This was actually my second time here, as I had been before a couple of years ago – I really like the L’Atelier concept, as its fairly casual and an ideal place to have a meal by oneself should you be travelling that way.

Red & Black Entry Carpet

The concept is this – the main dining area of L’Atelier is a bar surrounding an open kitchen. Service is, well, as casual as a 3-star Michelin French restaurant is supposed to be. I ordered the 5 course lunch (spending over $100 USD is never really a deal, but honestly, you’re not eating this level of food for this cheap anywhere else in the world).

Open Kitchen

The Menu:

I ordered Le Foie Gras, Les Lentils du Puy, Le Cabillaud, Le Porc Iberique and Le Paris-Brest.

The Amuse Bouche
Cream of mushroom, topped with a bacon emulsion and porcini mushroom powder. This, was wonderful. Super rich mushroom flavor, the bacon emulsion was the right salty touch to top the mushroom cream.

The awesome bread basket. Favorite bread – the mini croissants. Also, the plain baguettes were really nice.

Le Foie Gras
Perfect execution. Well, maybe slightly stingy with the initial toast, but they quickly offered two more slices as soon as I went through the first two pieces (I don’t know how you’re supposed to fit an entire round of foie gras onto one piece of toast anyways – I think four slices should be the standard order anyways.)

Les Letils du Puy
The flavors of the soup were excellent, but I wasn’t in love as much with the texture – which was slightly gritty, and some of the flavorings (like the cracker) didn’t work as well for this.

Le Cablliaud

The cod itself was solid. Flavorful, firm fish. Very nicely done, but not . . . outstanding.

Le Porc Iberique

This was very very nicely done. The richness of the pork, the fresh dill was a nice touch. But those potatoes puree. Oh man, these are the best mashed potatoes in the world.

Reading on the internet, its apparent that these use some ridiculous ratio of butter to potato, but they are so fluffy, so rich, so ethereal – life changing mashed potatoes as it were.

Le Paris Brest

Wonderful dessert. Little cream puffs with little bits of pear in cased in edible gold foil. A wonderful way to cap off the meal. The sorbet was frighteningly refreshing.

Then les petit fours and tea. The macaroon was really wonderful, as were the little golden chocolate nuggets.

I’d be remiss if I missed mentioning the service. Unfortunately I think this is pretty hit or miss. I had an excellent waiter who was able to explain all of the dishes in both Chinese and English – however, the couple sitting next to me had to repeatedly ask for the wine list, and had their dishes sitting in the service ready area, just out of reach, before being served up to 2 minutes later. Also their waiter looked like he had been in a fight the night before with bruising all around his eye.

It serves in stark contrast to what passes for high end dining here in Shanghai – even if the reviews have say its declining, I still had an exceptional meal here and look forward to returning in the future sometime.

So within a few minutes walk of my friend Abbie’s apartment was “mentioned in the Michelin guide Wing Wah Noodle House”

The menu is typical for a HK noodle house.

But they handmake their noodles upstairs.

Just about my favorite meal on earth. Wonton soup noodles.

Was still hungry, so ordered some beef tendon mixed noodles (dry) as well

Wing Wah Magazine Accolades

Wing Wah interior

The verdict – well, certainly a lot more convenient than trekking out to Ping Kee. The noodles were all quite good, but not really good enough to displace my favorites at Tasty Wantun or Jim Tsai Kee. Great though, if you’re in Wanchai or Admiralty.

Wing Wah Noodle House
89 Hennessy Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong, China
(Across the street from Southorn Playground)

First – here’s a list of (most) of the places Tony went when he was in Hong Kong – I decided I’d go out to Tai Po Market for Ping Kee and Yat Lok (although I saw the next day there was a Yat Lok in Central). Then I made plans to meet my former co-workers Monica and Jenny at Tung Po at the Java Road Cooked Food Center.

First, Tai Po Market is out in the New Territories, where I probably spent only 2% of my time in Hong Kong when I was living there. So after 40 minutes on the subway and train (I’m so dated I still think of it as the MTR and the KCR) I arrived at Tai Po Market.

Exiting out MTR exit A1, I walked straight for about 10 minutes, made a right turn and a little past the Cooked Food Center on the main town square was roast meat specialist Yat Lok. Famous for their roast goose and roast pork, I ordered a plate of each. Oh my goodness, do they do a really good roast pork. Seriously, I think its better than the stuff at West Vila and definitely better than the very expensive Yung Kee – both of which are excellent, but really Yat Lok was even better.

And the goose. I could only make stupid noises after eating the goose.

Roast Pork

Roast Goose

One of the best ways to distinguish a great Cantonese place – hanging meats in the front window.

If you saw the No Reservations episode, there’s probably one of the most beautiful sequences dealing with food ever filmed, where the noodle maker is rolling out the noodles by bamboo pole. While Josh wasn’t really accurate with saying there were only about 3 places left that made handmade noodles, the truth is they really aren’t that common.

Ping Kee was where Josh and Tony ate at (and where the handmade noodles were sold). Since I just had the big meal at Yat Lok, I only opted for the lo mien – dry noodles with lard. They were excellent, and really, the denseness of the noodles really came through. You don’t get noodles of this quality in Shanghai and only at a few places in Hong Kong.

The old guy from the No Reservations episode

Tai Po Market Cooked Food Center

After digesting and walking around for a while, I met up with my former colleagues Monica and Jenny for dinner at Tung Po. I had actually been to Tung Po many years ago with my cousin/roommate Patryk. Tung Po is basically a ‘dai pai dong’ – a big sign restaurant, or what traditionally were outdoor eateries – moved indoors. There’s still a few surviving dai pai dongs in Central/Sheung Wan, as well as Jordan/Yaumatei/Mongkok. I do think sometimes food tastes better when served by guys wearing Wellington boots.

Started with the daily soup. Here’s a good tip, when you’re at a Cantonese restaurant, order the daily soup. We do like our soups, and we make good ones. This is pork with carrots and winter melon.

Sometimes in crowded restaurants, especially if you have no reservations and a small party, you’ll be asked to share tables – dap toi. We shared with 2 other parties, but we were group A.

Spinach with conpoy/dried scallops

Pork Knuckles. Crispy on the outside, succulent and juicy in the middle. I’m sure these aren’t good for you.

Mantis Pods with garlic. Wow. These were amazing. Not cheap, but wow, I would eat another one right now. (In Cantonese these are called ‘pissing shrimp’)

Squid ink noodles. Garlicky. And really satisfying.

The surroundings at Tung Po.

Chef Robby

Final Damage for 3

Information on all three restaurants is readily available. I really love Tung Po, and the food at Ping Kee and Yat Lok is excellent. I probably wouldn’t travel all the way out to Tai Po Market again (especially since you can get handmade noodles at Wing Wah – upcoming post alert! and there’s a Yat Lok in Central) but if you’re ever out there. Mmmm.

Hong Kong style Bortscht

Black Pepper Steak on an Iron Plate

In the Mood for Love

Goldfinch

Normally I would have done something similar – however back in June, I had attended Habitat for Humanity’s Brick-o-lage fund raiser in Shanghai. My friend Eric who was head of the Shanghai office of Habitat had mentioned that if I was going to go on a Habitat trip, that the project in Yunnan was really the one to go on, so several months later . . . I went to Chahe, Pu’er, Yunnan to work on a Habitat Build.

View Larger Map

So on the Monday of the holiday week, I flew into Kunming and joined the 44 other volunteers (mainly from Hong Kong, but a good number from Shanghai as well – and a few other cities, including New York, Chengdu and Beijing). From Kunming, the village we were going to was a 6 hour bus ride south.

So once we reached the hotel in Chahe – it was time for bed. Then the next three days were filled with building (and demolition). The area where we were was extremely poor, with a per capita income of around 1500 RMB per year (a little bit over $200 USD). I did feel a bit guilty using a camera (and cell phone too) both of which were over 3 years of income for these families. Because the houses in this area are under threat by earthquake and also because they’re mainly built of mud brick, Habitat is working with the partner families to replace the unsafe housing with more sturdy concrete and brick based housing, and to that, us volunteers needed to build house foundations.

Normally in developed areas, foundations are poured concrete, however, up here in the village, foundations were made by hand (er, shovel and hoe actually) mixed concrete and very large river stones, on top of packed dirt. Making foundations by hand is a lot of muscle work, especially in the sub-tropical Yunnan sun.

But I had fantastic time, made lots of friends and will endeavor to go on another Habitat trip as soon as possible. In spite of the hard work – or quite possibly because of it, the trip was as rewarding and interesting as any vacation I’ve ever been on. Despite some organizational hiccups and a less-than-stellar hotel, I would wholeheartedly recommend a volunteer stint with Habitat to anyone. It was well worth the donation of time and money, and I hope know that the partner family will really be appreciative of presence.

Here are some photos:

Building foundation by hand (pay no attention to the concrete mixer in the background – we didn’t use it)

This gives you an idea of what kind of area the village (and build was located in)

As part of the build, we also met and interacted with a lot of the villagers.

Here are the homeowners of one of the build sites:

The village was a Hani Minority village and on the second day lunch, the women came dressed in Hani traditional clothing so they could teach us a Hani dance.

This was my small team:

and the entire build with the villagers

Habitat also brought a celebrity ambassador – Hong Kong pop singer (yeah, I’ve never heard of him) William Chan

They made sure everyone got a certificate:

On the last day, we went to the nearby county seat and watched a Hani Cultural performance, however the most fun was after (and during to be honest) the performance we hung out and played with the village kids.

Also, we sang, er, Jingle Bells

If you’re interested – the rest of the photoset is here

Wee Ling and I done messed up last month when I was in Hong Kong.

I purposely scheduled a 5 hour layover between Singapore and Shanghai where I sought to rectify this.

And I did.

Downstairs at Mido Cafe

and the famous baked spare rib rice. It was every bit as delicious as I thought it would be. Maybe because I had just gotten off a 3 hour flight, but it was still appreciated.

Pre-Opening Apple Store IFC HK

Tasty Congee and Wantun in IFC


Mango Sago at Hui Lau Shan

Back of a HK Cab

Full Moon at Mid-Autumn Fesitval

Gorgeous Day in Stanley

and then Singapore!
ION Orchird

Dramatic Tropical Sky

Food Court Laksa

My hosts Nick and Venessa preparing the chicken rice

Nick and Venessa’s dog Didi

Lunch with two of my favorite people – Mylinh and Sandra

Ice Kachang!

You have to see the baby! Sandra and Andrew’s lovely daughter Tiana

Big Prawn Noodles!

More Tiana

Chili Crab at Jackson Seafood House

And the best chicken wings ever – with shrimp paste

Why Yiwu? Good question – apparently this was all very last minute, involving a cancelled tour of Japan, some uncertainty regarding the local promoter and you end up ‘near Hangzhou’ in Yiwu. Where the heck is Yiwu? Well, its about 100 km south of Hangzhou.

Yiwu is famous here in China (and probably among anyone who buys and sources stuff from China) as the world’s best small commodities trading city. There they have a GIANT (and I mean GIANT) commodities market with stall upon stall upon stall upon stall selling plastics doo-dads, paper lanterns, toys, clothes, metals bits, power tools, watches, etc. etc. and there’s lots of etcs.

We took the bullet fast train down to Yiwu from Shanghai in little over 2 hours. The only thing we knew about Yiwu were that because of the presence of the trade markets, there was a large and vibrant Arab community (and Africans) and there were lots of Halal restaurants. So we came for football . . . and lamb.

For our first meal we decided at the Baghdad Restaurant – they didn’t have what I originally ordered, so I ended up with this lamb dish served on soggy bread. It was good . . . for the first 10 minutes. But after a while, it was like slogging through a soggy sandwich at a picnic.

Interesting set of clocks at the restaurant – Dubai, Baghdad and Beijing

After lunch we journeyed to the GIGANTIC Commodities Market and just marveled at the giant amount of crap that is available for purchase for sales in any number of different countries. We all recognized products that were available in your local dollar store or money tree or cost plus or whatever.

The infamous dress shirt vending machine that countless bloggers and media types have covered.

No, we didn’t buy one. 79 RMB – without being able to feel the product? No thanks.

Outside the commodities market, we found this woman selling these egg . . .well, what, cakes? It was an egg, cooked in a hot cup form, with a little bit of pork. It was freaking delicious.

The surprisingly modern Yiwu Meihu Sports Ground hosted that night’s contest between Arsenal and local team Hangzhou Green Town

The local team was unlucky to not score 3 times in the early going, eventually getting one goal off a counter. Arsenal played around with the ball a lot, but only scored in extra time in the first half.

In the second half, the visitors changed off all of their field players and subbed in mainly bench players (except for Jack Wilshire – a regular starter). And the subs played much more aggressively, including Ryu, a 17-year old Japanese phenom. But despite hitting the post several times, the Hangzhou goalkeeper was up to the task, stoning Aresnal several times with solid saves, and even distributing the ball for several dangerous counters from Green Town.

Several Arsenal fans made the trip all the way from London to Kuala Lumpur and Yiwu, as well. Including this very enthusiastic (and loud) woman, as well as this shirtless gentleman with many many Arsenal themed tattoos.

Colin and Jesse post-game

After the game, I broke out in order to walk around the Bin Wang Night Market and try to find myself some more Arabic or Middle Eastern food.

The night market was very similar to any sort of night markets seen in Greater China. Lots of street stalls selling clothing, snacks, noodles, and fruit.

I did spot a Turkish Barber though

After a bowl of noodles and some street snacks, I was still hungry and decided to head back to “Exotic Street” where the middle eastern restaurants were. On my way there, I passed a large amount of Chinese seafood grill sidewalk restaurants – if only I was with more people, I would’ve eaten here. But it is difficult to eat Chinese food for one.

I ended up having lamb with Arabic rice, which was very very tasty (saffron and some other herbs)

I’m not sure I’d ever go back to Yiwu, unless I had a business reason to go there. The Arabic food was good, but honestly, you can get quite a good selection here in Shanghai (and probably elsewhere too). But I’m glad I went. Once.