waiter, is that a pantyhose in my tea?

Many times I’d walked past 蘭芳園 (Lan Fong Yuen) and gazed at it in wonder, but never stopped because I thought it to be more of a take-away stall (though I noted that you could perch on the small wooden stools on the raised platform in the front). Sneaky peeps – turns out there’s an entire restaurant hidden behind that facade! Entrance is from that small corridor on the left of the stall.

Who knew?

I was meeting two friends who happened to work in the Central district, so we arranged to have lunch there. Unfortunately, between the hours of 12:30-1:30, all the restaurants (even so-so ones) in the area are attacked by the brigade of OLs (office ladies) and besuited bankers and other working folk. When I got to Lan Fong Yuen at 12:50 the place was already heaving and there was a queue steadily forming outside. Because of its popularity, they have a policy that if all members of your party aren’t present, you can’t get a table. Two of us ended up waiting for the last person just outside of the restaurant, behind the stall, which was basically their kitchen. We watched the efficient staff do their magic in the tiny space – one man was in charge of making the famous ‘pantyhose’ milk tea (practically five orders a minute, from what we saw), another in charge of their equally famed thick toasts with peanut butter/condensed milk as well as their pork chop buns, and another piling on the toppings onto platefuls of steaming-hot ramen before the waiters would whisk them off into the restaurant.

Left: A worker busily makes cup after cup of milk tea. There are about 4-5 kettles on the boil at once on the stove. Right: My cuppa. Note the happy men in the background slurping up their ramen!

We were eventually seated at a table in the corner, along with two other groups of people – they come and go quite quickly, so in the span of half an hour there was a cheerful group of young male office workers, a young-woman/old-man couple, two teenagers, and then a tourist couple from mainland China. It’s certainly elbow-to-elbow dining, but it’s fun because you get to peek at what everyone else is ordering (the satay beef noodles looked a bit putrid, but judging from the reactions, it was divine; seeing different dishes also made me wish I’d ordered a pork chop bun – it’s so round and cute!).

I already knew what I wanted to order – I had their signature braised ramen noodles with pan-fried chicken breast and scallion oil, and a hot cup of pantyhose tea. Who knew that such simple fare could be so good? I’m not generally a fan of instant ramen, but at the very least, it was cooked very well – al dente and not soggy and watery. The pan-fried chicken breast was also surprisingly good – juicy, and with a crisp skin and SO. MUCH. FLAVOUR. There was sliced cabbage for texture, and the scallion oil was magnificent, it really brought the whole dish together. Humble food but oh-so-good (and probably oh-so-unhealthy!). It cost $36 for the lunch together (roughly £2.50) and we left feeling happy and satisfied. It’s worth noting as well that the service was really friendly – which you don’t really expect it to be, considering how busy and popular the place is (as a rule of thumb, the more popular a place is here, the less staff feel like they have to try hard with good service).

It’s worth mentioning that ‘pantyhose’ tea doesn’t really refer to what’s in it (bless you), but it does refer slightly to how it’s made. The brew is filtered through a nylon fabric that hangs like a stocking, thus its name as ‘pantyhose’ tea – reason being it really filters out any imperfections and grains in the tea, as well as somehow integrating the evaporated milk and tea together more smoothly, which results in a super silky brew. The strength of the tea is also a result of it being brewed for exactly 13 minutes, according to the owner. At times, I’m tempted to try it on my own with an unworn pair of stockings just for fun. (A trick that my dad uses to make his tea smoother, actually, is to add discarded egg shells into the pot – allegedly, some famous milk tea vendors also add this to their brew – the remaining egg white sticking to the inside of the shell somehow helps to add a smooth texture to the tea. You still have to filter it, of course, but in this case we just use a fine sieve.) By the way, the above image is courtesy of Reuters, who wrote a pretty good article on pantyhose tea, as well as Lan Fong Yuen (take a look at the related video!).

Afterwards I had a good stroll around the markets of Gage Street (where Lan Fong Yuen is located) and Graham Street. I swear I never get bored of doing so (I’ve already been twice in the week I’ve been back in Hong Kong). There’s just something so alive about these markets and streets that I can’t help but feel a pang of sadness every time I think about how they’re going to tear it down. A post about the area will probably follow, eventually.

蘭芳園 (Lan Fong Yuen)
2 Gage St, Central, Hong Kong
Tel: 2544 3895
Open daily 7am-6pm

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

vert

1. Romanesco cauliflower – I first saw these beastly green veggies in Blackheath several weeks ago and did a double take. Can’t say I’ve ever seen a stranger looking vegetable before, so when I came across them again in Marylebone Farmers’ Market, I heaved a big heavy one out from the pile and lugged it home. Simply steamed with a dash of cumin, to go with a scrumptious Indian curry made by my flatmate – very lovely. They’re currently in season so give it a try (though they don’t taste any different to normal cauliflower).

alain ducasse at the dorchester

There is, perhaps, no right way for me to go about reviewing Ducasse’s latest gastronomic offering. Save for the fact that I do like my food a little bit more than the average person, there’s nothing about my repertoire that says I can write a worthy play-by-play of a meal that probably cost more than all my meals in the past month. But then again, why not? Does one have to be brought up on caviar and truffles to tell what is good and what is not? I guess there will be some people who will disagree with me, but ultimately I was just slightly underwhelmed by the food today, though there were some brilliant instances of some serious culinary know-how.

book smarts

Judging by my epic post about afternoon tea a while back, it’s no secret that i’m something of a tea fiend. A tea fiend is easily excited by blends and tea leaves she has never experienced before, like dark red coat oolong, bohea lapsang and whole rosebud china black. She is also easily won over by attention to detail when it comes to serving up a cuppa. So if you place this delicate, Taiwanese hand-blown glass tea set in front of her when she was just expecting your average teapot and mug, well… be prepared for some happy raving.