Sushi Sei
There are a surprising number of restaurants in IFC, one of the more recent arrivals is Sushi Sei. Offering two quite different menus at lunch and dinner the food we sampled at lunch was fresh, full of interesting flavours and well presented. Head Chef Kaoru Mitsuhashi said his style was based around the traditional Edomae Nigirisushi.
In truth we’re not well enough versed in Japanese cuisine to comment on it’s authenticity, but beyond having a very enjoyable lunch we did learn two interesting things. We’ve been eating our sushi incorrectly for years, instead of picking a piece up and placing it in our mouths we should actually turn each piece so that the fish rather than the rice touches the tongue first so as to appreciate the subtle flavours of the fish before the rice dominates the tastebuds. Very obvious, when you think about it….
In many modern Japanese restaurants the rice is squashed tightly together making more of a block to bite into. Chef Mitsuhashi claims the traditional method is to have the rice loser and served warm so that it ‘crumbles’ in the mouth. Unsurprisingly this creates a completely different flavour experience, again allowing the flavour of the fish to remain on the palate longer. Sushi Sei: Shop 2016, IFC Mall, 8 Finance Street, Central, Tel: 2387 3377
New on Knutsford Terrace is Port, the third bar from the owners of Zinc and Ra. Hong Kong has been one of the worlds busiest container ports for years but Port is the first bar bc can recall to use the shape and design of a container as it’s underlying theme and decor. The industrial container concept works well to create a unique design with a large outside seating area and a spacious interior.
There’s a small but interesting menu split into five sections – Apps, Soil, Sea, Land, Sweet Tooth – and full of interesting dishes we’ve not seen locally before. From the Apps selection bc sampled several very enjoyable plates the Blistered Shishito Peppers with Lime, Sea Salt ($55) were tasty and tangy and a perfect snack to drink with. The Boudin Arancini (Chorizo Rice Balls, $75) were large and filling and served with aioli sauce, slightly larger chunks of chorizo would improve this fine bar snack. The Chicharones ($98) served with plum and aioli sauce were large meaty and tasty if a little dry.
In the Soil section the Long Beans, Manchego Cheese, Lemon ($68) saw crisp long beans covered in cheese and lemon, simple fresh and crispy. From the Sea the Atlantic Cod Charred with Sweetcorn and Chorizo ($168) was a delicious blend of flavours and textures. Cod is such a delicious fish that we have to hope that stocks will continue to replenish. After so many interesting dishes the Bacon-Grind Sliders, Cheddar, onions and Comeback Sauce ($138) served with spicy fries seemed rather mundane but the sliders are large, with lots of freshly ground beef in the patty topped with good bacon (as a bacon lover a second rasher would have made the dish) and cheddar cheese.
An interesting and varied menu, generous well presented portions and reasonable prices ensure Port is definitely a place worthy of dropping anchor when your next in TST. Port – 2 Knutsford Terrace, TST. Tel: 2146 2222 Zinc –35 D’Aguilar Street, Lan Kwai Fong. Tel: 2868 3448 Ra –G/F Wing On Plaza, 62 Mody Road, TST East. Tel: 27121 3600
East West Culinary Menu @ Holy Crab
Lan Kwai Fong’s Holy Crab has teamed up with the Canadian and Thai Consulates to offer an eight dish East / West menu daily until 16 September. The culinary exchange menu features dishes from Thai chef Chalee Kader exploring different regional Thai cuisines and Holy Crab’s Executive Chef Mark Kerkstra showcasing Canadian seafood. All the portion sizes are generous, with the Canadian dishes designed to be shared. At the media tasting the four Thai dishes: Kao Soy ($200), Papaya Salad with Salted Duck Egg ($180), Crab Curry ($388) and Chicken Turmeric Soup ($120) were enjoyable, especially the crab curry and the turmeric soup, without being remarkable. The flavours lacked that extra little complexity that a chef who’s been cooking a certain food style for years acquires. The arrival in person from Thailand of Chef Chalee in the kitchen a couple of days after our tasting will surely have remedied that.
Chef Kerkstra’s four Canadian dishes: Dungeness Crab Popover ($140), Crown and Maple Canadian Seafood Trio ($200), Pond and Pasture Grits ($200) and Canard Poutine ($230) are a riot of flavours and textures. The Quebec maple syrup glaze makes the seafood trio appetiser super sweet but a perfect balance to the spicy turmeric soup. If there’s a quibble about the coffee grilled Ontario pork loin and tiger prawns that top some wonderful cheddar cheese grits it’s that the pork is cut a bit thin and the pork gets lost within the coffee grilling. The coffee adds a nice sharpness to the cheese flavour of the grits. The canard poutine is a massive wonderful dish of gruyere cheese, duck confit and Quebec foie gras slathered over thick french fries. There’ll be those who will not like this menu the Canadian dishes do not match the prevailing trend of dainty, light, almost not there flavours – these are hearty Canadian dishes and all the better for being so.
Holy Crab
3/F, Cosmos Building, 8-11 Lan Kwai Fong, Central, Hong Kong
Tel: 2110 0100
Since the closure of the old airport one large swathe of Hong Kong has become a deadzone for public transport. Alicia Sing explores how to get close to Kai Tak if you’re attending an event there or want to explore the area.
What are your options? Bus, minibus, MTR, walking… The closest MTR stops are Kowloon Bay and Ngau Tau Kok followed by a long walk. Here are the fastest and cheapest routes from across Hong kong, almost all routes require a 15-20 minute walk from the bus stop to the Kai Tak cruise terminal
[table id=KaiTak2015 /]
Alternatives – take a Taxi! There is a taxi pick up and drop off right outside the terminal. Here is the Chinese address for taxi drivers: 啟德郵輪碼頭
If you want to look up the fastest and cheapest route yourselves? Try this app: Hong Kong eTransport.
The latest promotion from Great in the basement of Pacifc Place is the UK Food Festival which features over 300 new products. Filling Great’s wonderful cheese room is an expanded range of UK cheese from Neal’s Yard, which sources farmhouse made cheese from across the Isles. Amongst others there’s Keen’s Cheddar, Kirkham Lancashire, Appleby’s Double Gloucester, Colston Bassett Blue Stilton and an interesting Shropshire blue as well as Ticklemore’s Goat’s Cheese…
Also featuring in the promotion are Dickinson & Morris pork pies. The humble British pork pie is actually a complicated culinary delight as anyone who has tried to make one at home can attest. Sealing the filling in the dough to create the jelly is an art unto itself. In the bakery there’s also a range of scones – perfect for afternoon tea, topped with jam and clotted cream, and yes Great is selling real clotted cream! Enough with this fake overly sweet stuff that masquerades as ‘cream’ in Asia and destroys so many fine cakes and deserts. There’s also battenberg cake, an English delight that features squares of sponge cake surrounded in marzipan.
Welsh lamb and Scottish seafood offer options and flavours to the more traditional sources available locally and of course there’s trifle…. The Great UK promotion runs until 3 September
RAPSOVOCE PERFORMANCE COLLECTIVE brings together pianist Nancy Loo, baritone Caleb Woo and soprano Jasmine Law, presenting a German song recital of Arnold Schoenberg’s Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten (The Book of the Hanging Gardens), Op. 15, and selections by Johannes Brahms, whom Schoenberg hailed as a great progressive, a great innovator in the realm of musical language.
The Book of the Hanging Gardens, Op. 15, is Schoenberg’s fifteen-part song cycle composed between 1908 and 1909, set to the poems of Stefan George. It is the first composition in Schoenberg’s atonal period. The poems of the ‘Hanging Gardens’ are all miniatures, elliptically relating the progress of an intense, ultimately doomed love-affair between two young lovers, ending with the woman’s departure and the disintegration of the garden.
Performers:
Jasmine Law 羅曉晴 (soprano)
Caleb Woo 胡永正 (baritone)
Nancy Loo 羅乃新 (piano)
Programme:
Johannes Brahms: Am Sonntag Morgen Op. 49 No. 1 Feldeinsamkeit Op. 86 No. 6 Vier ernste Gesänge Op. 121 Arnold Schoenberg: Das Buch der hängenden Gärten Op. 15
The Book of the Hanging Gardens
RapsoVoce Performance Collective When: 7:30pm, 22 August, 2015 Where: HKAPA, Recital Hall Tickets: $180 from HKTicketing
The Hong Kong Sevens are the best global sporting social event around, in a world before the Internet and instant global communication the HK Sevens were known across the globe even by non-rugby players like myself. For my first tickets I queued overnight in a freezing Victoria Park and stayed three months in a city I’d planned to visit for a few days. That three months, turned into a lifetime and I’m now proudly a Hongkong and this wonderful city is my home. That first Sevens an ecstatic happy memory, the 21 that have followed, some of the best days of each year even though it’s hard work.
I love the Sevens and appreciate that they’re HK Rugby Football Union’s golden goose the multi-million annual tournament that stuffs the Union’s bank account to over-flowing. The competition that even now in the era of professional rugby, players dream of attending or playing at above almost any other. That ‘other’ was once perhaps singular, the Rugby World Cup, from 2016 the ‘other’ is a duo as the Olympics embraces Rugby 7s for the first time.
It’d be tough to say which is the biggest and best known sporting tournament in the world, the Olympics or the Football World Cup. The Olympics probably just shade it. The roar at the HK Stadium when Hong Kong won the shield in 2010 for their first trophy in a decade was amazing. But Lee Lai Shan wining gold at the Olympics was monumental as was Li Ching and Ko Lai Chak’s silver in 2004. Watching Sarah Lee win a bronze medal live at the London Olympics 2012 had me screaming at the computer monitor and walking around so proud and happy of a HongKonger’s achievement on the biggest of biggest sporting stages.
The Olympics, for all their faults, are when the world focuses on sport almost exclusively for a couple of weeks. Hong Kong’s men’s and women’s rugby 7s teams, both have a chance to be among the twelve countries who qualify to compete at Rio2016. The Olympics only happen every four years so qualifying is a hard and rare opportunity, and the fame of the HKSevens has given Hong Kong home advantage for both tournaments.
Really, you didn’t know – I’m not surprised. Tickets for the November 7-8 Qualification Tournament went on sale last week. Yet there’s no mention of this on the website of the HKRFU. Nothing on it’s facebook page, not even a tweet (account suspended). There’s been no press release about tickets going onsale. No details of how many tickets are available locally to the general public (are the Union worried that having 38,000 tickets for sale will reveal how much they are screwing the public allocation at the 7s – come on the public are not stupid, they know they get screwed every March on tickets). Nothing, nada! A black hole of promotion, advertising and awareness.
It is quite frankly a disgrace, Hong Kong might not win the gold medal at Rio2016 but qualifying would be a fantastic achievement. The roar of packed HK Stadium might be the eighth man that pushes Hong Kong across the qualification try-line against our two toughest regional rivals Japan and China. So why does the HKRFU ignore this wonderful opportunity? Are they incompetent? Jealous that the Olympics will injure their annual golden goose? Or is Olympic rugby, like women’s rugby a part of the game to be suffered by the male dinosaurs who run the local game because they’re not feted and fawned upon, their ego’s stroked, as they are by all those $uper rich corporate$ desperate for access to the holy grail of sevens tickets!
Sort it out! The players and fans deserve better!
HKRFU website 18 August, 2015 – 4 days after tickets went onsale.
