Pre Chinese New Year gathering

When I first heard of this restaurant, I really fell for it because the pronunciation is the same as the Government house 禮賓府 so I was a bit surprised that the public could go in for food.
Anyway, it turns out the name of the restaurant is 禮賓傅 which is still pronounced the same but the last word means Master.

Although the name is slightly different, it is still related to the ‘Government House’ because this place serves dishes that were served to officials at the ‘Government House’ because Chef Chung previously catered for government officials there.

Chef Chung has previously prepared dishes for world leaders such as President of PRC Xi Jinping, Premier of PRC Li Keqiang, Prime Minister of Russian Dmitry Medvedev, and former President of PRC Hu Jintao, former President of the United States George Bush and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher.

Lai Bun Fu is themed with elements from colonial days with Chinese antiques and British bits and pieces.

Went here for a pre-Chinese New Year gathering so we had some warming snake potage as well as festive dishes.

Here was what we had:
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Deep-fried Jinhua Ham and Dried Oyster Rolls:

This was good because they have used the bacon and oyster concept where they have replaced bacon with Jinhua ham, which gives the oyster a nice saltiness without the smokiness.
It was an oyster rolled in ham then dipped in batter and fried.
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Traditional Snake Potage:

This was a great warming soup on a cold day with crispy red beancurd flakes and traditional petals to garnish the potage.
I liked the potage on its own without the petals and there was a nice strong fruit peel taste.
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Lai Bun Fu’s Classic Big Bowl Feast:

The big bowl feast had all my favourite ingredients because it does not contain any fatty pork belly or pork skin which are substituted with prized sea cucumber and fish maw.
The remaining sauce in big bowl feast was fit for a hotpot so we ordered extra vegetables to put in.
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Stewed Mutton and Beancurds:

The mutton was soft and delicate paired with my favourite fermented beancurd sauce.
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Braised Beef Brisket with Assorted Peaches:

As this is the year of the Monkey, there is a myth that cheeky monkeys will always steal peaches hence there are peaches in this dish to make it festive.
The chunks of beef brisket were soft and big and the peaches made it appetizing.
Personally I liked the apricots in this dish.
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Lai Bun Fu Fortune Bag:

When this was served, it was a huge tofu skin bag/sack with smaller tofu bags surrounding it.
Inside this huge tofu bag was a whole chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, but my favourite item was the smaller bags which are vegetarian filled with crunchy vegetables.
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Steamed Eel with Soya Sauce:

This was steamed fresh eel with black bean sauce.
It tastes nice but I eel bones and I just don't get along.
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Stir-fried Lotus Roots with Young Ginger, Chestnuts, and Goji Berries:

This was a vegetable dish to balance the meal, there was a nice crunch and gingery taste.
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Golden Sea Uni Fried Rice with Clams:

A fried rice that is memorable because it has springy clams complimented by creamy uni.
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Double-boiled Snow Fungus and Lotus Seed:

To finish off, had this nutritious sweet soup that contained snow lotus seed that has a sticky viscous mouthfeel.
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Lai Bun Fu 禮賓傅
5/F, 18 On Lan Street, Central

Fit for a modern Chinese Cinderella

I love Tang’s Cuisine because the food is delicious and it would be fit for a Chinese Cinderella to dine here with huge golden birdcages in the restaurant.

There is a nice modern twist to the food as well which makes it glamorous.
Every course was memorable but the starter and ending was fantastic because of the Western elements and it was my first time trying Nostoc.
We started off with a platter that had red wine cherry goose liver, Crystalline ice plant salad and Slow cooked salmon.

The cherry goose liver was velvety and fragrant complimented by the mouth watering red wine gel coating.


The Crystalline leaves are always a favourite of mine because I love that texture with all these studded droplets of fluid on the leaf that burst when you eat it.


The salmon was smooth and delicate.

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Tang’s golden roasted pigeon:

The pigeons served here are only 20 days old which give it a delicate and tender texture.
During dinner, they will give out half a pigeon to each diner.
The pigeons are currently on promotion at $38 each.
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Chinese soup:

A nutritious soup boiled with fish maw.


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Sauna abalone steamed in wolf berry and chrysanthemum tea:


The abalone preparation was quite entertaining to watch because rose wine was poured on to the pebbles and set alight, and then wolf berry and chrysanthemum tea was poured over it and the lid put on to let it steam like a sauna resulting in abalone with a floral fragrant complimented by fine salt.


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Sparkling stars (fish)

Basically this was fish done in three ways: fried, in light gravy and minced.
A fish lovers delight.


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For vegetables we had this hollowed out wintermelon filled with prized Chinese fungas and crispy Chinese ham surrounded by pea sprout leaves.


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The following dimsum are auspicious dishes for the New year with with a creative prawn dumpling which looks like a mandarin because the dumpling pastry is made with yuzu which makes it appetizing.



The Roast goose puff was elegant filled with shredded duck in rich gravy.



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Steamed coconut with nostoc 葛仙米:

As you can see I was obsessed with the nostoc because it was the first time I saw it.
They are seaweed pearls which are pretty in different shades of green/brown.


There was so much nostoc in it.
The Nostoc was like these big crisp tapioca seeds swimming in sweet young coconut soup.




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Healthy vegetable juice:

It was really nice how they ended the meal with two different fresh vegetable juices which help to digest and detox.
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Tang's Cuisine 唐宮壹號
8/F, Hopewell Centre, 183 Queen's Road East, Wan Chai.

Hong Kong McDonald's serves lilac coloured softserve

McDonalds Hong Kong has launched the purple potato softserve so went and tried it.

The McFlurry has meringue bits and the sundaes have purple potato syrup drizzled on it.

As I was mainly interested in the softserve and meringue I decided to get the McFlurry without the Oreo because the oreo doesn’t quite match purple potato and the taste is too sweet and overpowering.

The purple potato taste was pleasant and it is basically artificial fllavouring just like the ones they put in Taiwanese teas and it is similar to the typical flavours you get from Monins syrup.

They also serve purple rice soymilk which tastes more like purple potato so I suspect the flavouring is purple potato and not purple rice and it makes sense that it could be purple potato because they don't need to buy another flavour to launch a new product.

A classy place for dinner at Osteria Felice

After going to the carnival, Osteria Felice was close by so went here for dinner.
Friendly waiters greeted me and the one who was responsible for our table was really nice and knew so much about cocktails.
They had a create your own Martini option where you tick a gin or vodka base and then match it with different options as shown on the sheet.

I chose dirty Vodka with pickled garlic which came out surprisingly well because it had a savoury smell that made you ready for dinner.
The strawberry cooler was also good because it had a natrual strawberry taste with a great fizz.

After the drinks we started on the dishes, there were so many of my favourites on the menu so we ended up ordering too much and we were quite full by dessert.

Started with roasted Heirloom cauliflower’s which were flown from Australia, they were pretty in white, green and rare purple garnished with capers.
The florets were crispy as described by the waiter with a nice salty flavour to it.

Then we had the classic Vitello Tonnato tuna mayo a well-known Italian cold dish of sliced veal covered with a creamy, mayonnaise-like sauce made with tuna.It was creamy and had a strong tuna taste with tender thin veal slices beneath it.
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The crostini turned out to be a star because it had creamy burrata cheese and smoked sardines.
The sardines were different because it had a silky texture with a nice salty taste that paired wel;l with the cheese and crostini.

For pasta, there were two must eat items: Squid ink linguine Hokkaido sea urchin and parsley and Linguine with Sicilian red prawns cherry tomato.
I just love red prawns and the linguine was al dente while the squid ink linguine was infused with white wine and prosecco.

Our last main was the roast duckling with grappa-preserved cherry sauce, which was meaty and tender paired with a cherry sauce that was slightly bitter and sweet.

We finished dinner with Tiramisu and chocolate fondant with mozzarella gelato.
I loved the Tiramisu because the alcohol taste was prominent.

The chocolate fondant oozed with runny chocolate sauce.

Osteria Felice
G/F Hutchinson Building,