Dumbo Restaurant is nestled in a corner at the edge of Taipa Village in Macau and serves Macau-style Portuguese food. The curry crabs are supposedly good but I passed on that since I wasn’t really keen on using my hands on anything more tedious than shoving food into my face. » Read the rest of this entry «

If you’re ever in Hong Kong, you need to head for Mak’s Noodles and engulf a few portions of their wanton mee. They’re overpriced definitely but oh-so-good. A tiny bowl like this (it’s probably 2 mouthfuls. And I’ve a small jaw, the dentist tells me) costs 28 HKD. You’ll need to order the regular wanton noodles and not the fanciful noodles on the menu that comes with beef. The beef dishes come with a different soup base and are rather plebian in my opinion although the price, again, is anything but.

I don’t get why no one in Singapore has thought of actually selling wanton noodles that don’t taste like stale pork soup. All the wantons in Hong Kong are these delicate parcels of shrimp. No redundant ingredients like pork bits to pollute the clear soup either. The noodles are springy and chewy and have a distinct flavor of egg.

The original outlet is at Wellington Street but apparently they’ve got new outlets around Hong Kong now. The one at Tsim Sha Tsui pales in comparison though and I’d assume the same of the rest of the franchises.

Here’re a couple of drinks I picked up in Hong Kong.

This is really nice. It’s like carbonated jelly. Doesn’t quench thirst though. » Read the rest of this entry «

Here’s something that I picked up at Isetan’s supermarket. I’ve been told that milk and alcohol makes for a nasty curdy mixture and a name like Calpis Sour does add credence to that hearsay. Calpis, by the way, is a Japanese yoghurt drink that tastes somewhat like a dilute version of Yakult and a Calpis Sour is apparently Calpis with Vodka.

I don’t quite know what to make of it – it has the texture of a murky vodka and doesn’t taste much of Calpis. Not entirely unpleasant, definitely but I can’t say I liked it. At $4.40 though, it’s just slightly more expensive than a can of the untainted real deal.

We (ok, I) have been looking for good and affordable dim sum buffet for quite some time and heard about this swanky downtown hotel offering a weekend a la carte spread for $28++ per person. The catch is, we can’t descend on the restaurant there and then because we had to have a reservation. And there was a 2 month waiting list.

That needed to be explained because it would now make sense why we had to try out Every. Single. Thing. on the menu.

This is lunch for two.

Braised Spinach With Crabmeat and Roe in Chicken Consomme

The buffet limited each diner to one portion so I picked this. Despite the spinach, it bore a stronger taste of crabmeat and the roe was undiscernible. It was slightly viscous which helped keep the brew hotter than warm. Good if you like to drink your soup slow or if you like scalding your mouth and dribbling all over the rest of your meal.

» Read the rest of this entry «

It was a beautiful day to head out and dance in the sun.

Fortunately for the public though, I decided to not dance in the sun but cycle down to the nearest Carl’s Jr for breakfast. That would be East Coast Park, some 15ish km away. I woke at 930, swapped out my crumbling seat for my spanking new Unicycle.com.nz Kris Holm Fusion and headed out at 1020.

That ended the ‘beautiful’ part of my day.

I reached at 1115 and was told NO MORE BURRITO.

BREAKFAST ENDS AT 1100 AND BECAUSE I’M 15 MINUTES TOO LATE, NO MORE BURRITO.

I need to emphasize that.

NO MORE BURRITO.

There.

Because I didn’t want anything fried or beef, I ended up ordering some chicken salad that contained the daily recommended calorie count for an ant.

Stupid tasteless food.

I’m making up for it by heading out for some BBQ buffet in a bit.

I made lasagna yesterday because I like to eat. That’s about as eloquent as I am about my whims so let’s move on already. I made a seafood version because I don’t like tomato-based sauces and I quite enjoyed the version at The Coffee Connoisseur.

Here’s what I used -

• Half a bag of scallops
• 1 squid
• Some prawns
• A tub of button mushrooms
• Half a bottle of Alfredo Sauce
• Pasta sheets
• Half a slab of mozzarella
• Half a slab of pecorino cheese
• Some butter
• Salt, bla bla bla  to taste

I had no idea what pecorino was but the organic label was on sale. Parmesan is most commonly used but the pecorino was described on the package as being hard and tangy which sounds pretty close to parmesan. It’s very slightly softer than Parmesan and tastes somewhat stronger. I’d be getting this over Parmesan any day from now. If it’s on sale.

Alfredo sauce saved a lot of time but it ended up being a lot more watery than I’d like. Actually come to think of it, that might actually be due to the frozen seafood. Stupid frozen seafood.

Ok so after you get everything somewhat cooked, you chuck everything into a baking pan while trying hard not to eat half the stuff from the pan. Because half the fun of lasagna is in the cheese, you should fill the top of EVERY LAYER with more cheese. MORE CHEESE.

Then you bake it at some temperature that seems reasonably hot and that would brown the mozzarella. You bake it for some amount of time when you peek in and see that your food’s cooked.

Voila. Food.

Then you eat it. After which you take out the remaining slabs of cheese and eat them too. And then you drink some maple syrup for dessert.