I spent a lot of money on food in Hong Kong.
Thai
We reached Hong Kong well after lunch and immediately started looking for food options. We soon found ourselves at a Thai restaurant on the fourth floor of a building. The floors and furniture were dark made of, black marble, black leather, and granite materials. The far wall was bright green and lit by small accent lights. Blue accents in the artwork completed the decor. It was a fancy feeling place.
Paging through the menu I saw seafood fried rice served in a pineapple. I'm not a huge fan of seafood, but I couldn't pass it up. "There was a really cool dish and they served it in a pineapple, but I didn't order it..." #lametravelstories
The fried rice contained shrimp and bits of squid or octopus. A small dish of cashews and meat floss came with the meal.
Meat floss, if you're not familiar with it... is strange. It looks like matted hair that was used in a pillow. The only food I can compare it to is cotton candy. It's light and nearly melts in your mouth, but it's made out of pork. I know. That doesn't sound appetizing. It is a little strange but it doesn't taste bad.
Burgers and Burritos at Wilbur's
We spent most of the day walking and riding the outdoor escalators up the hill toward the midpoint. When suppertime came we found ourselves near a small pub. Large barrels are used as tables and create a neat aesthetic. They serve burritos and burgers. Burgers sound really good to me, and "Steak Sandwich" catches my eye.
It comes with a salad containing leafy greens, a blob of mozzarella cheese, and slices of avocados. The fries look like they come in the basket they were deep fried in. The whole meal is served on a wooden cutting board. #atmosphere
Hello Kitty Dimsum
Sunday morning we go out for dim sum. There's a Hello Kitty restaurant not too far away, maybe half an hour walk at most.
It's a fun restaurant, Hello Kitty adorns nearly everything. The dishes are either made to look like Hello Kitty or the vegetables in the dishes are cut into silhouettes of the character. The buns we get are filled with an egg custard and are delicious. Sadly, they come in sets of three and there are four of us. The rest of the food is good, but I wouldn't say it's spectacular. It's expensive and the portions are small, but the experience I think is worth the cost.
The table is short and the chairs are hard to sit in for long periods—a not so gentle reminder to eat your food and get out. An alcove with several tables has watercolor artwork of Hello Kitty which makes her look elegant and less like the cartoon she is.
I think if I could draw or paint, most of my artwork would be combining styles like this. Something about taking a character from one world and imagining them in another really speaks to me.
Pizza Express
Stanley is a town on the south side of Hong Kong. A promenade along the rocky shore is lined with open air restaurants. Walking from the shops to the shore the smell of freshly baked pizza whets our appetites and makes us long for home. (The shops sell trinkets, souvenirs, and "original" artwork. While the artwork may indeed by handmade and is painted on canvas, somehow the shops all have the same pictures.)
Stanley is a town on the south side of Hong Kong. A promenade along the rocky shore is lined with open air restaurants. Walking from the shops to the shore we smell of freshly baked pizza. The delicious aroma whets our appetites and makes us long for home. (The shops here sell trinkets, souvenirs, and "original" artwork. While the artwork may indeed by handmade and is painted on canvas, somehow the shops all have the same pictures.)
An Italian restaurant called Pizza Express is where we stop for dinner. The menu and the prices are much more elegant than the eatery's name. They have apple cider from Australia. The salad descriptions sound excellent, especially in the hot weather, but so do the pizzas. I order a chicken salad. Besides lettuce it also contains cherry tomatoes, crushed walnuts, and dried cranberries. It's dressed with a delicious sauce.
I also order the Peking duck pizza. The menu says Pizza Express gives a set amount to a children's AIDS charity for each Peking duck pizza they sell. There's no tomato sauce, instead the Peking duck sits atop the cheese with shredded greens and is drizzled with a sweet and tangy sauce.
The meal is something like HKD$250 for me, but after a long day of walking around the food is blissful.
Urban Coffee
Below our hotel was a small coffee shop and restaurant.
We stopped at Urban Coffee for breakfast one morning. Cappuccino and Eggs Florentine for me. I didn't really know what that meant and I was pretty sure I'd never had it before. It made for a great breakfast and kept me full a lot longer than I thought it would.
I also stopped at Starbucks pretty much every morning, mainly because it was right across the street. Usually I got a coffee and a muffin. I don't care where you live or what currency you are using, when your Starbucks receipt is over 50, you start wondering if you have a problem.
McDonald's at Victoria Peak
We hiked up to Victoria's Peak and ate lunch at the McDonald's in the galleria. They had a special Pacific Sunshine burger which had bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a tangy apple salad on top of the burger. It was really good and came with a coupon for a free ice cream sundae. (It's a shame they don't put these stores in more convenient locations, amirite?)
The Sweet Dynasty at Victoria Peak
Another sit down, family style meal. (Family style is when you order a bunch of dishes and share them all.) We had chicken feet, buns with custard inside, dumplings, and a couple other dishes I didn't take photos of. (Typically when ordering family style you make sure you have at least one meat dish and one veggie dish. Usually you get an assortment of each. Normally we order one more dish than we have people to make sure we have enough food.) We finished our meal with a fruit and tofu pudding that came served on dry ice.
Chicken Feet: If you've ever eaten a cherry, then you're likely familiar with separating the flesh from the pit with your teeth. Chew the fruit, spit out the pit. Now, imagine the flesh of the cherry has been replaced by cooked chicken skin and imagine the pit of the cherry has been replaced by a number of small skinny bones. That's what it's like to eat chicken feet.
Yoshinoya
Yoshinoya is a Japanese fast food chain. They serve gyūdon (beef bowls) and the food is tasty and cheap. It was probably the cheapest meal we ate. I'm mainly including it here to help demonstrate the variety of foods we were able to sample.
This restaurant chain was actually established in 1899, according to Wikipedia. I can't remember for sure if I ate at Yoshinoya when I visited Japan, but I certainly recognized the name when we saw it on the street.
Sichuan Style Restaurant
When we got off the ferry back in Zhuhai it was well past dinner time. We trudged hungrily to the closest food places and chose one of the first ones we came to.
We made a good choice. Pork and bamboo, green beans, peppers with chicken, and eggs with tomatoes. It was delicious and the three of us had enough to each take some home. The shop owner was thrilled to have us come and got a selfie with each of us as we prepped to leave.