No fireworks, just a food blast in Hong Kong, Macau and Sri Lanka?
MILLIE: Families bond together at Christmas and New Year. But, for the first time in 28 years, Karla and I celebrated the New Year apart. She booked a trip to Sri Lanka to attend a friend’s wedding, leaving me all alone. Luckily for me, my best friend Verne Reyes decided to treat me to Hong Kong, where we met up with Ramon Tan and Larry Mallari.?
Arriving late at night, Verne, her husband Hector and I were cold and hungry and couldn’t find a place to eat. We walked to The Peninsula from Marco Polo Hong Kong where we were billeted, thinking that the Pen lobby would still be open for light meals at midnight. But to our dismay, everything was closed. The doorman suggested a place where locals go and kindly hailed a cab for us, telling the cab driver where to take us. We found ourselves on Hau Fook Street near Cameron Road in the Tsim Sha Tsui area. It was a virtual food street. “Interesting!” we said to ourselves. There were many small restaurants on both sides, including a noodle house, dessert places and bars.
What caught my eye was one spic-and-span dim sum place called Caterking Dimsum. It was unusual as dim sum is hardly served at night. Hector ordered chicken rice with mushroom and shao mai. Verne ordered shrimp dumplings, xiao long bao and seasonal vegetables. I ordered Shanghai salted pork jelly and baked barbecue pork buns. It was good and filling and the surprise of the evening was, the meal was inexpensive! There were other items we failed to order but perhaps on another trip, I would like to go back and try: deep-fried bean curd with crispy foie gras, beef honeycomb tripe with XO sauce, shrimp spring rolls with garlic and cheese, and sliced beef omasum in ginger sauce, to mention a few.
The next day, we got up late and walked around Harbour City, looking for a place to have a late lunch. We chanced upon Le Cafe de Joel Robuchon, which is renowned for its high tea offerings. Verne ordered a goose liver and beef burger with bell pepper, which was exquisite! Hector had a chicken sandwich with estragon, avocado, tomato and artichoke heart of palm with homemade Bearnaise. I had a smoked Norwegian salmon tartine and a sucrine salad with chicken, Parmesan and tomatoes. To cap the meal, a nice cup of coffee and a gorgeous chestnut tart for dessert!?
The afternoon was spent shopping around until it was time for dinner. We walked to the Jade Garden restaurant near our hotel and predictably ordered Peking duck prepared the traditional way with the crispy skin wrapped in thin pancakes and served with hoisin sauce. Verne ordered soft-shell crabs dipped in light batter and golden-fried. After dinner we met up with Larry and Ramon at the Hotel InterContinental for a nightcap while enjoying the magnificent view of Hong Kong harbor.
KARLA: In the meantime, I was on my way to Sri Lanka with a layover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A friend, Jharvis Ong, and I decided to spend New Year’s Eve in Kuala Lumpur before heading out to Sri Lanka. It was my first time in Malaysia and the only thing I could think of was where to find the best beef rendang. Ha ha! One good thing out of many about traveling with Jharvis is that he has a really good sense of direction, while I on the other hand can easily get lost in an unfamiliar city. He then led the way to a night food haven called Jalan Alor.
Jalan Alor used to be the red light district but after undergoing several facelifts, they have been able to pass it off as both an indoor and outdoor food destination. Food stalls, tables and chairs were set up on both sides of the street. Jharvis and I settled in one of the indoor dining areas and ordered away. We had the barbecue bean curd, which was deep-fried tokwa stuffed with cucumber and radish, topped with nuts and BBQ sauce. Of course we had the Penang char kueh teow and chicken satay.
Since Jharvis wanted soup, we ordered the tom yum grouper, which I surprisingly enjoyed since I’m not that fond of tom yum.
We also ordered a small plate of salted-egg prawns — prawns sautéed in a runny consistency of salted-egg sauce. This I enjoyed the most despite the difficulty of peeling the prawns with two fingers and chopsticks… it was very much worth it. Jharvis also ordered an oyster pancake and finished it on his own. Yep, all that for two people. Eek. It was obvious we were in Malaysia to eat. Even during our walk back to the hotel, we were still talking about the salted-egg prawns, so the following evening, New Year’s Eve, we went back for it.
MILLIE: We all decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Macau to see what it was like, thinking that there would be a fantastic fireworks display. So the next day, we took the Superjet ferry to Macau. It was a bright and sunny day and we were quite amazed with the mushrooming of tall hotel buildings in this city of leisure since our last visit some three or four years ago.
We wanted to have dinner at Fernando’s, a local restaurant known for Macanese food, but they did not accept reservations and we did not want to wait forever, so we decided to dine at Restaurante Dumbo in the Taipa area. The restaurant was highly recommended to Hector by a friend and we felt we should try it out.
For starters we had bacalao fish cakes. Next we tried the sardines, which were lightly fried and tasty. We also ordered the succulent roast lamb chops in gravy, braised lengua or ox tongue, which was very tender, and pork chops smothered in white glazed onions. It was a very good meal and reasonably priced. We wanted to have traditional Macau egg tarts for dessert, but Dumbo had run out.
Disappointed, we left the restaurant and walked around and found several food shops and bakeries. We saw so many interesting food finds and could not resist buying. It was more like a shopping spree! There were dried meat products, egg rolls, peanut cookies, and Verne’s unique and delicious find was the Koi Kei Bakery chestnut cake. Larry’s was the Serradura ice cream, which was light and not too sweet. Yet still no egg tarts! The men decided to walk over to the nearby Galaxy hotel, while Verne and I queued up for a taxi. We arrived almost at the same time and met up at the lobby for coffee and, finally, egg tarts!
We were informed that the fireworks at midnight would be in the Venetian Hotel area but when we got there, there were so many people we were anxious about a stampede or losing each other. So we decided to go to the street level as the crowds were building up fast closer to midnight. Although there was a giant screen within our view, there was hardly any music, noise or cheers during the countdown. No jumping up and down as is customary on New Year’s Eve. No fireworks, even! Well, I didn’t mind as I don’t really enjoy the putukan. We instead decided to cross the street to the nearby Conrad and ordered a bottle of pinot noir from Marlborough, New Zealand, to celebrate friendship and the New Year!
KARLA: The next day, we decided to go to the Batu Caves, where we had to climb 272 steps to the Hindu shrine at the top. I had some trouble entering as I was wearing shorts and had to rent a shawl to wrap around my waist to cover my legs. After climbing up and down, we walked around the surrounding shopping malls and stopped for a snack. I had been noticing this place near our hotel called Kafe Karipap (www.kampongkravers.com), which serves “karipaps.” I’m assuming that it means curry puffs? But they had a showcase filled with empanada-like pastry with different fillings. Jharvis tried the chicken, spicy anchovy, and mushroom mayo, while I had the chicken and egg karipap.
While ordering, another item caught my eye: it was their roti jala chicken curry served with different colors of roti: pink using dragon fruit, a green one made from pandan, yellow roti using turmeric and an orange one made of paprika.
Our New Year’s Eve dinner was back at Jalan Alor as planned but this time, we ordered two prawn dishes, one that was kind of like cereal prawns and the other was sautéed with hot sauce and asparagus. Jharvis also ordered a bowl of soup and noodles since he wasn’t feeling very well. True enough, he couldn’t eat that much so I had the prawns to myself. Hehe!
We took a cab towards the Petronas Towers, where we were informed they would have a fireworks display at midnight. The whole area was crowded with people anticipating the New Year, but Jharvis and I were a tad disappointed with the display. I suppose after growing up with a good show of fireworks all around the metro during New Year’s, plus the Pyro Olympics held at MOA every year, we could honestly say that we’ve seen better displays. We didn’t even finish it and headed back towards the hotel.
Since the cars could not move due to the number of people on the streets, no cab wanted to take us in. So we had to walk all the way back to the hotel. It was the first New Year’s in a long time that I didn’t have a glass of Champagne, grapes and kiat kiat, jump for at least one minute, in hopes that I would get taller in the year to come, take selfies with my mom and meet up with my cousins and friends for after parties and New Year’s breakfast. But boy, was I relieved when we got back to the hotel and connected to Wifi. I received a Viber call from my mom to greet me Happy New Year.?
MILLIE: Back in Hong Kong on New Year’s Day, we all met up for a late dinner at our old favorite Yung Kee on Wellington street in Central for some roast goose, barbecued pork, sautéed scallops and broccoli, crystal prawns with bagoong and crispy fried noodles with mixed meats!
For that perfect ending, we walked to the Mandarin for coffee and awesome desserts of cheesecake with raspberries and apple crumble a la mode! It was a fun food trip with people close to my heart. But then again, I really did miss Karla and she would drool over the food pictures I’d send through Viber.
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Read more about Karla’s trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at http://www.quichethecook.ph or follow @kakakarlotta on Instagram. Send emails to milliereyes.foodforthought@gmail.com or find us on Facebook and read articles you might have missed: Food for Thought by Millie and Karla Reyes.
