Katherine hatches a wonderful surprise...

On Saturday, Katherine asked if I was free Monday night (which, of course, I was ;>) and requested that I reserve it for her. She was excited about what she was up to, but also very tight-lipped. Since do I enjoy surprises, though, I didn't pry too much.

Monday arrived and, after we both finished work, we took a bus to Canton Road in Tsim Sha Tsui. From there we entered the Silvercord shopping center, ascended the escalators to the top floor, and found the dinner spot she had chosen...

This is Hong Kong's branch of Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐), a famous Taiwanese restaurant chain that specializes in Shanghainese food (how's that for a crazy mash-up of three Chinese places?!). They are particularly well-known for their Shanghainese "soup dumplings" (小籠包, literally "little steamer buns"), one of my favorite foods, so I was on cloud nine...

Baby bok choy

Sweet and sour soup

"Dam dam" noodles (in a spicy peanut sauce)

紅油抄手 (literally "red oil dipped hands"),
a variant of a classic Sichuan dumpling dish

The primary reason we came: soup dumplings!

Dig in!

After dinner, we walked out of the restaurant and ran into someone who I hadn't seen in nearly five years: Edward Lo, a buddy of mine at Virginia Tech who was in the Hong Kong student organization (and someone who helped me begin my Cantonese and Hong Kong culture learning). He recognized me from a distance and approached me - I was shocked into near speechlessness. I mean, how does something like that happen?! The odds must be astronomical. After catching up for a little while, we agreed to meet again soon and parted ways. Katherine had more planned for the evening, after all.

We grabbed a taxi bound for Hung Hom and Katherine had it drop us off at the Hong Kong Coliseum...

...which you may remember from the concert I attended in June. The big surprise? Tickets to an extremely rare performance from my favorite Hong Kong singer/songwriter: Sam Hui! Sam has been in retirement for over fifteen years, so I never thought I'd get to see him perform, but it appears that he does host a concert once every few years. This time, I was fortunate enough to get to see him (thanks to Katherine!)...

The Coliseum was packed!

Sam has always loved outlandish stage clothing

Note the "Elvis Lives" sticker - Sam was heavily influenced by Elvis, both in music style and stage presence

During his rise to popularity through the late 60s and early 70s, Sam (now 61 years old) almost single-handedly created the Cantopop genre through a unique blend of Chinese and American music styles. Cantopop would not exist today, at least not in the same way, without his revolutionary work.

He also has an amazing way of using his music to describe moments in the development of Hong Kong while capturing the associated emotions, like little musical time capsules. (In fact, portions of his discography read like a fascinating cultural history book.) He is also unusual among Cantonese songwriters in that his songs are crafted as one would speak Cantonese, full of colloquialisms and accurate tones. Since Cantonese is a tonal language, mixing it with music is quite challenging, and many songwriters don't even try. They write the words they want to write, then sing them in whatever way the melody demands, often creating unintelligible results (since the same base pronunciation of a Cantonese word, spoken in different tones, invariably means completely different things). Sam's music is in stark contrast to this norm and can actually be used as a Cantonese learning tool (which is why Katherine first introduced his work to me).

Some other highlights of the concert...

At times, Sam was led around the stage by two of his dancers,
handing out gifts to the audience while performing

He invited a number of fans to sing along with him

His elder brother, Ricky, joined him for a few numbers

In the last half hour, he opened the floor for requests!
Fans were prepared with large printouts of complete lyrics (which he didn't actually need)

A snippet from one of my favorite songs

It was a gargantuan surprise that made for a magical evening and allowed me to bask in the performance of my favorite Hong Kong entertainer. A big "thank you" to my wonderful wife!

Traditions: Cookout with the 2nd Floor

Last year, in the first week of the school term, the second floor came up to our balcony for a round-the-campfire-like cookout. Last night we hosted them again (a little more than 20 people), so I'd say it's now officially a tradition.

It is also now a tradition that I handle the dessert, so before everyone arrived, I put together a peach cobbler (I made a mango cobbler earlier in the year, when peaches were out of season, but it was time to give them the real deal)...

Blanching the peaches...

...so that the skin falls right off

Sliced and mixed with sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice

Flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, butter (and then heavy cream)...

...became the crust dough

The whole package before baking

Time to rest

The second floor guys brought everything else (charcoal, grills, grillables, drinks, etc). Once the fires got rolling, we loaded up the skewers and huddled around the fire...

They even roasted a whole pig(!) in Cantonese style...

Delicious, but very hard, hot work

It might not be easy to make out, but I'm helping to carve the pig

Once everyone had their fill of meat, I pulled the cobbler out of the oven and it was completely consumed within minutes (along with about a gallon of vanilla ice cream)...

Like last year, as the evening came to a close, the whole group transformed into Merry Maids, cleaning everything in sight (grills, dishes, silverware, tables, floors, countertops, etc). Such wonderful guests!

Oreo goes crazy!

(But perhaps not as crazy as Ritz.)

Kraft is pushing two new flavors of Oreo over here these days, so I thought I'd let you see them...

Let's call the first one "Reese's Oreos" and the second one "Hong Kong Palate Oreos" (given the lowered tolerance for sugary sweetness here).

A unique and traditional family meal with the second floor...

We have a bit of a personnel shortage, so even though Katherine is the Warden, she is also the official "tutor" (like a "resident assistant") for the first and second floors in our residence hall. For that reason, the second floor invited us to join them on Wednesday for a big first-week-of-school dinner...


They were serving a very traditional family meal called poon choi...

The entire meal is slow-cooked together in a giant pot.

The pot has layer upon layer of different ingredients (mostly meat and seafood)

Each pot of poon choi is as unique as the imagination of its chef. Ours contained a whole chicken, fish balls, mushrooms, taro, daikon, pork, fried pork skin, tofu skin, eel, and shrimp. It was my first time trying it and it was wonderful!

Numbers turn on the old odometer...

My birthday fell on the calendar this past Monday, and I wanted to celebrate by spending an evening out with Katherine. I didn't have a dinner spot in mind - I thought we'd just let the wind take us - so we hitched a ride on a minibus, hopped out close to the middle of Hong Kong Island), and started walking north. As it happened, we soon passed by a favorite restaurant of mine that we hadn't sampled in over a year, and I couldn't resist. Welcome back to Duke's Burger...

The advantage of eating at 6PM or earlier!

Katherine's "Temple Street"
(exactly like a "Shirley Temple", but with fresh watermelon juice added)

My fresh strawberry juice

Outstanding onion rings (so crispy!)

Fried brie (served with a tangy-sweet raspberry sauce)

My oxtail and chorizo burger

Katherine's veggie burger

After the meal, we spent some time window-shopping and then returned home. Upon arrival, a group of our students surprised me with a very nice "Happy Birthday to You" serenade. A quality birthday evening. :>

Duelling Laksa!

On Wednesday evening, while looking for a place to eat, we aimlessly wandered down a back ally in Sheung Wan. To our surprise, we discovered two shops with nearly identical menus (but different owners) directly facing each other on opposite sides of the street. Stand off!

Now, it's not like they were selling common, everyday Hong Kong food (it wouldn't be strange to see two bakeries, two congee shops, or two dim sum restaurants across from each other). They were specializing a very specific kind of Malaysian+Singaporean soup noodle dish called "Laksa".

I'm sure you're thinking what we were thinking: It is our civic duty to stage a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred comparison of the two! Well, we're not ones to shirk civic duties, so we immediately dipped into one, gave it a fair shake, and then returned the very next night to try the other. The results...

-Wednesday-

Though the restaurants are right across from each other, the first one we saw was "Katong", so that's the one we tried first...

The decor was simple, but quite comfortable, and the menu was full of temptations...

A few unusal drinks to go with Hong Kong standards

Dishes from Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia

This means "Prawn Noodles in Soup / Dry Prawn Noodles",
but I couldn't help but laugh when I read it. ("Prawn me, fool! Prawn me dry!")

Sweet "barley water"

Katong Laksa!

Tong choi

Beef Rendang with rice

Chunks of watermelon with coconut milk and tapioca
(the first dish which truly allowed me to enjoy watermelon!)

This was a very, very good meal. And Katherine, having been to Singapore multiple times, confirmed that it was very authentic. We knew that it would be tough to top, but we came back the next night with an open mind...

-Thursday-

Across from Katong was "malaymama" (which easily won the contest's "cutest name" superlative)...

The menu was a tad smaller, but there's a lot of overlap...

...and, while we mixed things up a little, the basic structure of the meal was very much the same...

Calamansi lime soda
(I love these things)

Tong choi, like before, but with reconstituted dried squid, peanuts, and a sweet sauce

Their "special" laksa (which was soupier and not nearly as chock-full of goodies as the previous one)

Kaya (coconut-egg jam) spread on toast

This meal was also good, but I found the laksa to be too soupy and too salty. I can, without hesitation, say that Katong won this head-to-head contest. So, when you come to visit, that's where we'll take you.

This street has a few other restaurants that we'll come back to try, but the one I'm most interested in is...

A dessert shop called "McSweety"! We were absolutely full after our meals on both nights, but this cutesy name almost drew me inside anyway. I somehow resisted, though, so that will have to wait for another day...and another blog.

High Tea at Island Shangri-La

High Tea is one of the many wonderful British legacies left in Hong Kong - one that I have recently been wanting to explore further. Usually served between 2PM and 6PM, tea set meals can be found all over (in cafés, sandwich shops, etc), but they are most famously associated with high-end hotels and resorts. Last year, I tried my first High Tea with Carson at the Mandarin Oriental hotel and loved it. This summer, Katherine and I had three more High Tea experiences...

• A return to the Mandarin Oriental (where the homemade rose petal jam still leaves you gobsmacked)
• At a café in the IFC mall (I was without my camera, so it wasn't blogged, but it was tasty)
  
• Yesterday's trip to Island Shangri-La (the focus of this post)

I have a list of other High Teas that I'd like to experience, so you can bet that there will be more blogs about it, but today is all about our time in Island Shangri-La.

They serve High Tea in two places: the 6th floor lobby lounge and in Island Gourmet, a small cake shop on the 5th floor. The lobby had live music, but was much more crowded and noisy, so we chose the privacy of Island Gourmet...

About an hour later, just before we finished, this place would be absolutely packed

Unlike the other places I've tried High Tea, Island Shangri-La actually has three different tea sets you can choose from (in my experience, there's usually only one). They all looked delicious, but we went with the "traditional" set...

Rather a lot of goodies!

Elegant presentation

Clotted cream
(after someone tasted a fingerful)

Beerenberg strawberry jam and orange marmalade

(very good, but not in the same league as Mandarin Oriental's rose petal jam)

Sweets: apple milirtons, praline chocolate bars, raspberry tarts

Savories: roast beef finger sandwiches, smoked salmon squares, and chicken curry puff pastries

Scones!

Cakes: pistachio madeleine, English fruit cake, chocolate financier

With peppermint tea and hot chocolate to wash it all down, it was delicious (though decidedly carb-heavy) and I look forward to returning to try their other sets.