Breakfast this morning was back at the in-house (Chinese) restaurant downstairs.
Something about this place genuinely charmed me.
No doubt, the feeling wasn't so strong yesterday- first time, whatever- but it was stronger today.
The familiarity.
The nostalgia.
The (gradually fading) memory of birthday dinners with grandparents and extended family.
I chose the Poached Eggs on Ham set this time.
Sort of a modified Eggs Benedict, the perfectly poached eggs sat delicately on top of a slice of ham, which in turn sat on top of a typical English muffin (very much like the kind they serve for McMuffins at McDonalds). Included with the Eggs Benedict was a square of butter, a bit of orange marmalade, and a side of salad with lettuce and cherry tomatoes.
My friend chose a croissant set that was served warm and although a little smaller than what we assumed croissants were usually to be, was good enough to kickstart the day, and he enjoyed it.
Perhaps the best part of breakfast was the bowl of sago with coconut milk and balls of fresh cantaloupe bopping about inside.
It made the meal look so much more fresh and cheerful.
But we wanted to try out the breakfast offerings that Hong Kong is renowned for, so downstairs we went.
Originally we'd thought we might have dim sum (again) but then when we got downstairs decided that the cafe below seemed to be just as good, so Breakfast Round 2 saw us having two slices of Truffle Egg Toast, a Bolo Bun, and Milk Tea.
I wasn't as surprised by the amount of filling stuffed inside the toast as much as I was about how thick the toast slices themselves actually were.
Likewise I'd forgotten just how sizes of Bolo Buns in Hong Kong were.
This one seemed so huge compared to what I was familiar with.
Not that we minded.
Good breakfasts make for a great boost to the day.
Except that they also tend to make you feel rather full, which makes it a good thing that after getting some work done, when the time came for lunch, we decided to walk to the chosen area rather than hail a cab.
The plan was to visit this restaurant called Joy Hing close to Hennessy Road, but as it turned out, the place (on the ground floor of Cheung Hing Building) was closed, so we changed plans, and wandered along Lockhart Road until we found an eatery that had food we thought we liked.
There was a lot to be seen on the menu- a full set of dishes suitable for lunch, dinner and supper- but I spotted something I really missed, and so I ordered it.
One of my all-time favorites when it comes to (zichar) cuisine is hor fun.
Doesn't matter how it's prepared- with gravy, without, it's fine with me- but one of my favorite ways is to have it dry, with chicken, seafood or beef, and here in this eatery right there on the menu was hor fun dry- with beef.
So yes, I ordered it.
As well as a plate of roast goose and char siew rice which my friend ate.
It will be an understatement to say that i was absolutely delighted by the plate of beef hor fun when it arrived on the table in front of me.
This was a dish that- at the back of my mind- I'd always hoped to try if and when I were in Hong Kong. No doubt, there are restaurant franchises on the island and all around SEA where zichar style dishes are also found in almost every coffee shop, but I wasn't interested in the restaurant franchises.
I wanted to have it at the place where these restaurants began.
And it was authentically good.
Sure it was a tad oily, as most zichar dishes do, but the hor fun, although slim in shape, thick and chewy. The beef slices were tender, bursting with flavor, and I had a marvellous time eating the noodles strand by strand.
That doesn't mean that I didn't get to try the goose.
I did.
And it was just as good.
So it might be a little different from the one we had yesterday at Kam's but this too had sufficient fat glistening proudly underneath the skin, and the meat had that faint smoky flavor as it were out of the oven.
What I liked, really, was the char siew.
There aren't many places I know where there's actual fat under the char siew, and there aren't many places too where the sweet sauce is crafted in such a way that it makes not only the pork of char siew delectable, it makes the little cube of fat taste amazing as well.
The lunch was memorable.
So was the little walk along Lockhart Road after that where I got to do what tourists generally don't get to do.
I dropped (ahem) into the Lockhart Road Public Library.
Now I don't recommend anyone do that- it is a place for citizens after all- but library lover that I am couldn't resist wanting to see how a library in Hong Kong looked like- and I'm glad I did.
It's so interesting just how systems seem to be the same the world over.
It don't matter if the books on the shelves are of different genres or even a different language.
You come face to face with a wide whitish reception counter the moment you step through the door.
You get to appreciate the wide selection of audio-books which here in this Lockhart Road library, are placed on three, four large shelves right next to the door.
And you gawk at the large collection of Chinese-language, Chinese-translated fiction and non-fiction books on shelves stretching from a few steps near the entrance all the way towards the wall.
There was no time for me to look around the shelves and pick books out.
There was also no time for me to browse through their genres, look for unusual books, sit down and read.
So i quietly left, taking the lift down to the ground floor, before heading off to Wan Chai Computer Center a short 4 minute walk away back on Hennessy Road.
To be honest the place isn't hard to find.
But there are a lot of tall buildings, there are a lot of store signs and road signs and billboards and traffic and people, so easy it is to get distracted, but I know we walked a distance along Hennessy Road then an overhead bridge, before reaching the entrance of the mall.
Wan Chai Computer Center is the place to go (in this district) if you're looking for anything and everything related to electronics and communications gear.
Whether it be a Type C cable, whether it be a data cable, whether it be a cable long, short, thick or thin, for USB or otherwise, this is the place to be.
Of course, needless to say, there're the laptops for business, leisure and/or gaming, there're the PC units with their synthwave keyboards, synthwave lights, none at all, then there're the phones- and everything that comes along with it.
In this day and age, one cannot have a piece of electronic gear without some form of storage, so yes, here they are, and can I say that there seemed to be a lot more Verbatim compared to other storage drive brands?
I think we got a cable wire- one of those long, long ones.
I think we also got a hard drive.
Having finished this little bout of electronics shopping, we headed to one of the few bus stops right outside the shopping center for Bus 23 to get us to the foot of Victoria Peak.
Now, I don't know exactly where at the (foot of the) Peak we alighted, but there was some sort of entrance, there was a park behind, all these lush green trees, and this rainbow-colored wall that I think was part of a bird conservatory, or something.
It is a little difficult for me to describe just how traveling on The Peak Tram was like.
Not because the ride was boring or that there was nothing to see, but because there was just so much out my side of the window that it didn't even matter that our seats were on the (wrong) side of the tram.
Those sitting on the (right) side of the tram got to have the coveted views of Central or Victoria Harbour.
Us, on the other hand, found ourselves looking at windows of homes built- literally- alongside the line.
Not that I minded.
Especially since anyone who has ever heard of Hong Kong will have heard of the well-known residential neighborhoods on The Peak, and the ones at the Mid-Levels.
It's impossible not to know about the large houses that once served as homes of consulates, and government buildings (and which since have been demolished).
It's also impossible not to know of the luxe apartment buildings and houses that now stand in the affluent 'hoods of Mid-Levels Central, West, East and North.
I don't think we saw any of these 'hoods.
But, 150 meters below the summit at Victoria Gap where the upper terminus of The Peak tram is, we got some great views of Central, Victoria Harbour and the Kowloon Peninsula.
Some we took from the Pacific Coffee cafe at The Peak Galleria where we stopped for a matcha latte, some we took from this spot near the Lions Pavilion, and some we took from The Peak Lookout, which, by the way, has one of the most surprising, and breathtaking views this side of Hong Kong.
I had not known that the views from The Peak Lookout were like this.
I mean, look at the sea!!
You know, writing about this now I've come to realize just how little I know about this place.
And had I not gone there, had I not ridden The Peak Tram, I would not have known that Victoria Peak was actually not just one mountain, but a few, and that all of them had different names.
The one I knew all along was called Mount Austin.
But then there was Mount Kellett, Mount Gough, and even Bowen Hill.
Not to mention all the road names.
And the fact that the real summit of Victoria Peak today holds a radio telecommunications tower that's inaccessible to the public.
I don't think I'll soon forget the romanticism of the place.
It wasn't just the (ubiquitous) (signature) (distinctive) cityscape of Hong Kong that I saw.
It was HONG KONG.
It was me being in Hong Kong, gazing upon a view that made it impossible for me to believe otherwise.
I was thankful to be here.
So much so that I felt a wee bit of sadness to have to take the tram back down.
But if I'd thought that the feels of Hong Kong dissipated upon coming down the hill, beyond the lower terminus on Garden Road near St. John's Cathedral, there was still colonial Hong Kong to be seen.
On this short stretch between the Peak and Lan Kwai Fong (where we were going for dinner) there wasn't much, and I'm afraid I don't quite know what they are (today), but they were there- same architecture, same colors, same style of house upon a hill even.
One of them made me think of the Central Fire Station here in Singapore.
Another made me think of a person's home upon a hill here in Singapore that was presently now up for sale.
We headed along this road here outside the red and white building, made a turn, and walked along the stretch on the other side.
One thing about Hong Kong are the slopes and hills.
I don't think I'd ever climbed that many slopes and hills as during those couple of days I was there.
And you can't make a detour around those hills.
There's just one route to get through from this side to the other, and so climb up- or down- you must.
You have no choice.
Over in Lan Kwai Fong, we stopped at a building which I can't tell you the name of.
I can't even remember the name of the restaurant.
But the entrance of the building looked towards this particular very, very steep slope, which, I think, is one of the more well known streets in partying district Lan Kwai Fong itself, and the restaurant inside the building was on one of the upper floors.
There was a strong 1920s Art-Deco vibe inside the building.
I'm not sure why it was chosen, but you felt it at the reception, you felt it in the lift, and you felt it in the restaurant itself where it permeated through the warm lighting, the wall decor, the furniture and the food.
At another place I might have thought of Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard.
But today here we were, in Lan Kwai Fong, and I got a very brief glimpse of 1920s Hong Kong.
The food here was delicious.
I was, of course, expecting some sort of quality- the F&B scene in Hong Kong is not to trifled with- but the standards surpassed what I had been expecting.
You know how some places manage to make it such that you can't tell the difference between what's real lobster bisque and a packet of frozen lobster bisque?
Not so here.
They did it with meticulous broil, boil and perfection.
How do I know?
The taste, and the sheen (which although makes it look like a very oily curry is neither oily nor a curry)
And because this be a lobster bisque that's not from a packet nor a can, the flavor of the crustacean stood out with every spoonful.
Appetizers came in the form of a plate of a venison carpaccio.
Which, because I'm no food expert, couldn't differentiate between the meat of venison and beef, but it is rare that one gets to have deer meat in the form of a thinly sliced carpaccio served raw.
I'm more used to having it grilled, served on a hot plate, with rice.
I would have been glad to have just the lobster bisque and the carpaccio but we were here for a bit of red meat, and that was what we were going to have.
So for the main course we decided on a plate of lamb rump, and joy of joys, another dish of creamed spinach, which, I have to say, was one of the largest dishes of creamed spinach that I've ever had.
I liked it that the very soft and tender lamb rump was divided up in such a way that had I chosen to eat it with chopsticks, I could have.
And then there was the taste.
I can't put it into words but it was unusual.
You know how roast lamb often tends to have that heavy, heavy feel when you bite into it?
And how it sometimes makes a person feel like there's a weight in the stomach when they consume a lot?
This one, surprisingly, felt light.
Not on the palate- I could sense a hint of the burnt burnt smoky smoky taste.
I could also feel the meat juices burst out every time I took a bite.
But this piece of lamb, deliciously marinated as it was, didn't make me feel very full.
Which I liked, because there was this gigantic serving of what I think was couscous, or was it barley rice, as a side to the lamb- and the flavors, when eaten together at the same time, tasted clean, and just so good.
I loved it.
More than the couscous, however, and this I really loved, was the surprise dish of creamed spinach that had been friend ordered.
The soft, mushy texture of the vegetable countered the chew of the (also) very tender steak, and best part, the dish was creamy and milky without being too rich nor too heavy on the stomach.
It might have seemed like a simple meal (lots of protein) but we felt rather full when it was finished, and so had to skip dessert.
Perhaps one day we might try their dessert- there was ice cream, there was cake, and if I'm not wrong there was pie.
Dinner over, we took the MTR back from Central to Causeway Bay.
Special mention must be made of Times Square, by the way.
I know I haven't written a lot about it but it is one of the loveliest shopping malls around- you can't go wrong with Lane Crawford the department store- and whilst I didn't manage to get to the higher levels, I got a pretty good glimpse of their F&B, and shall I say the casual eateries and dining places would be worth a try when I come back here next time.