Lunch at Papillon

Papillon Caffe (Wan Chai)

Came here for lunch because I love the choices here.

The lunch menu is simple, you choose an item from each of the following sections:
Protein
Carbohydrate
Fibre

Every item on the menu has nutritional facts and its vitamin values shown.

It was actually quite hard making my mind up because all of them were pretty good.

★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
My selection:


In the end I selected:
-Slow Roasted Leg of Lamb with Rosemary and Garlic
-Cranberry and Orange Couscous Salad
-Homemade Avocado and Corn Salsa

The lamb was soft and delicious while the couscous was refreshing with the juicy pieces of orange in it.
Not to mention, the avocado salsa was my favourite because it was creamy and zesty.

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Photos of the restaurant:




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My next target will be the brunch.

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Relaxing at Cafe 8

After reading Ivy's review, decided to try this place but forgot about it, but then another foodie Mungkk reviewed this place so I went shortly after reading it.

Normally this place is quiet but the day I went they had a function there.

The decor was quite dreamy and relaxing.







A nice selection of lemon tarts, carrot cakes and quiches.


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Vanilla cupcake:


Unfortunately, the cupcake was not as good as it looked but I appreciated the fact that I was given a fork to eat it.
The cake was too dense and sweet for my liking.
I wished I ordered the quiche instead.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
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Cafe 8:

Pier 8, Central

Foie gras cooking lesson

Oceanthree Development Limited specializes in frozen luxuries such as Foie Gras, Crabs, Seafood and other gourmet foods.


They also sell a wide range of prized salts and other items.



Attended a cooking class by Cedric Touchard.


He demonstrated three different ways of serving foie gras.

1. Panfried foie gras with shiitake mushrooms and fresh spinach.

2. Pomelo salad with foie gras.

3. sliced foie gras, fried mango, lime, coconuts and piment d'espelette.

After watching the demonstration, I realilzed Foie gras was really simple to pan fry.
It tastes good on its own so if your lazy you can simply not bother with the recipe and have it with a dash of salt or a drizzle of balsamic vinegar or even jam.

Out of the three recipes, I liked recipe number 3 because it was refreshing served with balsamic vinegar.

Thanks to Oceanthree for the goodies especially my favourite Maldon salt which has an amazing pyramid structure.






Oceanthree Development Limited
Shop 905, 9/F., Westlands Centre, 20 Westlands Road, Quarry Bay

Ice Cream Gallery has quite a long history in Hong Kong, they started off selling luxurious icecreams in Repulse Bay since 2009.
Back then, their savoury icecreams were not that successful because people were not brave to try new flavours and not willing to spend money on icecream.

I would have tried but Repulse bay was stretching it because it would have meant getting a minibus from CWB and knowing where to get off.

A few years ago, they closed the Repulse bay branch and opened a workshop in Kwun Tong's factory area.
I finally tried ICG with the company of some fellow foodies.
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/commentdetail.htm?commentid=2315789&tc=sr2&con=rvw
The escargot was my favourite and the other savoury flavours were sweet which I did not like.

With the trend of luxury icecreams becoming popular, they now have a shop at Windsor house.
ICG is the Godfather of local icecreams because they have been running since 2009.

At Windsor house, they had Nitrogen icecream too with funky flavours.

I tried the milk tea egg tart which was a combination of the two things I hate the most in HK, local egg tarts and local milk tea.



★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Milk tea egg tart:

I was surprised that it was actually quite nice and it was amusing to watch them put half an egg tart into it.

The texture was quite good and not too icy yet silky. There was quite a lot of egg tart in it which balanced the taste of local milk tea which I do not like, whilst the bitterness of the tea balanced the horrible buttery taste of the egg tart base.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★

Ice Cream Gallery

G16 Windsor House

Causeway Bay

All you can eat dim sum at Zaan

Tried the all you can eat dim sum for $108 which does not include 10% service charge, tea and sauces.
So it rounds up to about $130 per person.


The dim sum creations are quite good but they don't taste as good as they look.
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Taro roll stuffed with purple rice:


This was literally a slice of taro with purple glutinous rice in the middle and rolled up.
It was not too sweet but the taro slice was not steamed long enough as it was too hard.
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Rice roll with BBQ pork:

It was too oily and the BBQ was not fresh and the colour was too dark.
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pork dumpling with mushroom:

In Chinese, it is supposed to be a shao mai but it just looked weird and tasted like fatty pork.
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honey and yuzu jelly:

too sweet
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Crispy dumpling with sweet and sour sauce:

This was the only decent tasting item.
It was crispy with nicely minced pork and black fungas inside.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
prawn dumpling:

The dumplings were quite oily.
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marinated chicken feet in vinegar and chili:


The chicken feet were too hard and the chili was too spicy.
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baked seafood puff, taro croquette stuffed with prune, crispy milk custard with almond:

Too oily and the pastries had the usual HK style buttery taste.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★

Zaan:

1/F., The Wesley Hong Kong, 22 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai

A delight for Choi Hung expats

Subway
If you have been to Choi Hung, there is ABSOLUTELY no Western food about!!

I was so glad to see this open!!!

Interestingly I began to see expats around the area which is a rare sight because I don't often see expats in Choi Hung except locals.

The new Subway is located in the MTR station where QQ Rice used to be near Hang Sang's ATM machines.

★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★
Veggie delight:



The sub was a bit annoying because the bread was really sticky as the person who made it obviously had sticky gloves on.
I chose the mustard sauce and the rest in the sub were tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, green peppers, and gherkins.
The sub was delicious as always with the juicy tomatoes and acidic American mustard sauce.
★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★

Vegetarian Thai food

Great place but food needs more fine tuning.

Meals come with soup, salad and tea.

It was amusing watching the guy attempt to balance the fork on the bowl.
I don't think the bowl was designed to have a fork put on it so they should have placed the fork on the table.

The salad was fresh but the sauce was too sweet and killed it. What was supposed to be healthy made unhealthy but it had nice mustard seeds in it.

The soup was pumpkin and ginger but I don't like ginger.

The main dish was really good but again they need to fine tune the salt and sugar they put in it because it was too sweet and salty. Again a healthy dish made unhealthy
However the spiciness was just right.

I desperately needed more rice to finish the rest of the dish but you get charged for extra rice, so I was still quite hungry after the meal.

The couple next to me complained about their sweet and sour dish because there were only two pieces of vegetarian meat and they joked that it should be called mixed fruit and not sweet and sour meat!!

Lastly, I could not drink the tea because it was rose and mint, the two things i hate the most.


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InnoVeggie (North Point)

G/F., 2-4 Fort Street, North Point