Another private initiation

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When the Hungry Tourist told me a while back that he was coming back to town, the place that I wanted to take him more than anywhere else was my favorite private dining facility.  You see, like many tourists, he is a big fan of Lung King Heen (龍景軒).  Not that there's anything wrong with being a fan - since the restaurant certainly serve up some delicious food and delivers fantastic service - but as a "local", I sometimes tire of hearing tourists rave about the place.  Having claimed the title of the first Chinese restaurant ever to receive three macarons back in 2008, Lung King Heen has been the one destination that well-heeled tourists always hit when they're looking for Chinese food.  And sometimes it's their only stop.

So I took the opportunity to round up a few friends who have yet to have the opportunity to dine there, and asked the chef to set up a menu with several specific requests.

Before we start dinner, though, Birdie Golf very kindly brought us something special from Singapore at Hello Kitty's request.  This bag of Gourmet Salted Egg Yolk Potato Crisps from The Golden Duck was damn good!  There was, of course, plenty of powdered salted egg yolk, but also some kick from chilis... and best of all, beautiful fragrance and flavors from curry leaves.  Can't wait to try to bag of fish skin!

Droning Boy: Cape D'Aguilar

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After a few weeks straight of having crappy weather - or fine weather during the work week and crap weather on the weekends - I've finally gotten a day off when the sun is out and the skies are blue.  That means I finally get a chance to take my DJI Mavic Pro out for more practice.

Ever since Hello Kitty pointed me to a particular video a couple of months ago, I've been wanting to go fly my drone around Cape D'Aguilar.  The old lighthouse sitting on the cliff seemed like a pretty good subject, and the water around Hok Tsui Wan (鶴咀灣) is so clean that the area has been designated a marine reserve, and the site of the Hong Kong University Swire Institute of Marine Science.

Lately, however, it seems that the public has discovered the beauty of this area, and selfish, irresponsible tourists have ended up trepassing on the Institute grounds looking for toilet facilities.  In the process they have caused irreparable damage to the research being done by the Institute, as well as polluting the pristine waters of the marine reserve.  Calls were made for the public to stop visiting the area so that it doesn't get damaged further.

I still wanted to go fly my drone there, and I figured that I could just go up to the area around the lighthouse and not actually go down to the rocky shores by the marine reserve.  That way I could avoid trepassing on the facilities of the Swire Institute, inflict zero damage on the coastline, and still get what I want.

I dragged my ass out of bed pretty early in the morning on a holiday, and got myself onto a bus headed to the area.  It happens to be Ching Ming Festival, and the bus was packed full of people on their way to pay their respects to their ancestors.  After getting off at the nearest bus stop, I set off on a trek of more than 3km towards my destination.

The trek was pretty easy, as there was minimal change in terms of elevation.  I walked past the ruins of the Cape D'Aguilar Battery (鶴咀炮台), which once provided protection for soldiers and their machine guns.  This would certainly make an interesting subject for drone photography, and would save me the trouble of trying to find my way down to the ruins themselves.

Golden Waves of the Riviera

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It's only been 12 hours since the end of our wonderful dinner last night, but Hello Kitty dragged ourselves out of bed this morning and made our way to the Centurion Restaurant at the Hong Kong Jockey Club in Shatin.  They've invited another chef from a restaurant with 3 macarons, and this time it was Arnaud Donckele from La Vague d'Or in St. Tropez.

None of us are regular visitors to the Riviera, so to be honest, we weren't familiar with the chef who, back in 2013, supposedly became the youngest 3-star chef that year.  But we were looking forward to getting a taste of the south of France.

We started with a few amuses bouches:

Carrot fritters picked up by hand, Cajun sauce - I don't know how the sauce was "Cajun", but there was plenty of acidity there.

Local shellfish coated with a lemon balm and cardamom cloud - raw Fine de Claire oyster with lemongrass mousse, and some herring caviar that I could have sworn was Avruga caviar.

Beyond Chungking Express

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We were getting together with a couple of friends we haven't seen in a while, and searched for a fine dining restaurant which had a corkage policy that could accommodate us.  Amber was out of the question, and Guillaume Galliot doesn't start his stint at Caprice until May.  I was looking to revisit old favorites which I've somehow neglected for a while, and Pierre was an obvious one.  A couple of quick calls to the restaurant later, and we were back at square one.  Apparently the corkage policy there wasn't very accommodating, either.

So we decided to go back and visit Sato-san at Ta Vie旅.  We've always been free to open as many bottles as we'd like here - paying full corkage, of course - and I've never not had a great meal.  After all, this is one of my absolute favorite restaurants in town.

I had seen a few pictures of Sato-san's new dishes

Caesar salad topped with hotaru squid, hotaru squid caesar dressing - it's firefly squid (蛍烏賊) season again, and I just loooove these little buggers from Toyama Prefecture (富山県).  I've always loved Sato-san's version of Caesar salad, replacing the anchovies with a better ingredient.  There's also shredded Japanese spikenard (独活), croûtons, cheese shavings, and the pepper chiffonade (糸唐辛子) that Japanese chefs seem to love. The little dab of sauce on the side was made with the liver (?) of the firefly squid.  Yum.

Six mouths. three cities, one goose

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The Hungry Tourist is back in town after a couple of months' absence.  It's only been a few weeks since we last saw each other in Bangkok, and in the meantime he continued to eat his way across the world.  As usual, he wanted to make Yat Lok (一樂燒鵝) his very first stop of his trip, so we agreed to meet up for a late lunch.  Coincidentally, Jinlovestoeat is also in town, and we found ourselves with a party of six - the biggest group I've taken to Yat Lok.

Since there were six of us, I decided that there was no reason we shouldn't order up one whole roast goose (馳名燒鵝).  The annoying thing, though, was that they chopped up the goose one half at a time, and we clearly didn't get two halves of the same goose...  And one half was clearly a little more charred and burnt than the other.  I do have to say that lately, their quality has been fairly inconsistent.  Some of their geese are a little too charred.  Thankfully, though, we still had one half that was just about perfect.