Hong Kong Restaurants: The Spaghetti House

When I’m Hong Kong, I usually eat mostly Chinese food.  It makes up for the crappiness of it right here in Montreal.

However, there are always exceptions and the first Saturday I was there, I was with my mom, her best friend and my aunt and we had to wait for a table at New Town Plaza.  It was between two restaurants right from each other.  Obviously, The Spaghetti House ended up giving us a table first so we went in and at down.

The Spaghetti House is a chain of restaurants specialized in mostly pasta.  I’m sure you guessed that one on your own 😉 The menu doesn’t only have pasta. It has rice, soups, salads and pizza.  I’ve always been curious how it was to go here.

Whats nice about The Spaghetti House (and some selected restaurant) is that if you hold a certain bank credit card, there are some priorities to it. In this one, it was the Standard Chartered Bank which opened up another special set dinner menu for a pretty decent price and some dishes not on the actual menu. My aunt had that specific card so she took a set dinner for two and my mom shared it with her.

Their meal included a soup, an appetizer, a set meal and a meal to choose from a specified list.

The Spaghetti House

Lobster Bisque

Apparently, I heard that The Spaghetti House is supposed to be known for their Lobster Bisque.  Except, I have this vague memory that my mom said that it was a bit on the salty side.

The Spaghetti House

Eggplant Rolls with Scottish Smoked Salmon and Crab Roe (Sesame Dressing)

I actually found this be an original idea.  I never thought of using eggplant as a roll.  Definitely something I would try to make.  My aunt and my mom both enjoyed this one.

The Spaghetti House

Baked Boston Lobster Thermidor in Crab Roe & Black Truffle Sauce with Handmade Fettuccine

This dish looks so beautiful.  Maybe its because I love lobster.  I couldn’t taste this because it had this creamy sauce on top of it. No one had any complaints about this one either 🙂

The Spaghetti House

Fried Rice with Scottish Smoked Salmon and Scallops

My mom especially complimented on her choice of having rice here.  I had a taste of this and it was very good.  Plus, they were generous with the seafood which always is a good.

Moving right along to my mom’s best friend who chose this:

The Spaghetti House

Squid Ink Rice with Grilled Chicken Steak in Fresh Tomato Puree

I’ve always been curious on what Squid Ink rice or pasta tastes like.  Apparently its rather good.  I didn’t get a chance to try this out.  However, she really liked it and said its a nice change. Maybe next time 😉

Finally, we come to my meal.  Up to now, all you’ve read is that I didn’t try a lot of these foods for whatever reasons.  The truth was that I had gone through a slight stomach problem after a week of eating crazily that never really revived so I wasn’t going to be too adventurous.  You will see that for the next few days, things will be tamer in the eating out department. However, it does get back to some form of normality so I still try to enjoy myself as much as I can 🙂 With that in mind, I was careful and chose a “go green” meal with angel hair and vegetables.

The Spaghetti House

Angel Hair with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Mushrooms

I’m a huge fan of Angel hair pasta and it seems incredibly hard to find at supermarkets somehow.  Its easier to digest and has a nice texture.  This one was very nice.  It was a bit oily but the balance of vegetables, both tomatoes and mushrooms were pretty good. It wasn’t too bland and had a good balance of taste.  I’d definitely say its a winner 🙂

Maybe it sounds weird to be eating Italian food in Hong Kong but a little change is always welcome to keep those taste buds alive.  The Spaghetti House may be a chain but it has a lovely menu.  I almost couldn’t make my choice. We all enjoyed what we had ordered and for my mom and aunt, they almost couldn’t finish their own meal.  There was also dessert included in theirs but I forgot to take a picture.

Are you fan of Italian cuisine? What sort of pasta do you like? Are you a seafood fan? 

Healthier Pasta Bolognese

Sunday’s are my fixed cooking days! Plus, my boyfriend has an 12 hour extended shift at work so he came home extremely tired.  I had to take care of it all alone.  Its been a while that I didn’t have help in the kitchen and had to multitask between various tasks to get dinner together in an hour time frame or so.  He requested pasta so I went in my inventory of recipes (I’m starting to do that now) and searched up this recipe from The Scrumptious Pumpkin. She has some pretty awesome recipes.  So far, I’ve only tried one other pasta recipe that she had a few months ago and it was super successful, so I went ahead to gather up the ingredients for this and get cooking!

My Healthier Pasta Bolognese looked like this:

Healthier Pasta Bolognese

Healthier Pasta Bolognese

The Scrumptious Pumpkin’s recipe for this is HERE!

I did make a few changes.  For one, I took her suggestion to replace Tagliatelle with Fettuccine.  I used the Smart ones which is white with whole wheat fibre. I’ve never used those before but they were on special so I thought it might be interesting to try it and get into healthier eating habits 🙂 Baby steps to changing eating habits, right? I also removed the mushrooms as I don’t digest them well and my boyfriend doesn’t like them.  I omitted dried oregano as I didn’t have it readily available. Thats about it! Everything else I kept the same and followed through with the original recipe!

This was a very good recipe! For one, it was quick.  I may have seemed like I was juggling between pot, skillet and chopping board but it was really easy to make.  It took about 30 minutes as she says.  Second of all and most important, my boyfriend loved it.  The sauce was tasty and flavorful.  Everything felt healthy and delicious (which usually don’t go together);)

I’m definitely going back to this one next time I want pasta.  Its delicious, healthy and quick..what more can you ask for in a dinner solution?

If you are looking for healthy solutions, I suggest you to drop by The Scrumptious Pumpkin.  She has a lot of great recipes to offer over there 🙂

Just curious, is there a specific type of pasta that you like? Spaghettini/Fettuccine/Linguine/Farfalle, etc?