bc magazine

Sidewalk Cafe, Tin Shui Wai

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Sidewalk Cafe opened it’s third outlet in Tin Shui Wai last month and if you’re in the area and looking for western cuisine it’s a solid place to go. With so many new restaurants opening each month finding something unique to catch diners attention is increasingly hard. Chef Hans option… a 1 metre pizza. No that’s not a mis-print Sidewalk Cafe’s signature pizza is 100cm long and a healthy 30cm wide with three different toppings ($268). A real table filler and tasty too – it also easily passes the how does it taste cold the next day test. Sadly for take away orders it’s sliced into three sections for ease of transport. There’s also a range of traditional 9 and 11 inch circular pizzas.

The rest of the menu offers a wide range of dishes from soups and salads, to pastas, risotto, steak and suckling pig. Portions sizes are good, with dishes well presented. bc tried the Baked Potato Wedges with meat and cheese ($42) a good filling starter with the potato nicely cooked and soft inside. The Baked Lasagna ($88) was enjoyable, cooked al dente and served with tomato sauce on the side. Personally I’d have preferred a few more herbs and spices in both parts of the dish but that’s my western tastes buds talking. The Pan Seared Barramundi Fillet with Spinach and Clams ($118) featured a generous portion of fish and half a dozen clams served in a white sauce on a bed of spinach. The fish was nicely cooked but the white sauce a little simple and thin.

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Sidewalk’s signature dessert is the Golden Snow Mountain ($68) a towering, it’s much taller than a can of soft drink, mass of toast, cream, ice-cream and fruit. It’s fun and designed to share. One word of caution, as with many restaurants in Hong Kong, some of the desserts and specialty drinks include that overly sweet artificial cream that you either love or hate. If you don’t like it (like me) then thankfully there are more than enough options to choose which don’t include it.

There’s a wide range of set lunches, teas and dinners which incorporate dishes from the main menu plus a soup/salad and a drink. If you want to share dishes you can as the portions are big enough. At Sidewalk Cafe you can have a good filling meal in a comfortable relaxed environment for $100-$150/person and up. A 1 metre pizza, love it!

Sidewalk Cafe
L128 Tin Shing Shopping Centre, 3 Tin Shing Street, Tin Shui Wai
Tel: 2682 8260. 7:30am-11pm daily

Other outlets:
Shop P8, Podium Floor, Telford Plaza 1, Kowloon Bay.
Tel: 2756 2218. 7:30am-11pm daily

Shop 503, 5/F The Spot, Sheung Shui.
Tel: 2868 2733. 8am-10:30pm

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Food Truck Festival @ PMQ

The Governments lame brained idea to introduce ‘Food Trucks’ to Hong Kong, when we already have some of the most amazing street food in the world, wanders down an expensive cul de sac at PMQ over the next 5 days.

There are four concept ‘food trucks’ at PMQ, as well as host of other tasty food outlets – so if you fancy grabbing a bite take a wander down. But in what is an all too familiar tale in recent years the rules and regulations imposed by the FEHD are well meant but idiotic and impractical.

The food truck festival is supposed to showcase the food trucks concept (the ones on show are far too small to be practical, but that’s a different matter) yet the FEHD rules prohibit any cooking inside the trucks (apparently they even prohibit serving food to customers from inside the truck…). So all the ‘cooking’ (actually re-heating as FEHD rules don’t allow actual cooking) is done behind the trucks.

The four participating restaurants masquerading as food trucks are:
Homie Cookies: Joyce Cheng’s home-made soft cookies ($20 each) and ice-cream sandwiches ($60) – pretty good.
A La Maison XXL Seafood and Grill: paella, lobster roll ($90), 12inch hotdog – friendly staff but small portions and nothing special enough to make visit North Point a priority.
Boomshack: burger ($80) triple cheese chicken waffle ($90) honey sriracha chicken waffle ($90) – solidly good, but with some authentic US food truck experience among the owners it would have been nice to see something more than just the same sandwiches you can buy slightly cheaper in the restaurant.
Superstar: Assorted Korean snacks $10-$50 – if you’re going to name your outlet Superstar then you need to deliver and on the first night they weren’t.

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The real tasty bites are to be found in the booths at the back…
Munchies: delicious home-made donuts ($40) donut balls ($10)

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Picada: colourful and tasty Chilean arepas snacks ($40) not on the restaurant’s regular menu.

Boomf: personalised marshmallows

And a fresh fruit stall where Andy the owner is using a hand-blender to turn watermelon and dragonfruits into fresh juices inside their own skins.

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There’s lots to drink, but sadly no seats. Running even a pretend food truck is expensive in HK so bring plenty of cash as prices are basically the same or higher than in the restaurants of the food truck vendors and booths.

Hong Kong Food Truck Festival 2016
Date: 4-8 May, 2016
Venue: PMQ
Tickets: Free
More info:
4 May – 6–10pm
5 – 7 May – 11am–10pm
8 May – 11am–9pm

Megabites: 24 November – Beefbar, Osteria Felice, California Tower

Osteria Felice
The latest restaurant to open in the space in Hutchison House that housed the Bull and Bear for so many years is Osteria Felice the new outlet from the Epicurean Group. Literally translated it means ‘happy tavern’ and that’s what the Italian themed outlet is looking to provide. There’s a small bar offering innovative cocktails and a create your own martini menu and a large raised dining area. The menu created by executive chef Brian Moore features a wide range of dishes from anti-pasti to pizza, pastas to gourmet slow cooked delights. Food that can be enjoyed at lunch, a relaxed casual dinner or ‘proper’ meal out.
Osteria Felice: G/F., Hutchison House, 10 Harcourt Road, Central Tel: 2516 6166 www.osteriafelice.com

Beefbar
Originating in Monte Carlo a decade ago, Beefbar opened on Ice House Street this month – the latest outlet from the Lai Sun Group. The opulent interior of marble and brass is surprisingly relaxed, service is attentive but unobtrusive. An A3 style menu features premium quality Australian, American and Japanese beef front and centre but also offers a lot more than just beef. There’s a broad range of seafood and meat tartare, fish, veal and chicken. As well as the Ala Carte menu there’s a range of city themed two or three course set lunches.
Beefbar: 2/F, Club Lusitano, 16 Ice House St, Central.Tel: 2110 8853, www.beefbar.hk

California Tower
California Tower in Lan Kwai Fong officially opens on the 30 November, with 8 restaurants and bars. As part of their opening celebrations some of the outlets are hosting a series of workshops and tastings.

Townhouse
Make Your Own ‘California Tower’ Cocktail workshop, where participants will be taught how to produce a ‘California Tower’ drink – created specially to mark the Grand Opening. There will be a minimum of 10 people per workshop and bookings must be made at least a week in advance.
Date: November 2015 to January 2016
Venue: 23/F, California Tower
Cost: HK$180 per person, including the ‘California Tower’ cocktail created by participant and a snack
Language: English
Booking: +852 2344 2366; [email protected]

Zentral
Nightclub Zentral is putting on a Mixology Cocktail Class, where bartenders will teach drinkers the craft of creating a cocktail.
Date: 27th November, 4th & 11th December 2015
Venue: 4-5/F, California Tower
Cost: HK$110 per person
Language: English
Booking: RSVP with [email protected] or walk-in

Fovea
Fovea is hosting two workshops to showcase both its Chinese culinary and cocktail-making credentials. At the restaurant side, the Recognising New Age Chinese Style Cuisine class will see Fovea’s executive chef introduce creative cooking methods used to prepare special Chinese-style snacks. On the club floor, the Fovea Special Cocktails class is conducted by Fovea’s resident bartender. Participants will learn an easy way to make cocktails.
Date: 28th November 2015.
Recognising New Age Chinese Style Cuisine: 2-3pm
Fovea Special Cocktails: 5-6pm
Address: 1-2/F, California Tower
Language: Cantonese and English
Booking: Ms Vanessa Tam, +852 2549 9166; Ms Isabel Chau, +852 9105 8172

Megabites: Food News, 31 March, 2015

America’s Culinary Bounty
In the basement of Pacific Place, through April 7, Great is showcasing America’s Bounty as it introduces and features many new American products. From seafood: East Coast Clams and Pacific Northwest Oysters, to fresh produce: meats to superfoods and grains – there’s lots to explore an savour. In Great’s wonderful cheese room there a selection of artisan cheeses from California. A wonderful firm and tasty Fiscalini Bandage Wrapped Cheddar is a delight, while the Cypress Grove Truffle Tremor is truly a gorgeous soft-ripened goat’s cheese. Among the other new products is Tolerant Foods range of bean based pastas which are wheat and gluten free, non-GMO, vegan and organic. For those who love grains and ‘superfoods’ there’s organic grains including quinoa from Arrowhead Mills and chia from Bob’s Red Mill. Many of the products will remain on-sale after the promotion period.

During the promotion Great’s hot food counter is introducing a range of take-away Tex-Mex dishes including nachos, quesadillas, fajitas and tacos

Free Milk @ Circle K
As the price of milk continues to increase, up almost 25% from last year as the regular price of a 946ml carton of milk surges past the $25 mark. It’s not often that you’ll find convenience store prices are lower than supermarkets but currently Circle K is running a long term fresh milk promotion buy 5 cartons of Nestle milk and get the 6^th free. Simply pick up the chop card at any shop and chop away.

Buffet ala Hung Hom
Newly opened in Hung Hom is Sav, one of these new modern hotels looking to be your trendy home from home and full of bubbly friendly staff. Located on the first floor adjacent to reception is Palatte the hotels industrial looking dining space. With raw concrete floors, clear perspex chairs, the look is very modern and bright – but for all the staff buzzing around it’s strangely cold and functional with everyone trying that bit too hard to be nice.

The dinner buffet is prettily displayed, with a table of enticing desserts looking to draw you into the main dining area where cold and hot dishes stretch the length of one wall. Two cooking stations offer fresh pasta and noodles. There’s lots of seafood – lobster, oysters, yabbies, muscles – some sushi and sashimi, various western, Indian and Chinese hot dishes and the obligatory range of salads. Organic greens grown in the New Territories and a cheese board round out the offerings. It’s a reasonable sized dinner buffet, but… at $588 it’s not cheap. The extensive seafood offerings may be a factor in the price – as this was a special media tasting it’s impossible to know if on a regular night when the place is full, it seats 100, these will be constantly replenished.

It’s a very pretty looking spread, sadly though the food is very bland – the hot dishes lacked flavour, the salads identity and the quality of meat wasn’t all that you’d expect. There are a lot of very good buffets available in Hong Kong these days and Palatte’s at the moment isn’t good enough to make it worth the trek to Hung Hom. If you’re in the area though, the high tea sets look good at $288/two people and the lunch offerings of a hot dish, salad buffet and tea/coffee range from $68-$138 are very good value.

In-n-Out Burger
Family owned burger chain In-n-Out returned to Hong Kong for their third pop-up burger event, this time in Causeway Bay. 250 lucky customers got to sample In-n-Out’s burgers – at American prices: a double double ($25) hamburger ($15) and cheeseburger ($20). Cooked either ‘animal’ or ‘protein’ style, the tasty fresh ingredients were a big hit and well worth queuing for. Sadly Brian Nakao the organiser of In-n-Out’s foreign events confirmed that the burger chain has no immediate plans to open a store or three in Hong Kong.