a little tea heaven

The next best thing after discovering a really fabulous place to eat/drink is to have someone else show you one of their favourite destinations. So on Thursday, a certain Ms Wong took me to the Sunsing Teahouse, located on the 32nd floor of the Soundwill Plaza in Causeway Bay. It’s a clean, quiet and sophisticated (yet unintimidating) teahouse overlooking the Times Square area, and from the moment you walk in you will feel calm, serene, and oh-so-far removed from the noise and chaos down on street level. Just the way a perfect tea house should make you feel.

It’s also clearly a haven for tea connoisseurs and lovers alike; on our visit there was a large group of Japanese women who stayed for hours, participating in what looked like a lesson on tea given by one of the group. The group pictured on the far left, we assumed, were true-blue tea fanatics congregating to enjoy several precious teas. The room is filled with quality teas, including rare aged puehr, gorgeous tea ware, and tea literature.

Each table has its own wooden water tray (with a discreet tube that draws the excess water away into a wooden bucket under the table), glass tea ware and china cups, and a black ceramic (?) kettle with an electric heating device to heat the water. A complimentary plate of Macanese treats were presented, which included phoenix egg rolls filled with dried pork floss and sesame seeds, wrapped with nori, and mini almond cakes (which I polished off with relish).

I took the liberty to order our first pot of tea – osmanthus oolong, one of my favourites and a tea that will always cheer me up with its uplifting, peachy aroma and clean taste. Being somewhat intimidated by the fiddly tea ware, I let Angie take over in the tea-pouring business. But to make things short, Sunsing’s website has a rather charming little tutorial on how to properly prepare and drink your tea. The tea was lovely as expected, and once we’d gotten all we could out of the leaves, we ordered a pot of west lake dragon well tea. All vibrant green leaves, the tea had a strong, very earthy, almost roasted rice-like aroma, so it was a good tea to follow after the gentle and floral osmanthus oolong.

The teahouse doubles as a shop, and virtually any kind of tea or teaware you can think of is available. From clay teapots for brewing that perfect oolong, to traditional, classy gaiwans. To my delight, they also sold the little double-walled glass teacups that I’ve always been meaning to buy from Jing Teas back in London. Each are handmade (in Taiwan) and unique. These little cups are not only delicate and beautiful (a real work of art), but extremely practical – the double wall is designed so that you don’t burn your fingers on the cup. At only $15HKD (£1) per glass, it was a steal considering the £2.50 price tag from Jing. And I have to thank Angie for sneakily paying for them as well as all our tea!

Teas start from $30HKD per pot (though note there is a minimum charge of $30 per person) and can go up to over $150 for the more expensive, rare teas. Unfortunately there’s a time limit on how long you can stay – two hours, though we found that was just enough for us – by the end of it, we were totally ‘tea-ed out’ and full to the brim. The service was, of course, impeccable.

Conclusion: A brilliant place, and a good one to go to if you’d like to learn more about teas.

Sunsing Tea House (新星茶莊)
38 Soundwill Plaza, 32/F, Shop 3201
Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Tel: 2832 2889
www.sunsingtea.com

i choo choo choose tuna

There are only two things in life that can get me up early in the morning, and that is food, or obligation. The people who know me well probably think that rising in the early morn to the crow of a cockerel is far beyond my capability, but on at least one occasion, I proved them wrong. One of the highlights of my trip to Tokyo in the winter of 2006 was the trip to Tsukiji market, which meant getting up at 4am (though, in reality, having slept at 2:30am we ended up dragging our unhappy, unconscious bodies out of our snug, warm hotel beds at 5:00). It wasn’t all bad though. There’s something very satisfying about getting up at such an ungodly hour in pursuit of food… it gives you bragging rights and a smug look on your face as you recount the story to your friends (or, they could just look at you with a raised eyebrow and think you’re mad).

We missed the tuna auction, but rest assured we had loads of fun dodging death at every corner (slippery surfaces and people shouting at you to get out of the way as their fast-moving karts loom towards you), photographing all the strange and wonderful seafood, and watching young apprentices being taught how to handle a sashimi knife. It was also the first time I actually realised how massive a whole tuna was. At the end of it all, we congratulated ourselves (especially me) for making the effort and sacrificing a few zees to come to this amazing place. Because seriously, who needs sleep when you get to have this for breakfast?

It doesn’t look like the greatest piece of tuna in the world, but I remember how pleased we were as we chowed down on our bounty, as a kindly obaa-san watched us with a bemused look on her face. This is what travelling is all about – screw sleep!

So if you haven’t guessed it by now, I’m a bit of a tuna enthusiast. A bad time to be one, considering the over-fishing of bluefin tuna, but in the end my gut won out – I had to visit Doraya, a Japanese restaurant specialising in just that (er, tuna, not my gut). It sounded like a dream come true. Also, it was recommended not only by my own mother (queen of good recommendations), but my (Japanese) boyfriend who usually snubs most Japanese restaurants in Hong Kong. So after a happy reunion with friends, we trooped over to the restaurant just a bit before 7pm.

We went to the branch in Causeway Bay (there’s also one in Tsim Sha Tsui), which is a seriously modest restaurant on Lockhart Road where not many people really go. Doraya, thus, is pretty much a hidden gem. It looks like any other Japanese joint you get around this town, but there are no flashy signs or clean-cut modern menus. It looks ordinary. Inside, there isn’t a lot of space either, it probably seats around 30 people at the most, with a tiny kitchen in the back. Their menu is a tattered, laminated affair, a few pages listing various incarnations of tuna dishes – there’s fatty tuna, seared tuna, tuna steak, minced toro and a smattering of other dishes (I think I remember seeing swordfish and mackerel). Prices for the dinner sets range from around $78HKD to around $200 for the most expensive one – It’s been a week since that dinner and I don’t have a menu, so my memory is a bit hazy.

I ordered the ‘double tuna’ set, which comes with luscious pieces of otoro as well as akami maguro. All sets come with a small dish of simmered vegetables, egg rolls, pickles and a bowl of miso soup.

The tuna was simply gorgeous. The otoro was, as expected, meltingly tender but without an overpowering fishiness or oiliness – perfection. The akami was the best I’d had for a long time – also melt-in-your-mouth, though obviously not to the extent that the otoro was! Both were rich with what I can only stupidly describe as ‘tuna-y’ – and unlike much of the tuna sold in Hong Kong (especially buffets, gah!), it didn’t taste bloody and metallic. It was fresh and just wonderful. Period. You’d think I could stop there, but no – there was quite a lot of rice and I was worried about being sick of eating all of it. But, get this: it was bloody amazing. Turns out Doraya uses top-quality koshihikari rice, from Niigata Prefecture, thought to be the best rice in Japan. It’s delicious simply eaten on it’s own, and has a tender, but slightly al dente texture and a subtle sweet flavour. I could have easily polished off a plain bowl of that rice. The whole set cost me $128HKD (£8.40!), which is tuppence considering the amount of tuna I got in there, along with the added bonus of the Niigata rice.

So, I wish I had something bad to say so this doesn’t sound like a gushing advertisement for Doraya. If only I could say that the service was rubbish, and that the waitresses wanted us out as soon as possible so they could cram more hungry hordes into the small restaurant and make a fatter profit. But no. Even after they’d cleared away our plates, they noticed our cups were half-empty and offered us some more tea – a small gesture, but an enormous one considering (as we later found out) the queue that was beginning to form outside of the restaurant. We were thankful that we weren’t pressurised to leave the place as soon as possible, and appropriately paid for our bill after we’d finished our tea.

It’s awfully rare to be completely happy with a restaurant here – sometimes it’s like an unbalanced see-saw; good food, bad service, or vice versa. At Doraya, everything was faultless. And the kicker? They open until 2am. Now you know where to get your midnight otoro fixes.

Doraya (定食のどらや)
G/F, 451 Lockhart Rd, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Tel: 2834 8851

Basement, Grand Right Centre, 10 Cameron Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon
Tel: 2366 8072

good vietnamese food? nha.

Yeah, I should have known better than to trust a hyped-up food critic way past his day. Or one simply of his standing – one of the most recognised critics in Hong Kong – as if a restaurant would dare serve him substandard crap! His glowing review of Cafe Locomotive, however, caught our eye. If you’re interested in why, he deemed their beef broth to be as glorious as the ones he’d had in Vietnam. We’re always on the lookout for decent Vietnamese joints in Hong Kong, since they’re few and far between and always erring on the side of inauthenticity. We decided that we’d troop all the way there like lemmings to indulge in the fabled broth.

As is usual with me, I woke up late and took even longer to paint my face; by the time we’d gotten on the bus my mom was fretting over the fact that we’d hit the restaurant during the lunch peak. At 12:45, the place was full, but there were no visible queues or anyone loitering around for a seat. The waitress took our name down and we waited for just 5 minutes before a table was ready.

It looked promising – all airy and with dark wooden furniture, high ceilings and some interesting decor. On a warm winter’s day (?!) in Hong Kong, this is the perfect kind of environment for a laid back lunch. There aren’t very many seats, but at least the high ceilings and semi-al fresco seating helps eliminate any inklings of claustrophobia.
I absolutely loved the decor. It was modern meets traditional – the restaurant itself is based on the story of a street stall based near a train station in Vietnam that would attract hordes of people with their mouthwatering pho, and a gigantic photographic print of the station in question hangs on one wall (as the only photo with the print in it includes my unsightly mug, it is not shown here). The two walls are also lined with luggage racks to simulate the inside of train carriages – charming! If only the food was as inspiring.

The menu boasts ‘authentic Vietnamese beef soup & chicken stock’, and the big seller is the ‘Locomotive signature rice noodle soup’, but we were far from impressed. The stock, to put it bluntly, lacked BEEFINESS – it was also surprisingly sweet, unappetisingly so. Squeezes of lime helped slightly, but overall it was a disappointment, considering this was their supposed selling point. I prefer a simple pho bo, but their signature dish included beef balls, beef tripe and beef tendons. My mom found the beef tendons in the noodles undercooked and bland, and I don’t think either of us touched the tripe – it looked exactly as what we thought it would taste – rubbery and flavourless. I’m tempted to say this was possibly the most underwhelming pho I’ve ever eaten in Hong Kong, but I’m not sure if it’s because of its own failings or due to my high expectations.

Moving on… after a disappointing encounter with a prawn and pomelo salad at Nha Trang earlier in the week, I ordered Locomotive’s version, which came beautifully presented. So pretty that the couple next to us were whispering loudly about it and subsequently asked the waiter to tell them what it was (side note: are Hong Kongers so unfriendly towards each other that a simple question to the table next door is totally impossible?). Its looks, however, belied its less-than-gorgeous taste. I expected a flavour explosion here – crisp, juicy pomelo contrasting with salty-sweet cabbage and carrots, a tang from the limes, a subtle aniseedy kick from the Asian basil… you get the picture. What resulted was a half-hearted assault on the tastebuds from limp flavours and way too much of the basil (bad memories of liquorice allsorts came flooding back…). The prawns were tepid and would have benefited from a bit of grilling; instead they seemed to have just been brought back from the freezer-dead and boiled. What I found at the bottom was a large amount of extremely watery nuoc cham, which didn’t help at all in the flavour stakes.

I was really confused about it all. Alas, Choi Lan, I knew better than to trust you and your smarmy ways. If only I’d read the 37 bad reviews (versus 9 good ones) over at OpenRice beforehand. The common folk are, again, the ones to trust. I always feel sad about writing off a place, especially one as nicely done as Locomotive – but as usual, the food speaks volumes. Sometimes it’s hard to know who’s really right, though (the media are positively fawning over the place), and who knows – maybe you’d like it. Perhaps I’ll give it another go somewhere along the line… maybe.

Cafe Locomotive (Contemporary Vietnamese Cuisine)
11 Wun Sha Rd, Tai Hang, Hong Kong
2882 8227
www.cafelocomotive.com

where’s the wagyu?

I missed this, but apparently Hong Kong’s wagyu beef shortage is now over; the mad cow disease scare in Japan has passed and luscious beeeeeef is being shipped into the city again. And so out come the weird and wonderful mascots again, all dolled up and ready to roll!

Oh Hong Kong, how you amuse me. I embrace you and all your eccentricities – including, but not limited to, the crazy mascots out on the street like the wagyu-woman above; it sent me into fits of laughter when I spotted it from a hundred yards away while sitting in an upstairs cafe… even more so when it shifted position and revealed its face. So wrong on so many levels…

Totally inconspicuous.

I totally exhausted the zoom function on my compact digital to take this shot, but it’s worth it. I feel like some melancholy, swelling music should be playing in the background – something like Moby’s ‘Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?’. The wagyu-woman would feature in the video, standing defeated in the busy streets of Causeway Bay while stoic Hong Kongers, used to such frivolous marketing antics, pay no attention to it (all played in typical emo-MTV fashion with the crowds speeding around it in fast-forward while the morose steak stays still)…

Anyhow, ’twas only my first outing into the ‘city’ today (I say city as I live far far on the most eastern side of the island where nothing much goes on) and I spent it well, easing my stomach into fabulous Hong Kong food by visiting an easy favourite, RBT.

Karin approves of the grub. And, we get our favourite seats again – next to the windows, where we can peer out into the streets below and point out the (many) perpetrators of fashion faux pas that stoll by…

I have to admit the food isn’t fabulous here, but somehow places such as these just become part of a routine, just because it’s so familiar. The bubble teas aren’t bad, and it seems that they’ve introduced a new series of drinks while I was away. Some are good, like the matcha latte with tapioca pearls above ($20HKD), others should just plain stay away from one’s oesophagus – corn smoothie, anyone?! And as usual, we stick to the old favourites – a platter of “Taiwanese” snacks, which included marinated chicken wings, chicken kidneys, beef shank and a tea egg. It’s all a brown mess in the photo above, but it sure was tasty (if not extremely sodium-fied). All is well, though, it tells me that I’m finally home.

RBT
Shops 201-6 (2/F)
Causeway Place
Causeway Bay
2577 2633

unbelievable!

Once again I have had to suffer through the ‘it’s not our fault’ simpering of an incompetent waitress. I am now fully convinced that to get decent pho in certain establishments in Hong Kong is to annoyingly order my beef to arrive separately, to avoid anymore pointless arguments wherein the wretched management tries to convince me that they couldn’t do anything about the fact that my pho had once again been served with completely cooked beef. In a restaurant, if I had ordered a steak to be done medium-rare, I would indeed demand it to be taken back to the kitchen if it came to me well-done. Why it should be any different here is a mystery to me. You serve what you advertise, and you do it well. Don’t try to make me eat this rubbish. Why should I pay for something that I hadn’t ordered?

Unbelievable. Unfortunately because this restaurant had scored so low in terms of service and food, it didn’t even cross my mind to note down its name. However I will be going back for this information, to warn any of you visitors to Hong Kong to avoid the place at all costs. To not only serve such tripe, but to question a customer’s dissatisfaction and to answer back with ridiculously illogical excuses is unforgivable. As I told the waitress, I would not be coming back again – a threat said with a smile, which finally led her to bring the complaint to the manager, which in turn led to my bowl being replaced. Only this time by a bowl of noodles with still cooked beef, with a few pink corners again floating above the broth’s surface, but I was too tired to complain again.

The restaurant in question, Viet’s Choice, is located on the 3rd floor of the building on the corner of Hennessy Road and Percival Road, Causeway Bay. It’s next to the RBT cafe and in the same building as Italian Tomato. While Hong Kong may be a mecca in terms of food, its service and sometimes flippant attitude to cuisine can leave a lot to be desired, and a bad taste in one’s mouth.