Tobasco at Hong Kong's McDonalds

I thought it was a joke when my friend told me there was a Tobasco burger at McDonalds.
Went to my nearest McDonalds and it was true, not only was there a burger but there was softserve with spicy fudge sauce and shake shake fries with spicy seasoning Tabasco sauce.

Onion ring angus:

Softserve with spicy fudge sauce:

I decided to try the Fries with spicy seasoning:
It was very spicy as expected but I liked it because it was punchy and the spiciness wasn't long lasting.
The only let down was that the fries were overdone, hard and dry otherwise it would have tasted much nicer.

Snap up some crocodile soup at 鍋居火鍋專門店

The broths and ingredients always surprise me at 鍋居火鍋專門店.
The first time I came here, we had the sweetest young coconut water broth, on the second visit I had some really good crispy chicken wings.
On this third visit, I tried the crocodile maca broth which has crocodile meat, sea coconuts in it as well as nourishing MACA mushrooms.

As I like trying new things, I tried the crocodile meat which is like tough chewy chicken but nice.

For seafood, we had Scottish razor clams and huge clams which I thought were going to be chewy.
It is really good that their staff did the clams for us because they were perfectly springy and sweet and they know how long it should take.

Good beef and meatballs are a must with any hotpots which are all available here!!

Last but not least, I loved the Kuruma prawn sashimi.
The prawn meat was sweet and succulent that it didn't need the soy sauce or wasabi.

Other delicious broth bases if you are not as adventurous as me!!

++Golden Canadian crab broth++:
Very appetizing and sweet because of the pumpkin, tomatoes and fresh clams.

++Forever young hotpot++:
Loaded with lots of anti aging and anti oxidant fungas, while the other ingredients help to nourish your brain and lower blood sugars!!

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鍋居火鍋專門店:
https://www.facebook.com/WGhotpot/

Kee Wah Bakery's 2017 new mooncakes

Kee Wah Bakery is a chain of bakery stores in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States, founded in Hong Kong in 1938 by Wong Yip Wing (1911–1999), they are well known in Hong Kong and overseas Chinese communities for their traditional Chinese pastries and delicacies.

It is also famous in the UK because stores in Chinatown would import some and people from HK would send them over. However, in the recent years people have been getting fed up with traditional mooncakes due to health reasons and family sizes are as not big as before.

The traditional sized mooncakes would last you for days because they are quite sickly and during the mooncake season, there are so much mooncakes about that when you share it with people, the chances are that they have already had some.

Before the festival, many bakeries start selling mooncakes which attracts people to buy new and specials flavours for themselves, then nearer the festival, people will start buying mooncakes for others.

Anyway, there are so many varieties at Kee Wah, ranging from traditional to modern ones that there is a mooncake for everyone.
Thank you Kee Wah Bakery for all these mooncakes.

★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
This year they have a mix of East and the West with modern mooncakes such as Cheese custard mooncake, HK tea custard and Coffee egg custard mooncakes!!

★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
The crossover with Ocean Park this year is a really good design because the box turns into a functioning LED lantern that is safe and fun for kids.
++++++++++++++
mini white lotus with yolk:
This was smooth sweet lotus paste with savoury egg yolk and sweet pastry.
++++++++++++++
mini red beans and egg yolk:
The taste of red beans and egg yolk was interesting.
++++++++++++++

★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Inside the cute panda tin was chocolate custard mooncakes and egg custard moocakes.

Mini chocolate custard mooncakes:
The chocolate and custard was really nice with a strong chocolate taste and hints of custard.
Mini egg custard mooncakes:
The custard was good because it was rich but not too sweet.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Nothing beats Tea mooncakes such as Earl Grey egg custard mooncake and Jasmine egg custard mooncakes because I love Earl grey tea!!!!

★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
https://keewah.com/en/products/mooncake

[COCO, The Mira Hotel] Fashion Matcha Afternoon Tea

CENTRESTAGE x COCO Fashion Matcha Afternoon Tea

Recently tried the Fashion Matcha afternoon tea at COCO to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the MIRA DINING GROUP.

I admit that I haven't dined at MIRA DINING outlets for a while and I have missed so much, they have come up with some really mouth watering and unique items such the chocolate durian tart, pandan waffles and even chocolate mustard for their meat pairings.

Guests are greeted with a green tea ceremony to start with.

The Matcha afternoon tea managed to impress me even though I am not mad about Matcha.

It was the Matcha that I liked because it wasn't grassy.

Presented with this stylish tea set, I always start with the savouries, moving onto the scones and then the sweets.

The savouries and sweets were equally as good which was good.

Starting with the savouries there was: roasted capsicum cupcake with goat cheese topping, matcha cream cheese with spicy cajun shrimp toast, baccola (salty cod) rilettes with sesame, matcha soba noodle salad with sesame.

The savouries were all fantastic but the roasted capsicum cupcake with goat cheese topping was the most memorable because the savoury cupcake was really tasty and the velvety cheese topping was divine.

Moving on to the Korean Matcha Cranberry Scone with homemade Orange Jam flavoured with Japanese Sudachi Lime, it was heavily dusted with Matcha powder that you can see my finger imprint after picking it up!!

The pairing of refreshing orange jam was a match made in heaven because there was a lot of solid orange pieces in the jam and it wasn't bitter complemented with fluffy whipped cream.

The Trendy Sweets comprised of: Taiwanese Matcha Elixir on Lamington & Yuzu, “Metallic Moonlight” Kyoto Uji Matcha infused in Vietnamese 40% White Chocolate Tart, Golden Wire Korean Matcha Latte Pudding by Executive Pastry Chef Jean-Marc Gaucher.

Finished with the Fashion passion drink which was a concoction of passionfruit and green tea.

It had a great refreshing fizz with notes of passionfruit, but most importantly it was not too sweet.

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Available from 26 Aug – 30 Sep, 3pm – 6pm at COCO (G/F) on Mon – Fri & Sun,
and at WHISK (5/F) on Saturdays
HK$448 for 2 Guests with cosmic chocolate treat (26 Aug – 9 Sep)
HK$428 for 2 Guests (10 Sep – 30 Sep)
Subject to 10% service charge. Mira Plus Members enjoy 25% discount.
Booking enquiries: 2315 5566 or dining@themirahotel.com

http://www.themirahotel.com/centrestage-x-coco-fashion-matcha-afternoon-tea/

L'Eclair de Genie Mid-Autumn collection 2017

Since the opening L'Eclair de Genie at Pacific Place and Prince’s Building in autumn 2015, there are now branches in Kwun Tong, Olympic and Tai Koo.
For Mid Autumn festival, they have launched two festive eclairs and limited edition Mid-Autumn festival mooncakes.

The man himself Christophe Adam was in Hong Kong to showcase the new collection.

No 286 Chestnut Umeboshi is filled with vanilla mascarpone cream and chestnuts from France, following a layer of umeboshi confit which gives it a salty kick to complement the chestnut.
It is garnished with a white chocolate golden rabbit, golden leaves and chestnut cream to give it that Autumn festive character.

No 287 Red bean sesame is very buttery and a popular pick because it is infused with smooth red bean cream and sesame crisp garnished with a rabbit and lotus pattern on pink.

La Lune Mooncake gift box are 4 colourful milk or dark chocolate shells filled with goodies.

Two contain fruit jellies (lemon yuzu lemongrass, coconut pandan) and the other two are caramelized nuts (caramelized hazelnuts, almonds).

The jellies which appear to be wrapped in plastic are 100% edible because the wrapping is just rice paper.

Fruit jellies (pate de fruit) are a traditional French sweet treats that are made with natural fruit juice.

http://leclairdegenie.com.hk/81-mid-autumn-collection-2017

Hongkongers flipping over Flipper's

Souffle pancakes are trending in Hong Kong, but my first souffle pancake was at K11 but unfortunately I was given an extra strand of hair and the taste was too buttery for my liking.

There is another popular one in MK called I love you Dessert Bar but the location is inconvenient, as well as that, there is a latecomer am.pm which does affordable souffle pancakes.

Anyway, decided to try FLIPPER's because it is on the HK side and celebrities go there.
As usual I was taking pictures of the menu when I noticed this girl sitting opposite behaving really weirdly, she was literally looking down, using her hair to hide her face like she had some weird problem which makes you notice her even more.
It turns out that she was Chrissie Chow 周秀娜!!

There wasn't a queue that day and it wasn't busy as expected.

Compared to all the other places, this one is the priciest but you get decent cream.

Decided to get the melon because I like melon and it does not have syrup like the strawberry and banana versions.

It turned out to be really good because there was no buttery taste and it was light and fluffy, whereas other places, the texture is just like foam and it disappears into nothing.
The best part is the cream because it is thick creamy cream and the melon was super sweet as well.
I was reminded by the staff not to use a knife to cut the souffle pancake as it ruins it.

FLIPPERS: i.t blue block  
Address: 6/F Hysan Place, 500 Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay
Hours: 10AM–10:30PM
Phone: 2367 2133

[i CREMERiA Café] A dinky cake for $160

To be honest, I think quite a lot of things are over priced in Hong Kong.
This dinky little melon cake costed HKD$160 which is around £16!!!!
Ok, it tasted nice but any cake in UK under £2 could taste as nice as this.
It is funny how HKers are willing to pay HKD$600 (approx £60) for a bunch of grapes!!

[i CREMERiA Café]
Shop 13, 4/F, Langham Place, 8 Argyle Street, Mong Kok

Exotic dishes at Verde Mar

Since my last visit, there are new dishes again.

This time, it is chicken wings, who doesn't love chicken wings!
I loved the crispy coating with a complex taste because there are so many spices according to the chef.
At first I could taste cinnamon then I could taste the cajun so the sauce was not really needed.

But in the end I tried the sauce anyway and it became really addictive because it was very hot and made the food appetizing.
The Mexican Truffle Salad (Huitlacoche) is also my favourite because it has lots of mushrooms which make it taste earthy and it is totally vegetarian.
Huitlacoche is very interesting because it is related to corn as it is a fungus that infects corn and causes it to swell yet it is a delicacy that you can eat!!! Hence the name Mexican Truffle.

For meat lovers, there was the Carnitas Taco with Blue Corn Tortilla. I was really lucky that day because the Tortilla is made from blue corn which was brought to HK by one of the Chefs friend.
Other than the colour, it is very filling with shredded pork and the sauce from the chicken wings complement it nicely.

Finished with the Pumpkin cheesecake mousse which will really surprise you because there is a good ratio of fresh pumpkin in it.

But then all their desserts are good like the sweetcorn icecream which has real sweetcorn in it.
For drinks, had the cooling Watermelon Mojito, Pin Colada and I had my favourite Horchata which is rice based drink with cinnamon.

It is really good to see them grow from a small joint in Quarry Bay to this cool restaurant in Wanchai!
++++
Verde Mar:
https://www.facebook.com/verdemarhk/