.

I tried the pineapple coconut flavour that came in a cone topped with a wedge of pineapple -- not canned! -- that had cinnamon sprinkled on top. It was an interesting flavour combination I never had before. And how does the pineapple stay perched on top of the ice cream? Through a tiny fork of course... I didn't find that out until I was eating into the pineapple and found something hard in the middle of it.

My cousin had a dessert combination that included matcha ice cream, mochi, red bean and some jelly cubes at the bottom. It was quite the decadent dessert, but not as much as the gold leaf one that we saw at least two people order.

Why one would want to eat a whole sheet of gold foil is beyond me, but hey if people are willing to pay for it...

Match ice cream with mochi, red bean and jelly!

I Cremeria
Shop OTG03A, G/F, Ocean Terminal, Harbour City
Tsim Sha Tsui
2386 6266

Don't Take the Peanuts

Cathay Pacific has found cabin crew have pilfered a lot of stuff over the years

Cathay Pacific is trying to continue to slash costs to save HK$4 billion (despite posting a HK$2.3 billion profit in 2018), but it looks like it may have found a reason why it's spending a lot of money too.

There seems to be a lot of pilfering going on, with flight attendants freely taking items on the plane, from cutlery and wine glasses, and even bread.

One of the more popular items are Haagen-Dazs ice creams

Apparently the theft of the items amount to "untold hundreds of millions" over the years, according to sources.

One of the more popular items is the pot of Haagen-Dazs ice cream served on flights. Some cabin crew are known to have freezers stocked with these ice creams.

"In view of an increasing number of reported losses of company property, we have informed our cabin crew that random inspections will be carried out," a company spokeswoman said.

Cathay had already warned staff in January in a memo about the "unfortunately increasing trend of company property discrepancies". Does everyone know what "company property discrepancies" mean?

Bottles of unopened wine and caviar have been taken too

The cabin crew will be inspected upon disembarking the plane, and they may only take with them cabin crew-designated meals, as well as fruit, water, and plastic-wrapped sandwiches.

That means they aren't even allowed to take the wet wipes or even peanuts.

"Zero tolerance means you are not permitted to take off the aircraft any item other than what the company has authorized as per the policy," said Ed Higgs, general manager of in-flight services.

"If anyone removes company property, irrespective of the value or if you believe it will be thrown away, you will be subject to discipline which may include termination."

Don't say you haven't been warned.

But what is wrong with taking leftover food that will be binned or opened bottles of wine? Or do they donate the uneaten food to a charity, and have proper ways to re-cork the wine for later use? 

Staff shouldn't even think about taking peanuts or wet wipes

It has taken this long for Cathay to realize some cabin crew are pilfering items? There is some mismanagement here.

And what about the airline's huge mistake in 2016 when it lost a whopping HK$8.46 billion on bad fuel hedging bets? Heads rolled, but taking pots of Haagen-Dazs hardly compares to losing billions of dollars.

Nevertheless, this is the new reality for Cathay Pacific flight crew. So put down those company-branded pens, peanuts and ice cream. It's just not worth it.

Sweet Enough? White Rabbit Candy Ice Cream

White Rabbit candy ice cream anyone? Apparently it's a hit in Los Angeles

I remember eating White Rabbit candy when I was a kid. The candy had a retro red, white, black and blue wrapper and then inside a thin edible rice paper wrapped around the milk-flavoured nougat.

Whenever I gave the candy to my non-Chinese friends, they would always ask about the rice paper. It just seemed normal to eat it! I also remember the candy being stuck in my teeth. You couldn't eat too many of them because they just got sickly sweet.

The chewy milk-based nougat is an iconic candy in China

Fast forward decades later and now an ice cream maker in Los Angeles has taken the iconic Chinese candy and made it into an ice cream that people there can't get enough of!

Wanderlust Creamery makes the ice cream by dissolving the milk-based sweets -- including the rice paper -- and originally served it as a promotional treat during Chinese New Year. It is also served in a cone wrapped in paper similar to the candy wrapper.

However the ice cream was so popular that the promotion, originally only nine days, was extended until the end of March.

Jon-Patrick Lopez, Wanderlust's co-founder, was quoted by foodandwine.com last week as saying are 1.3 pieces of White Rabbit candy in every scoop of ice cream.

Wanderlust sold 50 gallons of White Rabbit ice cream from February 1-20, then 50 more gallons from February 21-22 as word spread. On February 24 alone, Wanderlust sold its remaining 39 gallons -- nearly 1,000 scoops -- within eight hours.

This place couldn't enough candy to make the ice cream

The ice cream maker even had trouble sourcing enough White Rabbit candy to make the ice cream, and it was created without the knowledge of the candy manufacturer Guan Sheng Yuan in Shanghai.

When Guan Sheng Yuan found out about the White Rabbit-flavoured ice cream it was reported to be "pleased"... and probably wondering, why didn't we think of that?

Silk Road: Riding the Train to Turpan

Train staff checking to see if the platform is clear before moving on

Our visit through Gansu province was over and now it was time to board the train to Turpan in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The Dunhuang train station looked spanking new -- two years old we were told -- and right at the entrance we had to deal with security checks, showing our passports and putting our luggage through X-ray machines before even getting into the building.

Staff at the entrance have riot helmets and gear ready...

We arrived early so we had time to hit the loo (pretty clean) before heading to our train. Originally our Gansu-based tour guide was not going to join us -- we were going to go on our own and then meet our Xinjiang guide in Turpan.

However, we felt it was best he help us out just in case and we're so lucky he did.

Our second-class train tickets were bought months in advance; in that time period, some people had renewed passports so their passport number was different from the one printed on their ticket.

At least one person had a lot of hassle because of this and in the end had to refund her ticket and buy another one, which meant she could not sit with us. Our guide was on hand to help her out with this.

A high speed train ready to go (not ours)

If that wasn't all, there was the issue of luggage. One would think traveling by train is straight forward, but in China it's not. We easily took the escalator up to go across to the platform on the other side, but when we wanted to go down, there was no escalator, only stairs and a very steep slope to drag suitcases on the far right.

Needless to say it was a complete disaster -- people's suitcases rolled (or slid) faster than their owners and it created such mess that it was just easier, but more muscle work to carry suitcases down the stairs.

That resulted in our tour guide having to go up and down to help many of us bring our suitcases down several flights of stairs which was quite stressful given the sheer number of people also doing the same thing, and having to lift heavy loads.

Inside our train which is quite new

Finally that was sorted and gathering ourselves together we boarded the train, again our tour guide helping put many of the suitcases in the racks above. Some of us sat three to a seat, so six of us faced each other on the right, while on the left there were two seats.

The train started up quickly and we thought the staff would check tickets but they never did, and because there were many free seats some sat in other places. And then after one or two stops more people got on so we had to sit in our designated seats. 

By the way the food selection is quite dire -- there's instant noodles, drinks and chips -- including cucumber flavour. My uncle got soy bean drink with red bean, but it was the powder version which needed hot water and it turned out lumpy. One bright spot was having Haagen Daz ice cream!

One guy sitting near us had a dumbfounded look on his face watching us the whole time. He wore a black leather cap, black vest, T-shirt, glasses and boots. Sitting next to him was a woman on our tour who reported he had terrible body odour!

Finally he got off at one stop, but another man randomly sat next to her and he too stared at us. He didn't seem to belong in that seat, but what can you say? He looked a bit shifty, but that's because he felt uneasy being in a second-class cabin when perhaps he should have sat elsewhere.

Four hours later we finally arrived in Turpan, in time for dinner -- but wait we still had to deal with getting our luggage off the train and down the stairs again...

So that was our experience riding the train. One would expect it to be more convenient than the plane, but having to carry our suitcases up and down was too much!

Restaurant Flogging its Michelin Past

A Michelin-recommended restaurant is on this street in Tsim Sha Tsui!

Yesterday a friend visiting from Beijing sent me a message on WeChat about where we should meet for dinner.

It was a Korean restaurant on a small street in Tsim Sha Tsui, both of which I had never heard of.

Thanks to Google Maps I was able to locate the place, and while I waited for my friend who was running late, I did some people watching. The restaurant is in a building full of restaurants on Hau Fook Street and there were many small local shops, such as old school stationary stores, small boutiques, a hip crafts store.

Finally my friend arrived with two others in tow -- including the local guy who suggested we eat here.

It turns out the Korean restaurant was mentioned in the 2013 and 2014 Michelin guide -- how did the inspectors even know about this place in an obscure street in Tsim Sha Tsui?

Here's how the guide described this restaurant:

Steam rather than smoke is more likely to fill the air at this bright, contemporary Korean restaurant because hotpot is the popular dish here, with the seafood hotpot being a particular highlight. Other attractively presented dishes include grilled yellow corvine, kimchee and pork pancake, and the noodles are good too. The restaurant is housed within a new building, standing in juxtaposition to its more traditional surroundings.

But when we arrived, the staff were sitting at the tables waiting for customers to show up, and even when we arrived, they gave us the impression we were going to be a burden for them.

When we asked for recommendations to choose between two dishes, the waitress (who gave the impression she didn't want to be there) looked sullen and just picked one or the two to just settle the matter than giving an enthusiastic or honest answer.

She must also be annoyed when people speak Chinese to her, because she would immediately say I speak English, not Chinese.

How could this place be mentioned in the Michelin guide?! Not only was the attitude lacklustre, but the service itself wasn't very good. And authentic Korean? Ban chan, or the small dishes didn't include kim chi, and there was even potato salad smothered in mayonnaise!

Admittedly I didn't take any pictures, maybe because I was so taken aback by how this place was run. And by the way copies of Michelin guides were placed haphazardly around the room just in case you'd want to flick through...

We ordered a kind of seafood salad that came on a massive platter covered in a red (but luckily not too spicy) sauce, while the other was a giant hotpot filled with sausages. Sausages?

These were the supermarket kind, sliced on an angle, and there were even those small weiners with fake cheese sauce injected into them! Again I could not help thinking, this is a Michelin-recommended restaurant?

Aside from the overdose of sausages in the hotpot, there were a lot of rice cakes in there too, as well as lots of cabbage, onions and mushrooms. The broth wasn't too spicy and made less so when more broth was added.

In the end we couldn't finish everything. Our dessert? Nestle vanilla ice cream in individual plastic containers. How classy is that?

I don't know how much the bill was, but it must have been quite reasonable, four of us sharing two main dishes, and only drinking tea and water.

Maybe the restaurant was good in 2013 and 2014, but what we ate and experienced last night was hardly Michelin worthy...

Picture of the Day: Cheap Treat

For many in Hong Kong, Ovaltine conjures childhood memories

The other day I saw my friend's Facebook post saying that Ovaltine soft serve ice cream was back at McDonald's -- but only for a limited time.

I hadn't tried it before, so the other day I checked it out, only HK$5.50!

It does have that Ovaltine taste, the malt flavour with a bit of cocoa mixed in that isn't too sweet. For many people in Hong Kong, Ovaltine is a nostalgic food, bringing back memories of their childhood.

Another friend on Facebook posted a picture of waffles with the Ovaltine ice cream on top with chocolate sauce drizzled over them. He said it was available at the McDonald's at Admiralty, Quarry Bay and Cityplaza in Taikoo Shing.

The waffles definitely looked decadent, but I was OK with my cone. It seemed like just the right portion for a quick (and cheap) treat!

Desserts in K-Town

A sweet treat in the form of chocolate and banana waffle!

Near where I live there is a small dessert shop called Summer Ice that always has a line-up in front, mostly young people willing to wait. Inside it looks packed with people so you have to wonder, is it really that good?

I finally got my chance tonight, when a friend and I finished dinner in Tsim Sha Tsui and decided to meet her husband for dessert in Kennedy Town. Where should we go?

Soft ice cream with mixed berries

When we got there, there wasn't a line, but we had to wait outside, as all the tables were occupied. However, the waitress gave us an iPad mini to scroll through the images of desserts they had.

The repertoire isn't large, but seems to be enough to draw crowds: soft ice cream, waffles, coffee, shaved ice drinks, with berries, chocolate and matcha flavours.

After about five minutes we were shown our table that we had to share with other customers, and we ordered a soft ice cream with mixed berries (HK$50). We were told that each person had to order an item on the menu -- so that's how they make their money!

And so we also chose the chocolate banana waffle (HK$60).

The soft ice cream was quite sweet, but creamy -- we had had a spicy dinner so it was a good way to cool down our fired up taste buds. The waffle was delicious, and made extra sweet by the scoop of chocolate ice cream and chocolate sauce drizzled on top.

Sorbet (left) with roasted pineapple and a kind of limoncello

Our third dessert my friend's husband ordered is something I would definitely order again if and when I return -- the sorbet combo (HK$88), that features a lemon sorbet with a shot of what seemed like a limoncello lite, and two slices of roasted pineapple.

Most people ordered the waffle desserts, particularly matcha flavoured, and the mango smoothie.

The restaurant doesn't serve water to customers, who seem fine just having their dessert and leaving. Outside a line had formed, and by the time we left, there were at least six or seven people hovering by the door.

Ka-ching!

Summer Ice

Shop D, G/F, Full Harvest Building

6-18 Hau Wo Street

Kennedy Town
5541 0655

Some Paris Gems

Looking up at La Grande Arche at La Defense against the blue sky

Our third day in Paris was more secular, starting off at La Defense, in the far northeast end of the city.

One of then French President Francois Mitterand's "grand projets" that also included the Pyramid in the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay and Bibilotheque Francois Mitterand, La Defense's Grande Arche was completed in 1988, a 20-year project.

The site was originally where the French successfully defended themselves from the Prussians in 1870, and has now evolved into a business district, with many top national and multinational companies setting up their headquarters here.

The Arc de Triomphe is straight ahead in the distance

The arch is quite impressive, the gorgeous white marble and sharp edges create a striking image against a blue sky with disorderly clouds passing by. Look down from the Grand Arche and you can see the Arc de Triomphe in the distance.

Sadly we couldn't go up to the top of the building because the area where the glass elevators were was being renovated.

Nevertheless we took a quick peek at the nearby Quatre Saisons mall, where sales were going mad at 50 percent off.

Then we headed east all the way to Bastille, where as soon as we emerged from the metro station we saw the Colonne de Juillet or July Column. It was erected in the 19th century to honour the victims of the 1930 and 1848 revolutions. At the top is a golden statue, the Genie de la Bastille, who represents Liberty.

The curious Oriental room in Victor Hugo's apartment

We saw a sign pointing towards Victor Hugo's home and decided to find it. Down a small pleasant street by a park is his residence, an apartment where he lived with his wife Adele Foucher, from 1832 to 1848.

He paid an annual rent of 1,500 francs that was paid in four installments for the 2,800 square foot flat on the second floor.

Restorers have tried to make the apartment look as closely as it did when he lived there, following photographs of the place and eyewitness accounts.

Each room looked lavish, with sumptuous-looking wallpaper, lots of paintings on the walls, heavy antique furniture, and family portraits in photographs and paintings.

One of Hugo's ink drawings that has a lot of detail and depth

Most intriguing was a room that was done in an Oriental style, with caricatures of what Chinese people looked like -- with slanted eyes and wearing robes, Chinese-inspired furniture and murals, that were mixed with porcelain vases and plates, and two Guanyin statues.

So it turns out Hugo had some exposure to Chinese art and apparently appreciated it too!

The smallest room at the back was the bedroom, and they recreated it to look like the one in which he died in 1885, complete with the four-poster bed that was quite small, along with two paintings of his corpse on the death bed.

Soutter created abstract paintings in the 19th century

I still remember reading Les Miserables out of my own curiosity when I was in high school and what a slog it was reading the first third of the thick book. However after that things started to get interesting and the different plot lines came together making it a riveting read to the end.

And then years later the musical came out, but never gave the book justice to the numerous twists and turns in the plot, let alone the character development...

The ground floor of the apartment is reserved for rotating exhibitions and here it was showing Hugo also had an artistic ability, proficient at drawing, and how he influenced a violinist named Louis Soutter.

Hugo didn't pick up drawing until he was 30, while Soutter started when he was over 50. Soutter lived a sad life -- he never became famous as a violinist and instead ended up divorced and penniless -- his brother had to sell his violin to be able to let him live in an old people's home.

Hanging out at the Pyramid in the Louvre

When the two artists' drawings are put side by side, it's interesting to see their different styles -- Hugo masters facial expressions with minimal strokes, while Soutter is not afraid to cover the entire paper with pencil strokes that are confident and expressive.

From Bastille we headed to the Louvre, just to take pictures outside and then head to Opera station for Palais Garnier, named after the architect Charles Garnier who was commissioned by Napoleon III to build an opera house to reflect the opulence of the Second Empire.

We didn't go inside, but it was already impressive on the outside with the portraits of many composers lining the large building.

A memorable pistachio and strawberry ice cream sandwich

Just a block away was Galeries LaFayette and I was finally able to complete my mission in Paris -- to try an ice cream sandwich from Pierre Herme. My colleague had raved about them to me before, how she had one and returned not one more time, but twice in succession to savour these cold treats.

I tried the combination of pistachio and strawberry (6.90 euros) and was not disappointed at all. The sandwich shell is made of macaron, and then it's a thick slice of the strawberry swirl ice cream. Each bite was not too rich, and very refreshing, though my dad had the chocolate and nougat one that was quite heavy.

For my mom I chose three macarons for her and we agreed the Mogador was fantastic -- chocolate with hints of passion fruit to cut the richness and wasn't too sweet.

Au Printemps celebrates 150 years in pink and roses

Before going back to our hotel we passed by Au Printemps which is celebrating its 150th birthday this year, the outside of the store dressed in bright pink complete with rose-shaped medallions.