Asia Flavours

Restaurante Litoral (7/10)

There is always a bit of a debate that goes on in my mind when it comes to Macau - stick with Fernando's (only reasonable food but in a great atmosphere) or risk trying somewhere else that might not have that chilled al fresco experience that seems to sum up Macau. This time - due to my inability to persuade my hungover body to board a ferry - I missed the Fernando's lunchtime visit and caught up with everyone for dinner at Restaurante Litoral. It's not got the atmosphere that Fernando's has but it's a quaint restaurant with a distinctive Macanese style and - more importantly - the food is much better. 

The star of the show was definitely the clams which were beautifully cooked and in this simply delicious soup, full of fresh herbs, onion and garlic. I could have eaten that all night, particularly once the sangria started to flow! 

The fried prawns 'Litoral style' were beautifully cooked. I found the sauce a bit too unnatural and sticky sweet but the prawn underneath was delicious. 

In reverse, the sauce on the African chicken (a sort of peanut satay experience) was great but it must have been the smallest chicken in the world because there was virtually no meat on it at all. Our final dish was baked pork chop rice which was serious comfort food. 

So the key question: is it going to replace Fernando's as my go-to place? It's undoubtedly got better food and is full of locals, rather than Hong Kong tourists... but there is something rather nice about the chilled al fresco atmosphere of Fernando's. Difficult to call...

Restaurante Litoral

261A Rua do Almirante Sergio

Tel: 2896 7878

Dim Sum at the Shangri-la, Shenzhen

Dim sum at the Shang Palace in Shenzhen's Shangri-la Hotel was something of a Jekyll and Hyde experience. Some of the aspects like the decor and the steamed dumpings were outstanding and some, like the cha siu bao and the rice paper rolls, were severely underwhelming. Quite bizarrely, there was absolutely no middle ground whatsoever - it was all outstanding or severely underwhelming, nothing was simply "ok". 

The entrance to the restaurant is impressive - all sophisticated, moody dark reds and blacks with artsy features - and the service was very attentive. We started off with some red and green peppers stuffed with minced pork which were full of flavour and then a selection of steamed dumplings that were totally spot on. The pork and chive dumpling was particularly good although the prawn dumpling and the siu mai were so close that it was nearly a dead-heat as to my favourite. Had we ended the selection process there, it would have been an outstanding meal. 

Unfortunately, I'm a foreigner and therefore part of my genetic make-up means that I can't have a dim sum meal without a cha siu bao. When they arrived, they looked so good, all white and fluffy. But the taste... the taste was just plain odd. It was as if they had added honey to the mixture. The filling was overly sweet and, probably to compensate for the sickliness, there was a lot more bun than the filling required. Cha siu bao buns are not all that flavoursome in their own right and so  I was left totally unsatisfied by the experience. The other severely underwhelming dishes were the rice paper rolls, both the prawn one and the barbeque pork one. The filling was rather limited and the soy poured over the top just sort of disappeared without a trace into the roll itself. The result was basically a mouthful of thick flavourless rice paper. Island Tang's rice paper rolls have nothing to fear! 

It didn't inspire me to want to pop across just for a meal but if I was in Shenzhen again then I would probably head to the Shangri-la (if only to use the bathrooms after the griminess of the shopping mall). Frankly though, the trauma of all that excess form filling H1N1 red-tape at the border was enough to put any future trips across the border on hold until it's subsided...

Shangri-la Hotel

East Side, Railway Station

1002 Jianshe Road

Shenzhen 518001

(86 755) 8233 0888

Harlans' Afternoon Tea (7/10)

It's not somewhere I would have thought of for afternoon tea but Harlans in the IFC is a surprisingly good destination for whiling a way a few hours. 

The food definitely compares favourably with the versions of afternoon tea I've experienced at The Peninsula and the Mandarin. I don't think I could fault one of the items on the tiered stand. Indeed, one thing that impressed me was that it seemed much fresher than its hotel-based rivals. The bread on the cute little sandwiches I had at both The Peninsula and the Mandarin was not particularly light and fluffy, having developed a hardness that smacked of being made much earlier that morning. The bread at Harlans was excellent, still soft and fresh. 

I guess that the only disadvantage (other than the lack of enthusiasm for teapot refills) is that it is quite quiet so you do have to create your own atmosphere but that worked well for us today as we were able to chat easily in a relaxed, uninterrupted manner. The stunning view of Kowloon out of the huge window means that it would be suitable for when you've got out-of-town guests around and don't want the faff of having to queue at The Peninsula. 

A good afternoon tea.  

Harlans

2nd floor, IFC Mall

2805 0566

Yixin Restaurant (8/10)

My last experience of lemon chicken in Hong Kong could easily be renamed "nuclear reactor chicken". The sauce was a seriously disturbing neon yellow colour and frankly, I'd have been surprised if the chicken had come into contact with a lemon at any point during the cooking process. With that in mind, I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit when my friend C.L. suggested a lemon chicken dinner, particularly as I was expecting it to be a bit of a local Wan Chai experience.

Wrong on all accounts. My first pleasant surprise of the evening was the restaurant itself, a tastefully decorated restaurant round the corner from The Pawn. Painted a warm yellow, the dining area was clean and spacious with old black'n'white photos on the walls. Also, unlike quite a few Wan Chai restaurants, the menu is in English as well as Chinese. 

Second pleasant surprise of the evening was the food which was really quite unusual. The lemon chicken, in particular, was a highlight. I suspect that the following description will make you think I've gone mad but I assure you, it worked. The deep-fried chicken pieces, an excellent combination of tender chicken and really crispy batter, were covered in this thick, sweet lemon sauce that, I swear, bore a striking similarity to my grandmother's signature lemon drizzle cake. 

To accompany the lemon chicken, we had a stir-fried crab and egg white dish which wouldn't have been on my list if I'd ordered but which will be from now on. The subtle flavours and texture were great, real comfort food (although my friends tell me that it has to be eaten as quickly as possible after it leaves the kitchen because it is rather less appealing when tepid!). Then there was a house-speciality baked rice dish with chicken which was nice but which wasn't going to knock your socks off. 

The other rather cool dish was their version of that Chinese take-away staple, prawn toast. The deep-fried toast pieces were layered with fish and then a slice of ham for decoration. My friends thought the restaurant was all a bit gweilo although I did point out that I was the only non-Chinese person in the room and it was completely full on a Wednesday night. I think they eventually settled on the fact that it was western-influenced Cantonese food. 

All in all, a bit of unexpected success. 

Yixin Restaurant

G/F Shanghai Industrial Investment Building

50 Hennessy Road

Wan Chai

Tel: 2834 9963

Oyster C ... again (7/10)

The problem with having an amazing experience the first time you visit a restaurant is that the second time will never be as good (First Experience). This unfortunately proved true at Oyster C. The key problem was really that they were so busy that they couldn't cope - we waited 30 minutes before our drinks order was taken, wine glasses remained empty for long periods and it was very difficult to get the waiters' attention. The other impact of the over-stretched waiters was that they didn't offer the tom yum soup with the tiger prawn sashimi (and I didn't realise that they had to be ordered separately because on my last, less crowded visit - and indeed on a friend's separate visit - they had offered it as a done deal). Without the tom yum soup, the sashimi has significantly less wow factor. 

On the plus side, the clam pasta was excellent - the same creamy white wine sauce threatening to cause a coronary at any moment. The staff were helpful when it came to the oysters P.G. and C.O. chose and with 16 varieties on offer, even the pickiest oyster aficionados are likely to be satisfied. To their credit, they were working really hard to try and manage all the tables but perhaps they should have staggered the diners a little bit so that they could keep everyone happy. 

My first experience of Oyster C is still at the forefront of my mind so I'm clearly going to have to give it another shot but for HK$500 a head with wine, it should really polish its act.  

Oyster C

98-104 Hing Fat Street

Tin Hau

Tel: 2834 7748 

Rice Paper (6/10)

It's official. Hong Kong makes you lazy. Reaching Rice Paper last week felt like a serious expedition and yet, in London, I wouldn't think twice about spending an hour sweating away on the tube to get to a restaurant. To be fair to my inner laziness, from Central, getting to Rice Paper involved a walk to the Star Ferry terminal, a trip across Victoria Harbour and then the trauma of navigating through the labyrinth that is HarbourCity. Still, it was a good meal - nice food, reasonable prices and a lively, noisy atmosphere (helped by the fact that, even during out mid-week visit, it was absolutely heaving with a queue of people standing outside). 

The consistent Vietnamese food is not going to amaze you with its innovation but it is nice, consistent food, perfect for a mid-week dinner. The scallop and mango roll was flavoursome and our mains of seafood yellow curry and a squid and prawn pad thai were pretty good. The wine options seemed to be rather limited in terms of choice (although I noticed a chilled wine cabinet on the way to the bathroom and so it may be that we failed to receive the actual wine list...). Definite brownie points go to the service which was efficient without being pushy. All in all, pretty good. 

Rice Paper

HarbourCity

Tel: 3151 7801

Awesome Street Food in Xian

I'm generally not a big risk-taker when it comes to food. Fully conceding that my pathetically delicate stomach likes the cleaner things in life, I generally avoid eating street food. During my recent visit to see the Terracotta Army in Xian however, my stomach, tempted by the smells wafting through the air in the Muslim Quarter, was persuaded that street food was the best way forward and, perhaps even more luckily, it was proved right. 

Despite sitting outside for what in my books was probably a little too long, the kebabs were very well cooked through (while remaining tasty) and so we indulged in a couple. We were also tempted by what we thought were fried potatoes with chili (damn silly with hindsight given Shaanxi cuisine does bread, not potatoes or rice). It actually turned out to be fried bean-starch jelly which, though quite a dull substance, was good as a bland background to the chili sauce (although slightly smaller pieces of the jelly would have been better in my opinion). The highlight of our first night was definitely a fabulously tasty flatbread covered in dried red chilies, sesame seeds and cumin seeds. I couldn't get enough...

Biang Biang noodles was another dish on our culinary itinerary. The noodles are really thick and certainly rather challenging to anyone less than expert with chopsticks (particularly with a rich tomato/chili sauce threatening to splash at any moment!!). Once mixed, the flavours were really good with a great chili kick.

I was tempted to try one of the persimmon pancakes available in the night market, probably because they rather cunningly look like doughnuts, but the taste wasn't anywhere near as good as I'd expected. It wasn't unpleasant, just rather odd. The rehydrated persimmons (also known as sharon fruits) are mixed with flour, osmanthus, rose-petals and sugar and baked until golden. I suspect that if you're a fan of persimmons as a fruit then these are a dream come true but I'm just not that fussed about the fruit. Bizarrely, it is thought that the raw fruits can cure constipation (by causing diarrhea) and the cooked versions can treat diarrhea and dysentery which seems a bit contradictory but wiki assure me it's something to do with the osmotic effect in the raw fruit sugars and the high tannins in the cooked fruit. You learn something everyday...

The star dish was the yangrou paomo, a noodle soup dish that requires the eater to tear some quite solid round breads into tiny tiny pieces before the bowl is filled with noodles, mutton and broth. To that you add chili, coriander and cloves of garlic that have been marinated in vinegar and sugar for several months. Our first attempt at yangrou paomo at a cafe in the night market was tasteless and dull - indeed the bread was pre-torn which was a bad sign - but we persevered and found an excellent one outside the city walls at Lao Sun Jia Restaurant, one of Xian's most famous restaurants. 

Xian is famous for its dumpling banquets so we decided to try the 18-course dumpling banquet on the second floor of De Fa Chang. It was probably the culinary low point of the weekend with rather over-cooked dumplings and heavy, thick dumpling cases. It was a shame because some of them were really pretty, shaped like fish and birds. 

The exception to the not so great dumplings rule were the rather bready walnut dumplings which were excellent - crammed full of chopped walnuts. The flavour and smell was really nutty and they looked fantastic, shaped to look like actual walnuts. 

We tried a fried version of the steamed mincemeat filled bread which is popular in XIan.  It was so good that, despite protests by our arteries, we had to have a second. According to various internet sources, the filling involves boiling the meat with wine, rock candies, fresh gingers, shallot stems and a herb bag of teasel nuts, cardamon seeds, cloves, cinnamons and aniseeds for 3-4 hours. 

We kept seeing massive queues outside one shop selling mungbean cakes and therefore felt rather obligated to give it a try. We were offered black sesame, rose petal and peanut mungbean cakes(there were other options but the woman got bored halfway through explaining the varieties, insisting they were all good...!). To be honest, mungbean cake (cake is a loose term - more heavy paste) has a bit of an acquired texture. The peanut one was definitely the nicest tasting but I can't say I'm going to rush to locate some in Hong Kong! 

And the award for best dish of the weekend goes to ... the rose petal mirror cake. There were stalls like this all over the Muslim Quarter and so I put aside my slight concern about the jams left al fresco, and took the plunge. Apparently a breakfast item, they are made from steamed glutinous rice cooked in these traditional round wooden steamers and coated in rose petal jam, sugar, crushed peanuts and black sesame seeds. Presented on a stick like a lollipop, they aren't particularly sweet but have this lovely rose flavour. 

Definitely a week of dieting required. 

Box Thai (2/10)

Martha Sherpa may not have managed (quite) to convince me of the benefits of making Thai green curry from scratch in my own home (without a blender) but one thing she did do was give me a good idea of what I should expect from a Thai restaurant. I think that was why I was so disappointed by Box Thai. The menu looked great with lots of different options available and the food looked fantastic when it arrived in the serving bowls, but it just didn't taste great. In fact, in places it tasted quite bad - all sickly sweet with no kick anywhere. 

The starters were by far the best bit with the grilled beef salad being the hands-down winner, closely followed by the grilled salmon salad. The cucumber / lettuce combo below the salmon and mixed in with the beef was fresh and flavoursome with a perfect level of chili. Unfortunately, it then went downhill. The spring rolls were excessively oily and flavourless - to the extent that you could really taste the oil when you took a bite. The papaya salad was perfectly amiable but really lacked the kick that makes papaya salad so brilliant - the powerful but balanced combination of slightly tart green papaya, spicy red chili, salty shrimp paste/fish sauce and sweet honey or equivalent. Even the satay was a bit uninspired - the meat seemed cheap and hadn't soaked up any of the flavours of the sauce. 

The waiter recommended the Massaman beef curry (which had two peppers out of three next to it on the menu) and pork neck curry with pineapple so that is what we went with. What he didn't explain was that they were virtually identical except for the fact that one had tiny bits of pineapple in it. Neither had any kick in it whatsoever and the overriding impact was of coconut cream and sugar, lots of sugar. I've never had sweet Thai curries before and I can't say I like the approach very much. After a while the Thai green curry arrived. It was marginally more flavoursome but didn't really have that balance of coconut and chili that you might expect. Indeed, it didn't really have any chili at all. On the plus side, the beef noodle dish was quite good. 

Then the puddings... The creme brulee was seriously overcooked and had become rather rubbery. The tapioca pudding with coconut milk was fine but not particularly exciting. To top it all off, the tables are absolutely huge square tables designed for about 24 people but in such a way that you can't speak across the table. If you are in a group bigger than two you won't get a lot of cross table chat. 

Disappointing. 

1/F, 4 Arbuthnot Road

Central

Tel: 9123 6049

La Gare du Sud 1910, Kunming, China

Kunming is not likely to feature highly on your radar but should you ever find yourself in the city with an empty stomach then a trip to La Gare du Sud 1910 should be on your to-do list. The restaurant has a railway theme (don't panic, not in an anorak-y way) rather, the tasteful interior decor features walls filled with old black'n'white photos of the railway connecting Laos and Yunnan, built by the French in 1910. If the weather is favourable and the smog bearable then there is also a rather nice al fresco dining area with large shades and leafy plant beds. 

I was rather expecting from the name that it would be a French restaurant but it is actually Yunnanese. And rather good at that. Indeed, after eating a lot of stir-fried dishes with gloopy sauces and an added buzz of MSG during my travels in Yunnan, I'd say it was my favourite Yunnanese restaurant of the trip. I'm sure there are lots of people who would suggest that it isn't the most authentic experience in the world, but it was great food in a lovely setting and that works for me.  

The waitresses couldn't have done more to help (possibly because we were confused looking foreigners) and we painlessly managed to completely over-order on their suggestions. Although the menu wasn't in English, it was full of pictures so it was easy to order. Of all the dishes, our unanimous favourite was the hot pot which was really flavoursome and beautifully presented in a mini wooden barrel with hot stones at the bottom of the dish. 

I also finally got my Yunnan ham. I'd been somewhat obsessed by Yunnan ham ever since my trip to Bei Yuan in Guangzhou (Bei Yuan Review)  and was gutted when we traveled through the whole of Yunnan without really being offered any. The dish was colourful and the contrast with the green peppers was excellent, helping to remove some of the saltiness of the ham. The minced pork dish was also rather salty but was equally flavoursome - not a dish to have on it's own to be honest, it needed to be in a group of dishes otherwise you'd have been trying to quench your thirst for days! 

 

The only weird dish was actually the house special which was not great. It was a sort of thick soup to which you added a variety of herbs and spices and in which you dipped your baguette. The soup was all a bit bland and the baguette was deep-fried and seriously oily. Not a great combo when it hit your mouth! 

Still, the rest was excellent - definitely worth a visit if you happen to be in town. 

8, Houxin Jue

Kunming

China

+86 871 316 9486

Lost Heaven, Shanghai

Lost Heaven is stunning from an interior design perspective - the dark reds and dark woods combine with the dim lighting and abundant Yunnan art to create a visually spectacular venue. Added to that was the great atmosphere - the whole restaurant was full when we went and the noise level was just right, you could hear yourself talk but no one else! 

I suspect that Shanghai folk think it is rather expensive but from a Hong Kong perspective it is reasonably priced - with a particular note to the wine list which has a good range of wine prices on it. The food was all very tasty and the menu gave you quite a lot of information about the different tribes the food was supposed to come from. If I'm honest, during my trip to Yunnan I didn't have food anywhere nearly as sophisticated so I'm glad I've been to this restaurant!!