Buffet @ 再臨閣 The Salisbury

Chose YMCA on the basis that everyone would be having fun and eating out on a saturday, rather than coming here.
I liked it here because it was relatively quiet in the sense that there was not many people, but for noise levels, it was quite noisy.
There was need to snatch food either, as the people here were quite orderly.

On a first visit, the food was impressive, but if I came here next time I would know what to expect.
With other places, the reviews will be applicable at the time it was written, however with this place, I felt the old reviews were still reasonable because after looking at the photos from 2008, the food selection remains the same,
However its day time food and evening food may be different.

For the seafood selection there was various sashimi's, the salmon was a bit oily, the tuna tasted better. The artic surf clam was nice and juicy with a hint of sweetness.
I never had artic clams before because the ones I tried were not fresh and tough.

In general the food here is nicely catered for westerners, especially the terrines, there was ham terrine, beans terrine, liver terrine. The liver terrine was the best, nice and smooth, however I didnt like the bits of meat in it. The tea was not Hong Kong milk tea either which was good.

There was a good selection of cheeses too, monterey and stilton.
The stilton was rather strong, reminded me of chinese fermented beancurd paste (fu yu) and the monterey was firm and crumbly, but had a slightly bitter taste.

The sharks fin soup was clear with lots of bamboo piths, few strands of sharksfin and shreds of chicken. It tasted fresh without the smelly meat smell in it.

The choices of dessert was ok too, one of the desserts had brandied cherries.

The face blushes with the rush of blood! @ ZOE

Zoe has been around for a while, but hasn’t really caught my attention much, the cakes are quite commonly offered everywhere, such as the chocolate mousse, mille feuille.
The price is rather expensive, but then if they tasted good, then that price would have been reasonable.

Anyway, when I got there, the shop assistant was a bit annoying, instead of standing behind the counter, she came out and stood by my side!
She tried to recommend me the typical flavours such as Rose, Mango, but unfortunately, these are my least favourites!

In the end, I got the Blood Orange, and Blush.

Blood Orange:It had a layer of jelly on top to look nice, and layered with mousse, and a crunchy layer at the bottom.
It had a yoghurt tone to it rather than a citrus flavour.

Blush:I was disappointed with this cake, the chocolate mousse was very faint, and the cherries were the bright red glacier type. I was expecting strong black cherries, or at least cherries that had been soaked in brandy.

Berry juice drinks @ Panash

Got these drinks from Panash because they are not native drinks.

There were three flavours: Sour cherry, Clear blueberry nectar, and Strawberry and apple.

These drinks are from serbia, and they all taste sour with a strong apple juice base.

American festival @ Taste Supermarket

Taste is generally a good place to get international foods, although GREAT is much better.

They did an American Festival promotion, the American products I got were Cashew fruit juice, Coffee fruit juice, Pomegranite soda, chocolate cherries, and some other items, which were interesting too for this review.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
CASHEW FRUIT JUICE:
Had an exotic fruit taste with some nutty sediment in it.
Apart from that the packaging was great!
The colour was cloudy peach.


Quoted from the website: http://www.onenaturalexperience.com/
The Cashew Fruit has two parts – the Fruit and the Nut.
The nut actually grows from the bottom of the “Cashew Apple.”
The Cashew Apple is an oval or pear-shaped fruit that develops from the receptacle of the cashew flower. Called the Cashew Apple, it ripens into a yellow and/or red fruit about 5–11 cm long.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
COFFEE FRUIT JUICE:
There was only a faint taste of coffee, more strong on the strawberry.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
HANSEN POMEGRANITE juice:
Nice concept, however this one was sugar free, hence I felt its sweetness tasted artificial.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRIES:
Apart from cherries, they also have blueberries, strawberries, almonds, cashews.


The chocolate covered cherries are nice and plump, about the size of a fresh cherry but flatter. The chocolate coating is a rich glossy brown.
The dark chocolate goes well with the sweet cherry, and neither elements overpower each other.
The cherries inside are dried sour cherries, with a center that is soft and moist with a nice tart flavor that contrasts well with the dark chocolate coating.
It is a bit like eating a chocolate covered raisin, however there is more bite to it due to the cherries size.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PEARL ROYAL COCONUT:
I was so surprised they don’t sell coconut water in HK, they can be readily found in UK under the brand of Rubicon and in any indian/pakistani shops.
The similar products here usually contain young coconut pieces and sweetened to the extent that it is syrupy.
I really liked this design, a plastic young coconut with a carton inside.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
BROCCOLI CHIPS:
These are vacuum fried broccoli, which just looks like dehydrated pieces of broccoili.
I suppose it is more interesting than eating crisps and just a tad healthier eating a real piece of veg than reconstituted fried potato.
Next time, I would like to experiment putting dried cheese powder on it resulting in cheese broccoili in snack form.
This thai product also does other snacks too such as banana chips, pineapple chips, taro chips, okra chips.
The packaging was done very nicely, very western appeal with all the nutritional values, and at least with perfect English too.
http://www.greenday.co.th/


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ROCCA bakery part 2: Johnston Road

Discovered Rocca in the middle of a market. On the way leaving the market, I saw some cakes being brought over to Rocca, so there must be another cake shop nearby, it turned out to be another Rocca branch.

Basically the range is the same as the other branch, except the shop is slightly smaller, they had mini ring donuts topped with colourful icing, but they were sold out the next day.
As well as sweet items, they also do local bakery too at an affordable price.

I just got the chocolate cup, mini muffins and a piece of chocolate fudge.

The chocolate cup was basically blackforest in a cup, layers of chocolate mousse, jelly, crunchy chocolate, and a cherry on top with a piece of edible gold flake.
The cherry on top was heavily soaked in alcohol, liquor like.

The mini muffins were cute too, there were three flavours, chocolate chip, blueberry and wheat.
There are normal size versions too, but the mini ones cost 3.5 each.
The wheat one has a strong taste of cinnamon.

As for the chocolate fudge, it costs $9 and for the one with nuts it costs $10, I chose the plain one to try, the woman at Rocca kept saying the texture was like praline, that melts in your mouth.
It was slightly like that, and the best thing was that it was not too sweet, however its texture reminded me of the vegetarian cakes that do not contain egg.
The chocolate fudges were individually wrapped in opaque crisp packet, so it was like unwrapping a gift.

The shop is decorated quite nice, as good as C Bakery opposite, but the bakery products are not as expensive. Along the Johnston Road area, there is quite a wide range for bakery lately with C bakery and Pomme, and now the addition of Rocca and Ginger Bakery.

 

 

 

 

The new talk of bread in town @ BreadTalk

 

This branch of bread talk is located within the Wellcome supermarket.
It is rumoured that mall has been run by a Singaporean company hence it makes sense that there is a BreadTalk there.
However I wonder how long it survive because BreadTalk is quite high end for that area.

Anyway, it offers the same variety as their other branches.
I decided to try their cakes, so I bought three: Taro and kaya cake, lemon meringue tart and boston cherry chocolate cake.
◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎

Taro and kaya cake

 

Taro and kaya cake
For this cake, it was a sponge roll filled with purple taro paste.
I could not taste any Kaya or see any kaya as stated on the label.
The taro paste was rather starchy.
◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎

Lemon meringue tart

 

Lemon meringue tart
This was interesting because it actually had a slice of lemon on top.
It tastes like the usual lemon meringue cakes but it was too sweet.
◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎

 

boston cherry and chocolate cake

 

Boston cherry and chocolate cake
This was the best out of the three, it was not that sweet, and there was so many of cherry.
It was decorated with a small of macaron on top.