More good eats around town

Now that we've booked our flight back to Toronto, CharK and I have been spending these past couple of weeks in tourist mode. For starters, we've been trying foods and restaurants that were always on our "list" but that we never got around to.

HK cafes has always been a favourite of ours, with the variety of snacks milk tea and coffees. But somehow I've always left out ordering the iconic pineapple bun with butter. I've heard the allure of the combination is the hot bread wrapped around the ice cold hunk of butter. But my favourite is the peanut butter french toast that we also ordered along with a club sandwich. The crunchy bread and creamy peanut butter makes for a great (greasy) snack!

A greasy but yummy meal (Photo: CharK)

Another classic dish is wonton and soup noodles While I've had a lot bowls from university cafeteria, the noodles and wonton taste is much better at another iconic HK restaurant--Wong Chi Kei. I'm no food critic, but I like the noodle texture and shrimp that is served.

Weekday tea time at Wong Chi Kei (Photo: CathC)

One major benefit of being a tourist is going out to eat during the weekend tea time, when most people are still at work. There are no lines and the menus offer snack size portions. Aside from being less expensive than the lunch menu, the smaller portions means I can try a couple more things! A couple of "new" dishes to me were the truffle egg sandwhich, I'm not sure what makes this a "Portuguese dish" but it tasted great! The osmanthus and coconut gelatin was delicious, there was a lot of osmanthus leaves that the taste really comes through.

In most restaurants, vegetarian dishes are often a few items on the menu. But not so for Gaia Vegetarian Restaurant. Although the menu contains chicken and pork items, they are actually various vegetable, tofu, and mushroom ingredients in disguise. Some people think that vegetarian dishes should stand alone, rather than imitate meat dishes, but I think they can be playful and fun to eat. Like this orange peel pork ribs, the texture of the mushroom did give the dish a slightly meaty, stringy texture. But other dishes like the deep fried durian, are just fun to eat anyway. Surprisingly, the typical durian odour gets masks pretty well once it's deep fried.

A vegetarian take on "clay pot chicken and date rice" and dried orange peel ribs, as well as fried durian and kimpora salad, (Photo: CathC)