Redemption, one week later

Pin It

I was less than impressed with my dining experience at Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 (壹玖捌叁) last Friday, as the experimental tasting menu delivered a few head-scratchers. At the time, though, we already knew we would be coming back for lunch today. I had seen positive comments posted by friends about the dim sum here, which was why my dinner last week was so shockingly disappointing. Anyway, we got a different group today so we could try lots of stuff from their menu.

I was pretty excited looking at the dim sum section of the menu during my dinner last week, so I opened it up and started scanning for the goodies. That's when the staff came and told us not to order anything from the big menu... as the kitchen had come up with a new list of dim sum items, and those were presented on a totally different menu. So... one of the items I was most excited about trying is no longer available. Now I was disappointed even before we started ordering.

Someone was pretty excited about checking out as many dishes as we could with the five of us around the table, and it did turn out to be a big lunch...

Diced peppery Black Angus beef puff (胡椒安格斯牛肉餅) - I was a little surprised that this was the first item that arrived, but I suppose they had been pre-baked and could be heated up quickly?

This was unexpected, as the beef inside wasn't minced but fairly big chunks of what seemed like beef brisket, with a very nice and springy texture. Would definitely do this again.

Steamed vegetarian dumplings with mixed mushrooms (雜菌素蒸餃) - they definitely used some truffle oil/paste inside which, of course, worked well with the mushroom filling. The translucent wrapper, though, was too soft and broke apart with my chopsticks.

Steamed beef bone marrow with curry sauce (咖喱牛骨髓) - this was a real surprise to us. We've all had bone marrow numerous times, but usually the marrow is much more liquefied and would basically melt in the mouth. These were somewhat more solid, but worked very well with that classic curry sauce.

Steamed beef tripe with satay sauce (沙茶金錢肚) - another classic dish.

Steamed water chestnut beef balls with lemon leaves (檸香牛肉球) - the texture of this was pretty fluffy, but the bits of water chestnuts inside provided a crunchy contrast. Initially the fragrance from coriander was more obvious, but then the more intense perfume of kaffir lime leaves came to dominate later. Very nice.

Steamed pork dumplings with prawn and crab roe (鮮蝦蟹籽燒賣) - these were pretty good siumai, and the prawns on top were bigger and tastier than many other versions I've had around town.

Steamed red rice rolls with crispy prawn (鮮蝦脆皮紅米腸) - any steamed rice roll with crispy cruller inside is gonna be a winner, and this was no exception. No, the prawns were not crispy, but they certainly were tasty. There was some peanut butter sauce on the side, which kinda worked... but that was certainly not an obvious choice to most of us.

Crispy spring rolls with yellow croaker and Chinese cabbage, served with homemade young ginger vinegar (黃魚津白炸春卷) - this is definitely a rare and interesting choice of filling for a spring roll, so of course I wanted to try it.

This was very crunchy on the outside, and we've got plenty of flavors inside. As a yellow croaker fan, I'd definitely do this again.

Traditional deep fried glutinous rice dumplings filled with pork, dried shrimps, Chinese chives and jicama (傳統咸水角) - these looked fantastic from the outside.

The glutinous rice shell were nice and chewy but also crispy from being fried well. Unfortunately, it felt a little more "empty" than usual inside, where the filling was tasty but there was just too little of it.

Braised chicken feet in abalone sauce (鮑汁鳳爪) - nice to have it with abalone sauce instead of the usual black bean sauce.

Crispy mashed taro puff with Hokkaido scallop, egg drop and shiitake mushroom (北海道帶子荔茸盒) - these look really, really impressive. And they were pretty damn big so we decided to each take only half.

Looking inside we see a big chunk of Hokkaido scallop, some pretty-looking scrambled quail egg, and sliced shiitake. The taro mash was so nice and crispy outside but a little wet for my liking on the inside. Nevertheless, this was pretty tasty. And very filling, too!

Flaky scallion pancake (蔥油手抓餅) - we were excited to try this, but everyone broke out laughing when it arrived. It was just... so small! Honestly, it was maybe about a third of the size of what we had expected. Was it tasty? Yes, it was very crispy and crunchy, but yeah... not enough to fill the gaps between my teeth (不夠塞牙縫), as we would sometimes say.

Steamed bean curd sheet rolls with pork and shrimp in lobster soup (龍蝦湯鮮竹卷) - I was originally not interested in trying this, but everyone seemed to enjoy the lobster soup, and it was pretty flavorful.

Layered coconut pudding (千層椰汁糕) - pretty decent.

Steamed coconut sugar sponge cake, served with coconut and peanut butter (椰糖馬拉糕配花生椰絲牛油) - this looked beautiful.

The holes are finer and closer together, resulting in a denser texture. I didn't think the coconut butter was necessary.

Gourd-shaped chestnut purée puff pastry (栗子葫蘆酥) - the shell was nice, but that chestnut paste inside was really, really tasty

That was a lot of food. But we were very happy, or at least I was. It was a total opposite of what my dinner experience was like. Yes, there were a couple of items where the dim sum chef got creative, but there were no head-scratchers that left me thinking "WTF?!" Now I have another place on my list if I ever feel like dim sum.