Food Review: Hong Kong Desserts

Right after Lamma Island and looking at the nightview in Hong Kong and taking a stroll around busy Tsim Sha Tsui on Saturday night, my mom and I headed back home.  My mom had told me about how just around the corner, her and her best friend had discovered a lot of dessert shops.  Chinese dessert shops do not exist in Montreal.  I have been to one in Toronto before.  I love Chinese desserts and its amazing to eat it outside.  A lot of times it consists of pastes or sweet soups or made with glutinous rice or its with some sort of soy product like tofu.

We ended up going this one.  I saw a whole article on how it had won an award for being the best dessert place in 2011 or 2012.  I don’t remember exactly.  This dessert place didn’t have an english name though.

So for your reference, here is the actual link of the restaurant but its in chinese mostly.  I would deduct that perhaps its called Friends Dessert as the English name.

http://www.friendsdessert.com/aboutus.html

But for better reference, this link should give you the actual site of the restaurant that I went to and then the bottom one is the one that have all the other chains if it does interest you to try it out.

I went to this one: http://www.openrice.com/english/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=51597

This is where all the chains can be found: http://www.openrice.com/english/restaurant/sr1.htm?chain_id=10000675&region=0

The decor was pretty nice too.  The service was a bit not as good as expected.  This restaurant had a lousy group of waiters who seemed like they didn’t really want to be there in the first place.  But okay, we got service and we managed to get a decent spot and pretty quick service after that.

I ordered a Black Sesame Paste with Rice Balls with Peanut filling. What this is is Black sesame grinded into little bits and add a bit of sugar and you get black sesame paste, thats my general understanding of it at least.  It becomes a pasty liquid sweet soup. I love it! This tasted pretty good.  It wasn’t too sweet and the texture was smooth.

My mom ordered Beancurd with Gingko Sweet Soup with Rice Balls with Black Sesame Filling. Okay, let me say that again.  She ordered Rice Balls with Peanut filling but they mixed up the order and we didn’t bother to change it.  Nonetheless, she said that it tasted good.  So she didn’t complain about it, which is always a plus when she enjoys her food.

Then we shared a Mango Glutinous Rice Rolls. These rolls were okay.  The mango in the roll was sour as hell.  It was crazy sour, maybe its because I ate my sweet soup first.  Still, I love anything with glutinous rice and coconut shreds.

 

This place was quite good.  I’m not exactly sure if they have an award that this chain was the one they evaluated it with. The only downfall of this place was the service.  It was pretty nice to see the open kitchen next to us and the beautiful crystal lights lighting up the cozy restaurant.  The desserts had a lot of variety and some were pretty unique.  I stuck with the traditional though because I can’t get this in restaurants back home and they were delicious. I think its worth a try if you are ever in Hong Kong and walk past one of these.

Hong Kong: Lamma Island Part 3/3 Food

I am focused on baking and cooking so being on travel, I have to give you some coverage on food. You already know that since I already put up two food reviews.  Maybe I`ll start doing that once in a while if I find some good restaurants or some extremely bad ones, just to give out some warning.  Travelling and eating is something I love.  Lamma Island was awesome.  Unfortunately I didn`t end up having a crazy seafood meal.

Here`s what I had:

 

Say hi to my mom. She modeled for this one.  You know what that is? That is called Iced Pineapple. Its pretty much frozen pineapple to the point that when you bite in, it just gives you close to a brain freeze each time.  It was very good and refreshing when it was about 32C and hiking up a hill.  If you do this trail, remember to grab one of those.

We were hiking so restaurants on the mountains were not quite as abundant but we had about 45 mins till our boat left from Sok Kwu Wan.  That gave us enough time to eat a simple early dinner at this place.

RESTAURANT REVIEW: TONG KEE RESTAURANT

 

It is probably not the best restaurant but I didn’t have the English name of the restaurant so upon research on OpenRice.  Here’s the link for better reference: http://www.openrice.com/english/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=8241.  Just in case you do visit and want to eat there.  Although I’ve heard the more popular one is Rainbow Seafood.  I took a picture of it in the Seafood post.  They seem to have an extremely wide selection of fresh seafood.

Okay, so back to Tong Kee Restaurant.  We took noodles and drinks.  I apologize in advance because my mom and her friends beat me to one of the noodles before I could take a picture so I only have one of them.

To start, we had a nice icy drink:

This is one of my absolute FAVORITE drinks in Hong Kong called Ice Lemon Ribena.

For those who don’t know, Ribena is a blackcurrant juice.  They also make mixed berries and blackcurrant soft candies now.  Anyways, this is an amazing drink.  I’m simple, ok? I just love it because its fruity, a bit zesty and refreshing on a hot day.

Now for the main dish(es).

Chicken Chow Mein

I don’t understand why they decided to order chicken in a seafood area but its okay.  This place didn’t focus exactly on abundance of seafood.  So its alright.  This dish was rather delicious.  I thought it was a bit salty but it was done well texture-wise.  I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The second plate was (I think) a Beef Vermicelli dish.  I’m having a foggy memory of it.  You see why I take pictures now.  I ate so much in Hong Kong I don’t even remember what we ate.  It was an okay dish all in all.  Thats probably why I don’t remember much.

Tong Kee is a diner sort of restaurant so its not about seafood here. You usually would get a quick fix of noodles or fried rice at places like this.  We definitely had a filling early dinner and we were ready to set off back home. There is one last thing I’d like to mention about eating in Lamma Island in general, Tong Kee included.  You want to eat outside by the water. Its part of the whole experience.  You see fishing boats all over the place. If you dine there, you see the sunset.  I showed you the sunset in the Part 1 Trail post and wasn’t it gorgeous?

Before I leave, let me remind you again:

The beauty of outlying islands is the more quiet lifestyle.  You get to escape the tall buildings, the immense crowds and the general lack of natural beauty.  For a day at Lamma Island, it was a day to relax from the bustling ways of the big city and get back in touch with the simple things in life.

Hong Kong: Lamma Island Part 2/3 Seafood, Animals & Flowers

In Part 1, I took you on a little hiking trail and it gives you a good idea of what Lamma Island looks like.  Its altogether a popular vacation area.  Aside from being that, it is also known as a fishing village so being an island, it has access to lots of fresh seafood.  I mentioned that in the last post and I didn’t forget but rather I wanted to have a post to show you the seafood: giant shrimps and lobsters and crabs.  Whether you are into seafood or not, its still quite eye-opening to see it all live in front of you.  Your trail in Lamma Island is pretty much starting and ending with seafood restaurants all over the place, nested right next to the harbour. My pictures will go from beginning to end of trail in order.

So tanks and tanks of seafood may be the focus of Lamma Island.  If you are there and have time, you definitely should arrange some sort of seafood meal.

Other than seafood, there were animals.  I mean (mostly) domesticated pets.  My mom told me that its normal for business owners in small regions like this to have pets because then it poses as protection and security so you see mostly dogs around.  Oddly enough, there was an animal shelter and thats where you see the cat below.  I`m guessing there is a serious amount of strays as well.  I sure hope that it will be kept under control.

Look at that! I even gave you a little something.  We even saw cranes.  There were about 5 around this area.  It was absolutely cool!

Last time for the A Word A Week Challenge: Flower, I gave you mostly flowers from this trail.  So I just have a few more of the natural beauties I found to share.

I know one of them are flowers but the other one is super pretty too, right? I think that it was a very original picture so I had to share it with everyone.  The tree was made up of strands and strands of these draping downwards.  It was a pretty nice sight!

I actually have a little extra that I would like to mention before I end this post.  There was one feature of the hiking trail that I really loved and its this:

That is right everyone.  Its a dog toilet.  No more poop bags and carrying it through the whole path.  Just let your puppy take care of business here.  There are about 3-5 on the trail from my recollection.  I think its the best to make hiking on a family trail dog friendly because after all, our pets are part of our family.  Don’t you think its a great idea?

One more part to go! I am a bit behind schedule, please forgive me.  I will try to get it done before I head off to bed.  Any ideas on what its about? No worries you will see soon.

Hong Kong: Lamma Island Part 1/3 Family Trail

One thing that many tourists should be made aware of is that Hong Kong is surrounded a whole bunch of islands as Hong Kong itself is an island.  There are a few that are most widely promoted as tourist attractions for its hiking or heritage or culture.  Whatever you’re into, it never fails to disappoint.  The most popular one being Lantau Island with the Giant Buddha and Po Lin Monastery and the cable car system called Ngong Ping 360 which gives a fabulous view.  But, I’m not here to talk to you about Lantau Island.  I go every time I head back to Hong Kong but this time, I decided to switch it up and go to another island, a smaller one.  I’ve always wanted to go to the 3 other smaller islands: Cheung Chau, Ping Chau and Lamma Island.

I chose Lamma Island because there was an easier hiking trail so it wouldn’t be too hard for my mom either.  Some may know Lamma Island, because it had a serious ferry collision last months ago which caused some people to die.  However, we still decided to go. The deal with Lamma Island is that you can get there from one bay and then the hiking trail ends at the other bay, so that way you can take the ferry from both sides.  We took the ferry from Aberdeen and headed out to Yung Shue Wan.

Along the way to Yung Shue Wan, it was just beautiful.  We chose the warmest day in the two weeks I was there to go.  When we got to the harbour, it was a beautiful path lined with bicycles on both side.

You walk past restaurants with lines and lines of fresh seafood in the tanks.  Then you walk further in and its markets with food, wine, decorations, accessories.

Right after a good chunk of this, we reach the beach.

Just after the beach, we start our hike when it starts getting into a lot of trees and just starts having a bit more of an uphill climb.  Here’s where its amazing.  Flowers, trees and a beautiful view from up in the mountain.  There were rarely any barriers on the path and we had a blazing sun on us.

When we finally reached the other side, this side is called Sok Kwu Wan where we took our ferry back to the Central.

I haven’t talked to you about Central just yet but no worries, its the next part after Lamma Island. As you see, this island has so many aspects worth mentioning so its getting just a bit more attention. Expect them by the rest of the evening! I’m working hard to condense then into two more parts.