Almond snowball treats from Levain Bakery

Levain Bakery (Central)

Thanks to Mjqueen7e for getting me these treats from Levain.


I have always wanted to try LEVAIN in vain but the location is really inconvenient.

Luckily Mjqueen7e was at the Island East Markets and they had a stall there.


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Almond snowballs:
Initially I did not know what they were but they were interesting because they were very heavy in terms of weight when you held them.
It turns out, Mjqueen7e had already slipped in a card with the name of this but I was too excited and forgot about the card.
When I took them out, they appeared to be hard with a white icing sugar just like a snowball!

It seemed to be a cookie tasting like a buttery shortbread and it was crumbly.
The buttery and flour taste was quite strong, whilst the floury wheat taste lingered which I really liked because it reminds me of Farley's rusk by HEINZ, a teething biscuit for babies, and yes I can remember tastes as far back as that!
Thanks to these snowballs, I remembered another baby teething biscuit which is harder in terms of texture than Farley's.
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Hong Kong's McDonalds: Rice Fun Bowl [Beef]

McDonald's (North Point)

Despite the negative reviews I really wanted to try the Rice Fun Bowl by McDonalds.


There is a choice of chicken of beef.

The beef is bascially the same beef patty they put in the burgers and the chicken is the chicken they use in the grilled chicken burger topped with sweet teriyaki sauce.

I am quite puzzled why it is called a Fun Bowl because it is clearly a box.
So why don't they call it a Rice Fun Box

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Rice Fun Bowl [Beef]:
When I opened the box, the portion was quite small.
The broccoli was just broccoli in its most natural form because it was just blanched and the rice just had pieces of sweetcorn in it which was quite nice.
In terms of being healthy just the broccoli and sweetcorn rice is nice and healthy.


However I did not like the beef because the sauce was too sweet.


The rice was not soft enough and frankly there should be more rice because you do not get any other items in the set leaving you quite hungry!
Luckily I used the coupon from the Newspaper to get it at $25 because it is only worth $23 in my opinion.
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Future choices??There seems to be an option for pork and others as well as chicken and beef!!
Will we see sausage patty aka pork in the future for the Rice fun bowl??
Will we see curry sauce??


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The memoirs of Czarina

Czarina Restaurant (Mid-Levels)

Thanks to IVY_CWK or I would never have known about this restaurant and I rarely dine in this area because it is too much effort to go there.

When she first told me I had a quick look at the reviews thinking it was another Chinese style Western place for food but then they were closing down after decades of business so I decided to give it a try.

It was interesting because it was Russian Cuisine.

I wondered how the Russian cuisine ended up in Hong Kong because they were not ruled under the Russian Empire.

There is always non authentic Russian borscht soup served in Chinese Restaurants because they use tomato to replace beetroots.

Anyway, when we arrived, there was a crew filming the restaurant.

Inside the restaurant, the decor was quite old and historic by Hong Kong standards, but commonly found in Europe.
The table mats on the table reminded me of the ones used in UK with a cork base.

The menus were mostly handwritten and difficult to comprehend.

It was like Chinese joined up writing.


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Russian Borscht soup:
Although it is not authentic, the taste was better than the Borscht soups served in other Chinese restaurants.
There was lots of tomato in it.
As well as this, I also tried the Portuguese fish soup which was much nicer because it had lemon in it.
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Prawn and potato salad:.
The potato salad was surprisingly nice, it tasted natural unlike the other syrupy sweet salad cream HK style salads crammed with sweet tinned fruit.
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Seafood platter:

The salmon was a bit dry and had bones.
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Baked crab with cheese:

baked crabmeat n cheese
This was extremely delicious and contained real crabmeat and not surimi.
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Cameraman caught on camera while I happened to be filmed by the Cameraman!

camerman at the corner filming

See corresponding video
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Gigantic desserts galore

THE STEAK HOUSE winebar + grill (Tsim Sha Tsui)

This was a sweet four gathering to try the huge desserts at the The Steak House Winebar + Grill.

As I have not been there before, I made a reservation through their website.

They actually called me back, unlike other hotels/restaurants who have websites with emails to make it look like a website!!!

Anyway, they called me and said that The Steak House Winebar + Grill has a minimum charge of $500 per person so for desserts you can just walk in and dine at their bar section.


Luckily when we got there, the bar was comfortable with sofas and nice chairs.


Although I knew the desserts were huge from the review, I didn't realize they were that big.

I was planning to order the Green Tea fondant, Trifle, Tofu dome mousse, New York on diet or the Caramel pecan turtle and a lobster macaroni.

I thought the four of us could share four desserts each having a quarter, but they advised us that they were huge and we could only manage two.

So in the end we just ordered the Green Tea Fondant and the Trifle.

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Green Tea Fondant:


It was huge and had a mega amount of fondant in the middle, it seemed to take forever for it all to ooze out!


The green tea taste was quite strong but the sweetness was quite sweet.
There was vanilla sauce which we did not use.
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Trifle:



The caramelized strawberry slices were really nice.
The custard was quite creamy.
It was slightly different to the British version because this one was richer.
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Water:
Tap water / hot water was not free but according to some reviews it appears to be free if you persist!!
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Weird tasting soft pork bones

Felt like having some rice so came here randomly.

While I was deciding what to order, the waitress at the entranced seemed to be keen at luring people in the restaurant.

I wonder if she got commission for luring people in.

I did not expect the food to be good because people will walk in if the food is good and not need to be forced/lured in.

Their steaks were served in bowls with rice which was fun watching how people struggled to eat them with chopsticks and Chinese spoons!

Anyway I ordered their signature pork soft bones with rice.


When I opened the box, it was basically pork ribs in tomato sauce, the stuff they use to make their daily soup.
It was really sweet and disgusting and there was strong ginger in it, which was probably used to cover the taste of bad pork.

Delicious and colourful Omerice

Omerice (Tin Hau)

I would just like to Thank IVY_CWK and Mjqueen7e for treating me to this delicious Omurice dinner.
This is a mega late review as we dined here ages ago!

Omurice is an omelette made with fried rice and usually topped with ketchup.

At Omerice, they specialize in Omurice and offer so many different flavoured omelettes with different sauces to choose from.

For the omelettes there were so many types: squid omelette, tom yum kung, spinach and scallops and sea urchin.

All the omurices are served with ketchup but here they have curry sauce and cream sauce to choose from as well.

When you order you can ask for the omelette to be semi-cooked which we did because it tastes even better.

We decided to try the spinach and scallop omerice and the squid ink omerice with stuff chicken wings with cheese and spinach.

While we were digging into the delicious omerices, the manageress gave us some jellyfish salad.

The cutlery there is quite cute and matches their logo, the fork resembles the cracked egg.

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Chicken wings stuffed with cheese and spinach:
The chicken wings were lovely and crispy and it was filled with delicious spinach and cheese.

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Spinach and scallop omerice with cream sauce:
The texture of the omelette was really nice because we ordered it semicooked so the omelette tasted really delicious with strong spinach taste.
The rice in the middle had generous pieces of scallops in it.
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Squid ink omerice with cream sauce:
Compared to the spinach omerice, the squid ink had a stronger taste which tasted great with the hot fluffy rice in the middle.

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Jellyfish salad:
The salad was really refreshing complemented by their Japanese vinaigrette sauce.
The jelly fish was nice and springy.
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On the menu it was interesting that they had Pigeon's egg too which I tried recently at a restaurant in Ho Man Tim.
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/commentdetail.htm?commentid=2291541


Thanks to IVY_CWK's arrangement we got a shared room which was really nice.

I can't wait to dine here again and try the other Omerices.

Banquet food at Paramount

Paramount Banquet Hall (Kowloon Bay)

I do not bother reviewing foods from banquets because it is just the usual boring food but this time the food was actually ok!

The Chinese banquet always starts off with roast suckling pig, fried items, chicken, fried rice, noodles and desserts which do not taste as good as the banquets in the UK.

This time it was actually quite good because I took seconds of nearly every dish.

As it was a media gathering, it was hosted by handsome and tall Andrew 袁文傑 from now TV, formerly an actor from Asia Television!


It was held at MegaBox's Paramount which was quite an inconvenient location.

Started off with the roast suckling pig which had an even distribution of meat and crispy skin.

The scallops rolls were not that nice because it was filled with salad cream, scallop and fruit.


The braised ducks feet and abalone were delicious especially the ducks feet because it was soft and gelatinous.
However it was slightly too salty.

Then there was fish and I had the huge fish head which was rich in collagen and has the fish cheek which is the most delicate part.

Lastly the dessert was good because it wasn't the usual boring stuff, it was a square block which tasted like the Taiwanese pineapple cakes, it was lovely and chewy and not too sweet.