My colleagues and I were in Hong Kong in early May, attending an international conference on comparative perspectives on criminal justice in China, organized by the Centre for Rights and Justice at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Our stay in HK was short - just two days and three nights - as this was a pit stop of sorts before our longer trip to Beijing for a number of meetings.
I had done zero research on places to eat in HK, figuring I'd just rely on my colleagues who'd been there before; on recommendations from people at the conference or at the hotel; and on my college friend Alex, who I hadn't seen in roughly 20 years, the last time I'd been in the city. At some point, though, I got a number of recommendations from friends on Facebook, including some from college friend Andy, who'd worked several years in China, and from Thom, an acquaintance from Columbia, who almost daily posts pictures on Facebook of wonderful meals that he's cooked.
Thom suggested a place in Kowloon, where we were staying, called Tai Ping Koon. Either his description of it or the old timey pictures on the restaurant's website, or both, made me want to try this place out; it also didn't hurt that the Granville Road location was pretty close to my hotel. After day one of the conference, I knew I was going to be pretty worn out with trying to absorb a ton of new information.
Luckily, my colleague Jim was up for trying the place. We both took a liking to the somewhat old school interior with lots of booths, etchings of turkeys on glass partitions, slightly worn down feel, and what seemed like schools of waiters swirling around the floor.
The menu had items neither of us had heard of before. The descriptions weren't all that helpful - what exactly was the "Swiss sauce" on the famous Swiss sauce chicken wings? We never did find out, even after asking, but it wasn't really a problem. Borscht soup, baked Portugese style chicken, that Swiss sauce - I figured we'd be entering the territory of fusion-cuisine-before-there-was-the-term-fusion-cuisine. (According to the restaurant's website, the menu offers "a tentative exploration of Western cuisine" "interpreted in a Chinese way.")
After some not very compelling appetizers, the main dishes came out, both house specials. We were eating family style, which became a problem immediately after I tried this roast leg of pork. So tasty! I wanted to create a protective fort around it with my arms and shovel the delectable morsels of slightly fatty pork directly into my gullet, but, no, I had to behave and share. I don't know what the sauce was exactly - soy sauce, yes; some sugar, probably; but what else? It wasn't super sweet and was thin, not syrupy. Whatever it was, it really hit the spot, and I wanted to use up every bit of rice to soak up that gravy.
The other special, the baked Portugese style chicken, was, er, interesting. Not bad, but nowhere nearly as snarfable as the roast pork. A thick and rich sauce (with cheese? I couldn't tell) overwhelmed the chicken. Another blog describes this as a curry sauce, but that's no curry I've ever encountered. Tending towards sweet, the sauce also hinted of cinnamon, I thought, but what the heck was supposed to make this Portugese? I was hoping to hit some bits of linguiça, not being able to come up with any other ideas, but no dice.
The verdict on the chicken was not that favorable. We were getting pretty full and didn't feel obligated to clean the plate on this particular entree, which we had ordered in lieu of the Swiss sauce chicken wings, which I think the restaurant had run out of, strangely, for so early in the evening.
But even though we were full, we couldn't resist ordering the souffle. We'd seen these coming out of the kitchen - one may have gone to the table right next to ours - and they looked great and smelled pretty good, all bakery fresh and such. I'd never had a real souffle before, and Jim was up for it, so there it was in front of us, and impressive object that, in the pictures, seems to glow from the inside. What it tasted mostly of, though, was of poofy, eggy, sweet dough. I'd give this dish a flavor to fun ratio of 1 to 5, and for the restaurant overall maybe 1 to 2. Definitely worth a try.
Comments