Eating in Hong Kong - 1

We were very excited about eating in Hong Kong - Liz had reams of recommendations and we had only 6 potential occasions (we extreme dine only once a day on holidays....usually trying to eat one of everything on the menu).

Day One - tired after 26 hours of travel and in the wrong time zone we ate at a nearby restaurant (behind the YMCA on Ashley Road) that was incredibly busy, filled with students and served good basic food.  Our assumption is that it is hard to find bad food in Hong Kong.

Sea bass and vegetables, stir fried shrimp and an exceptionally flavourful Yong Chow rice

Day Two - into Liz's list.  We love Sichuan and she had a recommendation - the Yellow Door.  Good things are often hard to find.  The Yellow Door is a sign over an obscure doorway, then down a dark hallway and you enter an elevator that should have been long ago condemned and lurch up to the 6th floor

All was well.  A charming dining room, welcoming staff and a fish eye view of the density that is Hong Kong - including (below) an overhead shot of "the escalator" (more about it later)......plus some wonderful, incredibly flavourful food.......here's the view and the escalator

Onto the food - deep fried stuffed eggplant with sour/spicy sauce cleared the sinuses in a very flavourful way!

Fried cod fillet with mushrooms in spicy sauce - perfectly done fish in a very aggressive sauce 

Then stir fried chicken with pickled chilies (below).  Again, wonderful flavours but we'll never get used to how the chinese macro chop  chicken.  The french fillet method that deletes backbones and cartilage is far more dental friendly!

We liked Yellow Door so much (and were fascinated by what the people at the next table were having) we went back again.....and to another restaurant owned by the same people......following is Round 2 at Yellow Door.

Exquisite dumplings in chili sauce.  We are big dumpling fans.  Not a complex dish, but one that defines a chef.  These were ethereal wrappings made of air, a succulent filling and a hot sauce that crept up on you and kept on creeping.

Sauteed garlic stems with shredded pork.  A new form of garlic could not be denied.  We loved it.  Where do all the North American garlic stems go???......we want them

Then deep fried fish with chili bean paste.  Crispy skin, moist flesh all bathed in a sauce that combined heat and depth of flavour.  The fish was great, but they should bottle and sell the sauce! 

And then the killer - a dish to make grown men weep....from every pore.  Richard consumed a box of kleenex mopping the sweat from his bald head:

"Boiled Pork in Chili Soup"

and they aren't kidding about the chilis - all those red things are sichuan chilis.  Great flavours and incredible heat - a dish to remember.

We had to try the owner's other restaurant - Kin's Kitchen...............see Eating in Hong Kong - 2

Comments

[Liz in Minneapolis]

Liz-
OK I know I am a year late with this comment... but I am reviewing your Yellow Door experience so we can enjoy ourselves there this Saturday. We love "green garlic" or garlic stems... we can get them at our farmers market in early June in Minnesota. Look for them in Toronto!
I hope you're enjoying Barcelona!
Liz in Mpls