Death Noodle

So I was wandering along Bonham road for about the 100th time since I got to Hong Kong and realised I hadn’t posted any photos on my little blog. So here are a few. Before you judge, bear in mind most were taken drunk or with me farting around with the settings on Instagram/PuddingCam…

So…what about these three guys then, what’s their story, huh?

 Secret garden I found right in the middle of Central…not very secret at all really

I bloody love the shutters over here

Old Hongkers…

Every shop seems to have a little shrine outside

First BBQ of the season, behind the camera

This guy’s apparently a dick. Even for a politician…

Something approaching sunset from Ap Lei Chau. Beautiful factory on the horizon…

 Temple street

Still think this would make a good bar….Temple St

Absolutely no idea

Aren’t parks in Hong Kong lovely? Not a crack whore in sight…

Do you hot pot? I’ve got to say, when it’s cold and miserable outside, there really is little better to eat than a whole heap of shit chucked into a boiling cauldron of broth and eaten with a powerful dipping sauce.  It’s DIY dining at its best.

Roast Pot in Wan Chai is one of the best I’ve had in Hong Kong. There’s still a lot that can go wrong with hot pot, even though the diner is basically in control of their own destiny. Ingredients need to be as fresh as they come, the stock should have a decent depth of flavour, there should be ample choice of stuff to bung in it and, most importantly, it shouldn’t be too formal.

Roast Pot in Wan Chai ticks all boxes  – a huge menu of everything from tofu, to various vegetables, meat, fish, fish paste, dumplings and some more unusual stuff like deep fried fish skin. And there are a goodly number of stocks to choose from. We had pork bone and a spicy Sichuan number – which offered good contrast and great basis for the feast that ensued. Fried garlic, minced garlic, spring onions and chopped red chillies completed the dipping ingredients line up.

Most importantly, though, considering that you’ll be dipping, fishing for and then shovelling up spoon after spoonful of delicious morsels into your cakehole, it’s a BYO restaurant, so you can bring as many cheap 7-11 beers in from outside as you like.

No matter how much we order the bill never comes to more than around HK$200 a head, which is pretty good value in my book. It also seems to be a bit of a celebrity haunt, if the hundreds of photographs on the stairs up to the restaurant are anything to go by.

Go now before it gets so hot outside that you won’t want to pot.

Roast Pot

109-111 Queen’s Rd East, Wan Chai, HK

Expect to pay about HK$1-200 for the food max

The Flying Pan. I would rate this as my favourite brunch place on the name alone, so the fact that it plays cracking 80s tunes and serves spot-hittingly decent brunch 24 HOURS a day is definitely a bonus.

The menu is exactly what you want from an all-day breakfast place, or exactly what you don’t with a hangover, as it is so exhaustive as to include virtually every western brunch dish I think I’ve ever heard of, with every conceivable combination or taste apparently catered to. As well as eggs done any way you like with various meaty accompaniments, or poached on muffin with hollandaise in endless variations on the classic Benedict, or in omelettes, or the Full English, or in ‘Sunrise Sandwiches’, they also do scrambled tofu. If that’s what you’re into.

Other options include savoury crepes, pancakes and waffles or French toast, and there are some good value meal deals where you can add sides like baked beans, salad or lyonnaise potatoes.

On paper, then, perfect. In reality: not very perfect. The plates were cold, they were a bit stingy on the spinach for my eggs Florentine (poached eggs, spinach and bacon on muffin) and the lyonnaise potatoes were a bit under. The Benedict across the table looked better, though, with a  large slab of gammon nestling under each egg. On another occasion I had the eponymous Flying Pan – bacon, eggs, sausage patty and ham. Again the food was only lukewarm and the porky products on my plate had the texture of processed meat. No, no, no. Sorry, just no.

It’s not ridiculously cramped for Hong Kong but on a Saturday afternoon was heaving when we arrived and there were queues outside by the time we left, so be warned, although there’s also a Wan Chai and Discovery Bay branch if it just has to be the Pan.

I can’t decide whether I’m pro- or anti-Pan. On the one hand it sums up everything that’s good about Hong Kong – mixing all sorts of cultural breakfast heritage from English to Continental to North American and even Mexican. It’s just that the execution isn’t very good and the heritage of some of the meat is obviously not great. Certainly not as good as The Brunch Club and pretty much only passable if you’re so hungover you can’t speak or so drunk you don’t care

The staff are lovely, though, and it’s pretty cheap. If I can remember next time, I’ll stop off there immediately after the club to nip any potential hangover in the bud before it has a chance to fester until the following day…

The Flying Pan; Old Bailey St, Central

Expect to pay about HK$60-80 a head

Dumplings. Big fan. And apparently they don’t come much better in Hong Kong than at Wang Fu’s.

This tiny hole-in-the-wall café-style dumpling diner has been serving up Ms Wang’s delectable Beijing-style potstickers for years now and has even been mentioned in the Michelin guide. It would have been rude not to give it a try on my first weekend in the big city.

Normally I’d choose the lighter, altogether more sophisticated wanton over the Beijing dumpling, but after a few early evening happy hour liveners, the latter actually come into their own. Insanely cheap, filling and quick. Wang Fu’s are among the best I’ve tasted – the skin not too thick, the filling rich and packed with flavour, and plenty of choice too.

The décor won’t win any awards, ditto the solitary toilet, which is basically located in the kitchen, but the lovely friendly staff and low prices will. Seeing as a huge bowl of dumpling noodles will barely set you back HK$32, we elected to forgo the extraneous stuff and get 3×10 lots of the little beauties sans broth.

Pork and chive ($HK39) were moist and wonderful while pork, scallop, shrimp and yellow chive (HK$49) were a little lacking in the allium kick I was hoping for but delicate and moreish with a wonderful depth of flavour.

However, my tip for the top that particular night were the mutton and green onion (HK$45). Bit of a novelty having sheep and not the usual pig or seafood in a Chinese dumpling and the earthy richness of the meat combined nicely with the onion.

Add in a slug of chilli sauce, or some soy and vinegar dipping sauce and you have a perfect lunchtime snack or mid-evening pit stop. Just remember those breath mints afterwards.

Wang Fu; 102 Wellington St, Hong Kong

About HK$75 per head w/drink, depending on how much you love the dumpling

Hotel restaurants were, back in the day, the place to eat. Led by those great dining rooms of the Savoy and the Ritz, they radiated the opulence and grandeur of the Edwardian era and you could gorge yourself silly on some ludicrously over the top Escoffier nosh. Sadly, it wouldn’t last.

As Michelin came to London and chefs started doing fancy things in their own-name restaurants, hotel dining fell out of favour. The trend turned towards seeking out the small, exclusive joint where the chef/patron’s name would be above the door, and their reputation and livelihood at stake if they screwed up. Now though, hotel dining has come full circle. There was Marco Pierre White’s fabled Oak Room in Piccadilly, where I ate my first ever three starred dinner in the late 90s, then Ramsay reinvented Claridge’s a decade later and now they’re all at it, the latest being Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental.

Sadly though, the norm for most hotel dining is still overpriced, confused and usually reminiscent of eating in an airport departure lounge. Ichi Sushi in the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge had two things in its favour from the outset however; a beautiful view across said bridge to the Houses of Parliament, and super friendly waiting staff.

The menu is as unintimidating as a sushi/sashimi joint could be, with all the staple nigiri and maki, California rolls and sashimi plus one or two interesting quasi-Nobu style treats on the specials selection. Behind the 80s style shiny black counter, head chef Sadayuki Okamoto worked with stereotypically quiet, taught efficiency to bring us a special starter of seared tuna with yuzu-dressed mizuna and jalapeno sauce. The fresh tuna, although it had been pre-seared, was not overpowered by the sauce despite the huge pools of jalapeno green sludge we got on the plate. Decent opener and hat tip to Nobu on a decent blending of South American and Japanese flavours.

The star, as it should always be in a sushi bar, was the fish. A user-friendly selection of sushi and sashimi saw two pieces of salmon, tuna and yellowtail plus spicy tuna maki roll and what was labelled as California roll but arrived as avocado filled maki. Also on there were one nigiri each of tuna, salmon, yellowtail, prawn and salmon roe. All pretty sparklingly fresh fish and served with some dynamite fresh wasabi that puts the powdered or tube based stuff we usually get to shame. There were also other specials of prawn tempura roll – amazingly still crisp inside, and spicy tuna rolls – lacking a bit of spice but serving up a nice umami punch nonetheless.

My only criticisms would be the selection was a little on the mean side for £40, but then again, this is a hotel restaurant, as attested to by the incongruous lounge bar crooning from the adjoining area. We also felt the sashimi could have benefitted from being sliced a little thinner and the rice lacked that slight sweet, vinegary punch you expect from sushi rice.

There’s a shortish list of wine, but a separate sake section and plenty of choice from the food menu for the odd vegetarian who might wander in here from time to time. This included my old Japanese nemesis mozuku, a gloopy bowl of gelatinous seaweed sometimes served with a raw egg yolk, which will test the resolve of even the hardiest culinary daredevil.

As hotel restaurants go this is not a bad little shout, and represents a welcome new choice if you’re on the South Bank and hungry. So have some respect, please don’t go to Yo Sushi.

Ichi Sushi & Sashimi Bar, Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, London

+44 (0)20 7620 7373