Travel Snaps - Paris

“Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world.” 

― Virgil Kraft

L'HOTEL LE RESTAURANT Amuse bouche

L'HOTEL LE RESTAURANT Squid Coconut & lime sauce Sauted, carott

Alpilles strawberry - lemon grass
French pie style

Macarons - Arnaud Larher, Paris

Boulevard Raspail Sunday Market

Boulevard Raspail Sunday Market

Huitrerie Regis, Paris

Librarie

Les Marquis de Ladurée, Tuileries Gardens,  Chocolate Boutique

Saint Germain Les Halles Stall

Real chocolate fountain!! Michel Cluizel - 201 rue St Honoré
75001 Paris

Ferdi - best burger in Paris, superb mix of tapas  (recommended by Uncle Brad)

A sun-lit Parisian alleyway 

Green coffee beans of Kopi Luwac
waiting to be bought and roast in a Malongo coffee house 

A real coffee one stop shop - green beans, automatic roaster and barista.
Malongo in 50 rue Saint André Des Arts, Paris

Paris come to Hong Kong - Eric Kayser and Laduree

Hong Kong must be an attractive place for foreign brands to do business. You don't need to look far to see people queueing up to go into flagship stores of Chanel, Louis Vuitton etc. You also get famous patisseries and bakeries from Paris setting up shops in Hong Kong. Maison du Chocolat, Jean Paul Hevin have been here for quite some time. Now we have two additions in TST.

Laduree - the name synonymous to macarons, has opened a shop in Harbour City in TST. Modelled in the exact same fashion as their Paris shops, the shop sits directly opposite a Prince Jewellery and Watches store. At 30 dollars a pop, you get to compare macarons made with 150 years of tradition vs all the pretenders to the crown.

Eric Kayser - a famous bakery chain had its grand opening in Jan, also in Harbour City.

Eaten fresh, Eric Kayser's bread are soft and tasty. Try its olive bread if you get a chance. Lunch menu is good value. The savoury dishes are cooked to a high standard and you get a basket of its bread selection. The optional desserts are great value for HK$20 additional but guess they can be better.

We wait for its Happy Valley branch to open in April, then we might get to try the crumbs!!

Paris - Restaurants, Patisserie and Photos

Some shots from Paris.

Colorful tomatoes salad and creamy mozzarella from Mon Vieil Ami in Paris. Tomatoes in season were sweet and flavorful.

Green asparagus in a risotto, roasted sweetbreads from Mon Vieil Ami in Paris. An amazing dish, if you didn't mind eating something squishy and rich. Love the crispy surface. You need a huge appetite to finish the dish.

Sweetbreads are not sheep's brains or testicles, as some people confused them to be. They are thymus glands or pancreas. If you never had them before, they are taste a bit like bone marrow but richer, tastier.

Canal St Martin - about 10 minutes walk away from Le Chateaubriand

Prawn cooked in Cognac with a slice of nectarine - from Le Chateaubriand 

Jacques Genin Chocolate - exquisite and delicate. 

The spacious chocolat and pastry shop of Jacques Genin in Marais district of Paris. The spiral staircase lead up to the kitchen where everything you see behind the glass display cabinets and more are coming from.

Basil Lemon Tart - Jacques Genin

Jacques Genin in Paris

Jardin du Tuileries

If we ever get a chance to see the Eiffel Tower, this is probably what it would look like to us.......

Tin Lung Heen 天龍軒 in Ritz Carlton Hotel Kowloon

It was a cloudy day, so you couldn't see very far.
The surrounding sea wasn't the most picturesque part of Victoria harbor either.

There are restaurants where you enjoy you see from the windows more than you enjoy the food. Riding up the high-speed elevator going up to the 103th floor lobby of Ritz Carlton hotel, mum was expecting Tin Lung Heen to be one of those restaurants. The elevator ride up was surprisingly speedy and quiet. Once you're on the 103th floor lobby. you need to ride the escalator down one floor to the Chinese restaurant. The ceiling was high and spacing between tables was generous. Service was courteous to a fault.

So how about the food?

The dishes they ordered were all good!! Definitely more memorable than the food they had in Lung King Heen in Four Seasons Hotel.

So mum's expectations were turned upside down!! In a good way!!

至尊甘荀鮮蝦餃 Shrimp Dumpling

西杏雪影叉燒餐包 Almond Crusted BBQ Pork Bun
This is much better then Tim Ho Wan and Lung Keen Heen in Four Seasons, but comparable to World Trade Centre Club Chinese Restaurant (not been mentioned in our blog).

西班牙黑豚肉叉燒腸粉 Iberico BBQ Pork Rice Roll
Big Chunks of BBQ Pork, I would order this again and again.  I am not a fan of BBQ Pork Rice Roll but this has given new meaning to the dish.

蟲草花湯牛肉丸 Beef Balls in Soup
The highlight of the meal.  Seasoned perfectly with the right mix of texture and flavour.  Never seen before so its a novelty to us.

蒜香鸡 Deep Fried Chicken with Garlic
The crispy skin chicken was well presented and cooked and cut to perfection.  Sauce was good but probably too sharp on its own.  Best eaten with white rice.

Restaurant - Shanghai Lo 上海佬 in Wan Chai Hong Kong

It's an illusion. You can see this dragon so clearly because the picture was taken using long exposure and post-processing was applied to the photo. So you need a small tripod to take photos in this restaurant.

Perhaps one of the funniest thing eating at Shanghai Lo was that everyone at the table, there were 11 of them, were having a hard time reading the menu. They only realized upon exiting the restaurant that a tiny LED book-lamp should have been offered. So you know how dark it was inside the restaurant. Perhaps understandable given that this restaurant is located in the building where the most famous nightclub this side of Hong Kong Island used to be. Even going to the washrooms you need to be ushered pass dark velvet curtains!! Once you get accustomed to the lighting, or the lack thereof, the Shanghainese food waiting for you were mainly traditional, some with a modern twist and high quality. Portions are small but not overly expensive.

We dare say this is shoo-in Michelin star candidate!! Make sure you reserve a table and come enjoy one of the better Chinese restaurant in town.

Address - 5 Tonnochy Road, Wanchai. Tel: 3125 3888

熏蛋 (smoke duck's egg) - wonderful texture cooked to perfection, just look at the runny egg yolk on the right

川味鴨舌 (spicy duck's tongue), 清炒河蝦仁 (wok-fried shrimps)

上海佬鍋巴 (Shanghai Lo's rice crisps) - one of the signature dishes, the raw quail's egg yolk gets mixed into the small bowl of minced meat sauce and then eaten together with the rice crisps. A great combo

花雕酒醉雞 (Huadiao drunken chicken) - one of the starter highlights, you can smell the fragrance of the Huadiao when the dish arrives.

油淋雞 (literally chicken drizzled with oil) - not the most appetizing name, but great crispy skin and tender meat!!

無錫脆鱔 (sweet & sour fried eel)

脆皮素鵝 (fried yuba)

Ramen - Tamashii Ramen Hong Kong 魂

Mum and dad are eating out a lot these days because JieJie J is on her 3-week home leave. So we get to write a lot more. So lets take a look at Tamashii 魂.

Mum and dad love their noodles and would even dare to boast they have tried more noodles in more corners of the world than most. One of the highlights for their many trips to Japan was to try out ramen and udon in those places. Tamashii's bowl of ramen must rank amongst the top of anything they have had. The shop's ambience is perhaps the most nostalgically Japanese in Hong Kong. If one is forced to pick between Butao 豚王 and Tamashii, the latter is their current top pick. Before we carry on with their praises for the place, you should know what Tamashii is NOT about:

Big portion - smaller than Butao and probably small than Ippudo

Super rich broth - lighter than Butao, similar to Ippudo. But the soup broth imparts a subtler flavor then either.

Queue at 11:30am, half-hour before opening.

A place to chat over a bowl of ramen - while nobody drives you away, but you feel bad occupying the seat while all the poor souls queueing outside breathing exhaust fumes from the constantly passing traffic going up Canal Street Flyover. Go to Ippudo for a more hospitable place to wait in line.

Feeling healthy - even though all the ramen come with small bits of veg like, sugar snaps, bamboo shoots  and the pork broth is lighter; the one piece of char siu will send your cholesterol reading through the roof. The worst thing is after the first piece melted in your mouth, you will be itching for a second helping to put even more load onto your pumping heart. Not sure if this is the feeling that the name of the shop is referring to.

Tai Keku 太極 - with black squid sauce

Tamashii 魂 

Hidama 火魂

Address - 18C Sharp Street West, Causeway Bay (side street behind South Pacific Hotel)

Feel free to check out where else we have written about eating noodles and ramen in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the world. tag - noodles

You might like to read this "Lifestyle" article in the Standard with more background. You get greeted by the broad bright smile from Lily Chen, the owner, when you enter the venue.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=36&art_id=119783&sid=35447828&con_type=3&d_str=20120217


Check this out to see what "tamashii 魂" mean in Japanese. 
http://japanese.about.com/od/wordoftheday/p/Word-Of-The-Day-Tamashii.htm