Hong Kong Leftovers

HONG KONG
So I've pretty much wrapped up all my major posts I wanted to do about my Hong Kong trip (gosh, it's been almost a month now since I came back), but as usual I always have a few photos that I don't really feel warranted a full post but didn't want them to go to waste. So here's a special edition of Leftovers: Hong Kong style.

One night I had dinner with my uncle, and I let him do all the ordering because I wanted to see what he typically ate. We went to a restaurant near my hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui in the Kowloon side, and my uncle ordered a soup, a chicken dish, and two types of fish. (I like fish since it's healthier, so didn't mind getting two orders of it.) My favorite fish dish was this one above, which is a steamed Giant Grouper. I've never had grouper before, but what was so interesting about this preparation is that they left the skin on, and the skin seemed really thick, so it was kind of like eating sea cucumber, which is another delicacy. There actually didn't seem to be a lot of flesh, but that's why the skin preparation seemed so interesting so it gave you more to enjoy.

Yung Kee Restaurant is a venerable institution famous for its roasted goose. In Hong Kong, people prefer goose over duck, but they're prepared similar to the roasted ducks hanging in the windows around Chinatown in the States. My uncle and cousin and her family invited me to Yung Kee for lunch where we had to try the goose.

Yung Kee is a beautiful restaurant with three floors, but is so popular there can be long waits. On the top floor, you can get a reservation if you know someone. So my cousin actually got a table by calling the secretary of an executive friend. We had an assortment of dim sum dishes, which included the 1,000-year-old eggs served with pickled ginger. This is a popular appetizer in Hong Kong. I typically will eat this preserved egg in jook (the rice porridge) but never alone like this. It was nice, and the ginger definitely helps. The goose was a beautiful large platter, even though it was just half a goose, but I have to say that while it was good, it tasted just like roasted duck. It didn't seem amazingly good, so not sure what's all the fuss about. But at least I can say I went to Hong Kong and had Yung Kee's roasted goose. (BTW, Yung Kee has a Michelin star because of its goose.)

I ate a lot of snacks from two popular bakeries, and one bakery sold this 1,000-year-old egg puff pastry. (Yeah, I was obsessed with the 1,000-year-0ld egg products.) This is a mini version of the puff pastry, and while the egg portion was a bit chewy, they had a ginger flavored paste along with it that I especially liked. I bought a few of these mini puff pastries to eat on the long plane ride home.

And, finally, you can't travel to Hong Kong without eating some danh tats, or egg custard tarts. These are the danh tats from Tai Cheong Bakery, one of the city's most famous bakeries known for these tarts. But my cousin says you can go to almost any bakeries and they'll probably have good tarts, and I believe that. In Hong Kong, the danh tats are made with two types of crusts, so when buying you have to specify if you want it with a flaky crust or a cookie crust. I'm a traditionalist, so I got the flaky crust. And OMG, these were sooo good. The crust lived up to the name, but it really was the silky custard that makes them famous. I wished I could eat more, but that was the thing about my days and nights in Hong Kong, they were going from one eating spot to another and snacks were hard to squeeze in.

So that's a wrap on my trip to Hong Kong. I hope you enjoyed looking at all the food pictures as much as I enjoyed eating them. I'm already plotting when I can go back to get a bowl of won ton and more danh tats!

Yung Kee Restaurant, 32-40 Wellington St., Central, Hong Kong. PH: 852.2522.1624

Tai Cheong Bakery, 35 Lydhurst Terrace, Central, Hong Kong. PH: 852.2544.3475