The Suite Life at The Peninsula Hong Kong

How sweet life can really be when guests enjoy the Suite Experience at The Peninsula Hong Kong. From the moment they arrive at the airport, the Suite Experience begins with a complimentary chauffeur-driven transfer to the hotel in one of The Peninsula’s green Rolls-Royce Phantoms, a service that is repeated upon departure. Every day, guests are treated to breakfast for two and an unlimited access to the mini-bar in the suite.

The Peninsula Hong Kong is impressive. I have been visiting this hotel since my teenage days, eating and drinking there, but I have never actually stayed in it.

Recently, after having planned a food trip with friends, we decided to live it up and stayed at The Peninsula, Hong Kong’s oldest hotel, which opened on Dec. 11, 1928. The hotel has 246 rooms and 54 are suites that range from 41 to 45 sq. m. for a Deluxe Room to 370 sq. m. for The Peninsula Suite. Each guest room has a king-size bed or twin beds, an Oriental-style wicker upholstered lounge-chair with Chinese lacquered coffee table and lamp stand, writing desk with an additional flap, spacious wardrobes complete with built-in drawers and safe, a luggage rack and The Peninsula’s uniquely famous shoe box for shoe shining and delivery of newspapers.

Each guest room also features flat-screen televisions with local and satellite TV reception and a CD/DVD player, silent fax machines with personalized fax numbers, two telephone lines in the bedroom and two in the bathroom, with two lines compatible with ISDN technology, complimentary high-speed broadband Internet access and computerized controls for curtains, TV, radio, airconditioning, valet button and lighting. Marble bathrooms feature a large and luxurious bathtub, separate shower stall and private toilet. A TV, a regular telephone and a hands-free telephone as well as multi-setting mood lighting are also standard features in all bathrooms. Each room has an audio/visual set featuring 30 radio stations and 53 TV channels, together with a DVD/CD player. Seven hundred CDs and 500 DVDs are available in the hotel library. The 1,116-sq.-m. spa is impressive as well, occupying two floors, offering views of Victoria Harbour and 14 state-of-the-art treatment rooms. All treatment rooms, multifunctional for both facial and body treatments, were designed to eliminate sound and competing scents from other rooms.

Then there are the Peninsula Hong Kong’s famous outlets. There’s Salon de Ning in the basement of the building. (The Peninsula Manila recently opened Salon de Ning, a great place to unwind and relax.) If Ning is not your thing, then the Philippe Starck-designed Felix on the 28th floor may be for dinner, snacks or drinks. After dinner, drinks and cocktails can also be had at The Bar on the first floor of the hotel. Fine French food can be savored at Gaddi’s, Japanese food at Imasa, Swiss food at Chesa and Cantonese cuisine at my favorite Spring Moon. I can’t get enough of Spring Moon’s wonderful dimsum and those crispy seafood noodles (ask for it, it’s off menu). The Lobby is probably the most well known of the outlets. The Peninsula’s rituals are rooted in British custom as The Duchess of Bedford is credited with launching the fashion of afternoon tea in 1830. By the 1840s, wafer-thin slivers of bread encasing thinly sliced cucumber and platters of light sponge cakes were served in the new tea gardens of Vauxhall and Marylebone and by later Victorian years, tea was a well-established meal with savory sandwiches, hot teacakes, English muffins or scones. Tea was a time to share gossip and show off one’s prettiest teapots and china. The Peninsula extends this tradition by serving tea in cups of eggshell-thin bone china, in The Lobby. Afternoon tea begins with savory finger sandwiches with crusts removed from freshly-baked white and brown bread, and filled with smoked salmon, egg or chicken salad, prawns and cucumber. Warm, buttery scones arrive next, made from a recipe unchanged at The Peninsula for over half a century. They’re served with strawberry jam and Devonshire clotted cream. The lines for afternoon tea at The Lobby are extremely long but there is a section reserved specifically for guests of the hotel.

Another “bonus” about staying in a suite at The Peninsula Hong Kong is the fact that guests are allowed complimentary use of the hotel’s bespoke Mini Cooper S Clubman for three hours a day.

It was truly a magnificent and much needed break spending it in a Peninsula Hong Kong Suite. We had a grand time staying at the 128-sq.-m. Grand Deluxe Harbour View Suite, one of the seven suites guests can choose from. The suite was so beautiful and relaxing that our group opted to have drinks there after dinner.

The hotel general manager is Rainy Chan, who is also area vice president — Hong Kong and Thailand, The Peninsula Hotels. Born and educated in Hong Kong, Chan began her career at the front desk of a major hotel in Hawaii in 1989, working her way up to become the front office manager. In September 1994, she joined The Peninsula Hong Kong as front office manager. She was transferred to the US where she spent five months in Chicago putting together the Rooms Division team for the new Peninsula Chicago. At The Peninsula New York, she held the position of resident manager. In December 2001, she returned to The Peninsula Hong Kong as resident manager and was then promoted to hotel manager in August 2002, responsible for the day-to-day operation of the hotel, together with The Peninsula Arcade’s 80 shops and 10 floors of office space owned and managed by the group. She was then promoted to general manager of The Peninsula Bangkok in August 2004 and returned to The Peninsula Hong Kong as general manager in April 2007 as its first female general manager!

My stay was truly unforgettable and blissful. I certainly am looking forward to another opportunity to enjoy The Peninsula Hong Kong’s sweet suite life!

The Peninsula Hong Kong is located on Salisbury Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong.

(For more information, check out www.peninsula.com or contact The Peninsula Global Customer Service Centre at telephone: (852) 2926-2888 or e-mail [email protected]. Reservations can also be completed online at www.peninsula.com or sent through fax: (852) 27322933.)

Food tripping in Hong Kong

My traveling group to Hong Kong recently couldn’t have been more perfect. They were frequent Hong Kong visitors and knew what and where to eat! Our first get-together was in Fook Lam Moon (35-45 Johnston Road Wanchai). Eleven months before this trip, Linda Oledan had taken Anton Mendoza and me to sample the restaurant’s delicious roast chicken and noodles. Because there were only three of us then, we were not able to order the restaurant’s famous suckling pig. Now that we were eight, I finally got to try that succulent flesh and crispy skin. The pig was gone in a few minutes!

Al Tengco even told me to save my appetite for the next day as we were going to have Shanghai hairy crabs, which were in season. Wu Kong (27 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon) is a well-known Shanghai restaurant and even gets fuller during the hairy crab season. Most of us chose the set menu consisting of soup with crab meat and crab fat, one hairy crab, sticky rice with crab meat and fat, a pork dumpling also with crab fat and meat, vegetables and rice dumpling in ginger tea for dessert. It was another excellent meal. Too bad the hairy crab season only lasts from late November to late January or early February at the latest. All of us even brought home bottled hairy crab fat from Wu Kong.

We also went to the non-Chinese restaurants, two were very memorable. Caprice at The Four Seasons in Hong Kong side made me try the roast bresse chicken, crayfish, sautéed salsify in a tarragon infusion. This was the first time I had tried bresse chicken, reputed to be the world’s best.  As a red meat eater, I was surprised to find the breast more tender and juicy than the red meat.  True to what I read about this famous chicken, it is always served with the feet bearing numbered rings around them. Caprice also served my favorite type of oyster, Belon.

For Japanese, go to Sushi Kuu (2-8 Wellington Street in Hong Kong). Try its toro (tuna belly) rice, which I savored. The BLT burger (from Bistro Laurent Tourondel from the US) is also available in Ocean Terminal in Kowloon. The steakhouse is also in the same building but a word of advice, when you go the burger joint, forget all those fancy burgers, just stick to the normal BLT burger with or without cheese and you’ll be happy with that. The rest of the burgers in the selection were overrated.

It was back to Chinese cuisine for our last dinner in Hong Kong. Choy Cojuangco suggested Lei Garden (338 Hennessy Road Kowloon) for the restaurant’s Peking duck (two ways) and that melt-in-your-mouth roast pork belly. It also had giant razor clams, which were superb.  The place was packed and we wanted more of the pork belly but it was already sold out.

Four days in Hong Kong and I must have gained four pounds.  It was a foodie’s dream though I must admit my discovery of those restaurants was courtesy of my food-loving group. I can’t wait till our next food trip!