Noodles in a bag

Before I left home I made sure to say adios to Mong Kok. With shopping and crowds galore, Mong Kok is a pit stop for all tourists and locals alike. My destination was Mong Kok Centre, a mall formatted more like a market with tiny stores and stalls selling little trinkets, clothing, and accessories. Surprisingly my mission in this outing was not to shop. All my heart desired that day was a bag of noodles.

On the ground floor is a stall that provides the 'bag of noodle' service. Step one is to choose what type of noodles you want, then you proceed to choose 3 toppings to go with your noodles. Once selected, someone takes all the bags of what you've selected, combines them into one, mix

es in either garlic or spicy sauce, and you're good to go!

The best part of it is...this snack hardly puts a dent in your wallet!

Each bag of noodles, including toppings only costs $5!

man man sik,

Elyssa Yuen

Literal Delight Express

Most Hong Kongers do not take advantage of crossing the border to Shen Zhen. Crossing over into China is a transition that most do not enjoy or appreciate...but who can blame them? The crowds, pushing, strange people trying to lure you to their store. It's a sight that I tried to avoid at all costs myself. This summer however, I figured out how much SZ offers and crossed over by MTR 5-6 times. Last summer I went once to get a winter coat made, and I was so pleased with the result that I couldn't wait to go back! This time around I got: 3 male dress shirts, a dress, shirt, pants, skirt, and a cheung sam made. Spending hours picking out material and attempting to communicate with my tailor who spoke no english, resulted in a famished group. I must explain first that I do not venture very far past the exit of the MTR. A few feet away is a huge mall. The very top floor holds a market that only sells material, and the surrounding stores outside of this market are numerous tailors. The floors below sell everything your heart desires. Back to being famished, the famous restaurant chain in Hong Kong called Loreal has a place right next to the huge material market. If you ask me that was absolutely genius. They have bilingual menus to attract tourists (and of course people like me) and the food they serve caters to the Hong Kong crowd. After eating here once I was hooked, and ended up eating here

every subsequent time I visited.

Like any place, I can't say that everything they serve is great. An example being, their siu long bao. Served in traditional bamboo baskets used for steaming, each individual dumpling was steamed in a mini aluminum cupcake holder. I thought it was adorable when it came out, and actually brilliant for people who aren't used to or capable of picking up their dumpling without bursting its insides. THEY WERE THE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT EVER. The dumplings were completely stuck to their aluminum counterparts and there was slim to none soup.

Thankfully, the meal only got better! My favorite dish tried here consisted of seafood stir-fried in sweet and sour sauce. They infused this popular dish with the well known dim sum dish 'cheung fan.' So, there was a mixture of stir fried seafood, and fried chinese donuts stuffed with delicious shrimp!

Other side dishes we ordered were ma ma dei but this place is a must just for their sweet and sour seafood dish!

man man sik,

Elyssa Yuen

再見香港 zai jian xiang gang

As I prepare to leave home, it's only fitted that I blog about one of my favorite restaurants and cuisine of all time- Shanghainese by Crystal Jade. Now, I have never been to Shanghai and have therefore concluded that my palate has not been acquainted with true Shanghainese flavors, but that doesn't stop me from loving this huge chain restaurant across Hong Kong.

Of course, siu long bao 小籠包 is a must. To this day, I have never encountered a place that is capable of making these succulent dumplings with such thin skin whilst being able to hold in a mouthful of soup. Dishes ordered when I frequent this delightful haven are: Dam Dam Min 擔擔麵 (slightly spicy peanut sauce noodles), chicken and cucumber noodle salad served with a sesame oil & peanut butter sauce, and lou ba sou 蘿蔔酥 (shredded turnip fried in little dumplings). I also recommend their shrimp fried in ham dan 鹹蛋 (salty egg).

Words cannot express how much I will miss this place. If you're in Hong Kong and have never been to Crystal Jade, shame on you...

man man sik,

Elyssa Yuen

Childhood Snack: Pudding in a Bowl

Passengers, allow me to introduce you to my favorite childhood/teenagehood snack: Bowl Pudding （砵仔糕). Every time I see bowl pudding sold on the street, I always buy one, preferably with brown sugar (pictured above) because when they use white sugar, it tastes a bit sickeningly sweet. And always with red bean, because it gives it a contrasting texture with the smooth and... taut pudding, and yes, those two adjectives also describe a baby's bottom. Give me this instead of ice cream any day, and I'll be a happy camper.

The pudding is steamed and used to sell for HKD$3, the cheapest food item money could buy. The brown sugar bowl pudding is always sold out at the end of day, especially when students got off school at around 4pm. Perhaps due to its popularity but most likely to inflation, the bowl pudding is now sold for HKD$4. The pudding is scooped out of the ceramic bowl using the two bamboo sticks.

I lived in Chi Fu, a middle class residential area with a cutesy shopping mall. Nothing crazy, just your regular wet market, supermarket, hardware store, a few restaurants, all frequented by the same folks who live in the area. The shop that sells bowl pudding is at the wet market where they also sell curry fish balls, shrimp and pork dumplings, noodles and other Cantonese comfort foods. My cousin Gloria and I went to the same secondary school school, so we'd hop off the school bus and head over for after noon tea. Sometimes we'd go to McDonalds or Pizza Hut, but most of the time, I enjoyed bowl pudding or other non-chain store food. I tried bowl pudding at this place that claims to be the King of Bowl Puddings (砵仔王) which has chain stores all over HK, but it tasted so mass-produced, and it was over-steamed so the pudding was all mushy. Too bad these small, privately-owned eateries are slowly being gobbled up by boring, tasteless chain stores.

Bon voyage,
Jenny Cheng

Rice Rolls for Breakfast

Rise and shine, passengers! For breakfast today, you have two options: Chinese breakfast or a Western breakfast. The difference is a Chinese breakfast is only savory, and a Western breakfast can be sweet or savory. Think waffles, pancakes, sausages, eggs. A Chinese breakfast can be a glass of soya milk, congee, fried noodles with soya sauce, or glutinous rice rolls （粢飯）, pictured below.

The rice is glutinous so it's sticky, a bit like the rice in sushi. The filling is pork floss (豬肉松）, fried dough stick (油條）and pickled vegetables（榨菜). And I went to a famous place for it in Causway Bay on Jardine's Bazaar. It's a Shanghainese eatery on a small side street that has signs all over advertising their famous piping hot rice rolls. I was looking for something to eat for lunch that I could carry in my hand and eat while I walk, and a rice roll was perfect for the occasion. They make their rice rolls fresh at lunchtime and breakfast time, and it's so piping hot that I felt it was going to melt the cling film. The big pot behind the rice rolls is hot soya milk, I prefer it cold and sweetened in summertime.

Last summer on my way to work, I'd buy one at the corner shop and bring it to the office. I love the texture of the rice, it's not mushy or soft but chewy. The filling is only mildly salty and doesn't taste too overpowering for the morning. The one thing is, it's a little too filling for breakfast. It gives me food coma for the rest of the morning because it's literally one bowl of rice, and glutinous rice is usually more starchy and filling than regular rice. I've never seen rice rolls being made, so I stuck around and asked the two ladies if I could take some photos. They worked together, one rolled and the other wrapped cling film. Just like how you make sushi, you need strong hands to shape the rice.

If you're a curious epicurean interested in knowing how your food is made then you should visit this eatery. You can watch the two ladies roll and pack, before they nudge you for getting in the way of their business. The rice roll is HKD$11, a bit pricey since it's their top selling item, but if you go to other breakfast places you can get it for around HKD$8. That's only around USD$1, just imagine, a delicious USD$1 meal!

Bon voyage,
Jenny Cheng

Taste of Shanghai

This past Tuesday the interns at work and I decided to try this Shanghainese restaurant that's always packed during lunch hour. Apparently famous for their crab- a conclusion made from the newspaper and photo clippings in the stores window, this eatery is a great place to take a group of more than three. Taking in to account that we're meager interns, and that crab isn't in season, we opted to order some local cheaper delights. We ordered: fried tofu, siu long bao (of course), pan fried dumplings, noodles, chicken, and soup. My apologies for the pathetic translation, but that is a result of my pathetic chinese. The meal was delicious. Each dish was full of flavor, with nothing overpowering. The six of us left completely satisfied.

If you're looking for a quiet relaxing meal, this is not the location for you. We were seated with another party, sharing our table with about six strangers (some of whom were photographed in the background of the soup shot).

Conclusion: great food, authentic experience, clean enough, and each of us only shelled out around 50 hkd.

man man sik,

Elyssa Yuen

Bouncy Fishballs of Aberdeen

Aberdeen (香港仔）used to be a fishery so it's famous for fishballs. And the best place to eat fish ball noodles is Tse Kee (謝記山窿魚蛋) on Aberdeen Main Road (香港仔舊大街). Tse Kee used to be a hawker stall and set up tables on the street. It was next to a huge boulder that the kitchen was next to, and it made the eatery look like it was in a cave. The restaurant is run almost entirely by family. Tse Kee is also famous for their fish cakes (魚片), fried fish skin （炸魚皮), deep fried dumpling wrapped in fish skin (魚皮餃） The fish balls are famous for their bounciness. There is a myth that the best fish balls can bounce up and down on the table.


They have two types of fish balls, both pictured above. Fried is golden and not fried is gray. If you just buy fish balls or a block of fish cake, it's very expensive and can cost over HKD$100. I like to eat it with thin yellow noodles, but most people like to eat it with the thick white vermicelli. Tse Kee is also one of the last places left that still serve bottled cream soda (pictured up top). I think it tastes better than canned cream soda, not sure if this has been proven though so it's probably just psychological. Glass bottles are actually very environmentally-friendly because you can reuse it.

The bowl of noodles was around HKD$16 but I was sort of bored with what was in the bowl. No doubt it's of a higher quality, but nothing I can't find in the rest of Hong Kong. Passengers, if you ever find yourself craving noodles in Aberdeen, go for the less healthy but much more delicious options like the fish skin dumplings. It's deep-fried but guilty good.

Aberdeen is dear to my heart. My grandpa made a living making fish sauce in Aberdeen, and my mum went to primary school there. This was also a hang-out spot for many an afternoons during high school days. Aberdeen, which in Chinese means Little Hong Kong, is like a mini city that seems to have minimal Western influence, which is rare to find on Hong Kong island.

Bon voyage,
Jenny Cheng

Green Summer Treats

Passengers on board Delight Express, I'm going to switch up the AC because the heat + humidity in Hong Kong is unearthly. Don't you think we feel we deserve more junk food in summer time? Somehow when you feel like you've sweated the equivalent of a swimming pool, you darn-right deserve a scoop of ice cream! I found here two ice-cold summer treats that are both healthy and refreshing.

At Prince Edward (太子) the other day, my best buddies Melanie, Janette and I were hustled into this brightly-lit dessert shop on the intersection of Sai Yeung Choi South Street (西洋菜南街) and Bute Street (弼街). On the way in, she saw a huge mountain of brown stuff that looks sort of doughy and immediately labelled it 'mud'. Little did she know, that fueled my curiosity to try it. It's actually a Taiwanese dessert and comes in many flavors. If you look below, I'll point out the flavors to you.

Brown: chocolate ('mud') / Yellow: mango / Black: sesame / White: Taro / Green: Green Tea / Beige: Durian


I ordered the green tea one just because the thin layers piled on top of each other looked so much like lettuce, it's quite beautiful in a strange way. Turns out, it's not dough at all but sheets of ice! Janette describes it as like drinking a smoothie, because it melts as soon as it's in your mouth. It costs HKD$25, a little bit pricey so share it with your significant other, like the next table did, or with a bunch of friends. The name of the dessert is cotton ice （棉冰）, I guess because it looks like a piece of scrunched-up fabric, I'll give the Taiwanese credit for creativity.

And to make it seem more like a drink in solid form, there were tapioca balls, sago and jellies right next to it. The ice was very refreshing, but a little cold on the teeth, and way too much for one person to finish, even though it's mostly just ice. The couple at the next table ordered the mango one and could barely finish it. It tastes a little bit like ice cream, but much healthier since there's no milk in it.

It's an interesting summer alternative to the usual summer treats, but I still think nothing can beat a classic scoop of vanilla ice cream.


Hong Kongers can be creative with food too. Tsui Wah (翠華) has a line of creative summer treats. They've paired mango slices with fried fish, but the kale with ice (冰鎮芥蘭）HKD20, is the most creative thing I've seen in awhile. You basically eat the kale like you'd eat sashimi, chill it first and then dip it in soya sauce and wasabi.

I prefer normal hot vegetables but definitely give this dish a try. The vegetables are kind of hard from being chilled, and the dash of wasabi is a fresh take on a traditional Chinese dish. It's great to see creative dishes, and if more people have curious appetites then food developers will be motivated to create it. So passengers, I'd encourage everyone to have an open mind and be brave, you'll discover a lot of pleasant surprises along the way!

Bon voyage,
Jenny Cheng

King of seafood

On my way out of Guang Zhou, I was ready to venture out of my tourist bubble and into some local-foreigner middle ground. On the outskirts of the city sits the largest seafood restaurant in the entire world (yes you heard it, and of course it would be in china...). In addition to it's mass, there is an inclusive seafood market smack in the middle of the restaurant. So, from bartering for live fish to dining on lobster, this restaurant caters to all.

We were on a time crunch so there was no time for messing. We sat down and ordered: a local fish served in black bean sauce, pan fried seafood noodles (chou min), scallops in a chinese garlic butter sauce, and like all traditional chinese meals we started with a soup.

Chinese soup to a chinese person is like grass to a cow (okay maybe not quite, but you get the picture), and we will drink it if you put it in front of us, without loking at whatactually has been boiling in our soup for a good half a day.

The soup that was brought to us was a broth made of pork, bitter melon, fish, and scorpions. It was a little on the thick side as the oil had not yet been skimmed (and i reminded myself i was in china not at home), but the flavor was still delicious. When boiled, the bitterness from the melon becomes mild, and when mixed with the other soup ingredients becomes a slight aftertaste. The overpowering flavor was of course the pork, and quite frankly the scorpions didn't trigger a single one of my taste buds.

The pan fried noodles that came were a hugeeee disappointment. The size and texture of the noodle was one similar to that of a bloated spaghetti noodle...now everyone who's had pan fried noodles knows that is unacceptable. My father threw a fit, called the managers, and threatened to email their boss as he 'says' he is a close friend. The shrimp were miniscule, and the noodles too oily. All in all, not worth valuable calories or chewing energy.

The fish was mediocre, nothing you wouldn't be able to find at the dinner table of a typical Asian home so I feel no need to elaborate.

The scallops were still attached to their shells, sitting in a bed of garlic butter, and garnished with vermicelli glass noodles. The presentation was clever, the sauce was nice, the noodles were delightful, but the scallops were a failure! Biting into one I had to ask myself if it was dried or cooked (the obvious answer is cooked) and someone obviously overcooked them! Cooked scallops should be served at a soft succulent texture, and ours were nothing close to being prepared correctly. Overall, this dish has the potential to be fabulous, but if you order, demand that your scallops are unde

rcooked rather than over.

Overall rating: A must have experience to a traveler in the area purely for the experience. Their food however was nothing other than mediocre. Bill was 311 RMB (but this could have resulted in part to the yelling of my father).

man man sik,

Elyssa Yuen

Beijing Style Cold Noodles

The Beijing Wong Fu Dumpling Restaurant (北京王府水餃) at 98-102 Wellington Street in Central is one of the most famous places in Hong Kong to have Beijing style dumplings, which are freshly made with absolutely delicious fillings. My favorite is the cabbage and pork filling. They have a Dumpling Of The Day which are sold at a slightly lower price and I would definitely recommend ordering that because it probably means it's cheaper, and you can't go wrong with any options at the famous Wong Fu. The restaurant is frequented by people working in Central who want to eat quickly and go back to work, so this isn't really a place to sit and chit chat for hours on end. One of their lesser-known dishes is their Beef and Tomato Cold Noodles (below).


Now I've tried Japanese soba, which are cold buckwheat noodles served with ice underneath and eaten by dipping it in soya sauce. Cold noodles was very appealing at the time because of the sweltering heat in Hong Kong, but eating cold beef was a bit of a surprise, pleasant at first but slowly became a bit nauseating. The other option was replacing the beef with egg, but eating cold egg didn't seem that appetizing either.

Nonetheless, the first few bites were very refreshing since the restaurant is a bit hot and crowded. But the noodles were completely drenched in oil so I was full very quickly. Now this is when a tall glass of cold soya milk comes in. Boy, the soya milk washed down all the oil and grease like no other, but the oil still sat in my stomach and made me antsy to run 10 laps to feel normal again. So passengers take note, the noodles are worth trying but share it with 2 people or more. And don't forget to order a glass of cold soya milk and a big generous plate of dumplings. Make sure you dip the dumplings in the dark vinegar, not soya sauce! Expect to pay around HKD40 to 50 for lunch per person.

Bon voyage,
Jenny Cheng