Inside the Tower

Our dimsum lunch at La Chine turned out to be a good surprise. We wanted to try something new during our quick stay in Macau and this Chinese restaurant inside The Parisien came into the radar. We figured since we haven't been inside the fake Eiffel Tower in Macau we may treat this as an extra sightseeing stop too. 

Dim Sum and Some More

I was at One Harbour Road at Grand Hyatt Hong Kong last month to check out a few new dimsum dishes by Chef Chan Hon Cheong. It has been a hectic (and rainy) day but glad to enjoy some quiet time with decent food.

Dim Sum Lunch for 4

Late April marked the first time in 3 months that we could finally dine with 4 persons at the same table, and we decided to “celebrate” that with a weekend dim sum lunch at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants in town. We love the culinary transformation Chef Jayson and his team has done at Man Ho for the past few years, and they never failed to impress us even with a simple lunch get-together such as this. 

Dim Sum and More

Honestly we didn’t do much for our staycation at Conrad except getting the much needed rest, but we did drop by their Golden Leaf restaurant for a decent lunch on the first day. We hopped down to the restaurant, which is located at the basement level of the hotel, after we checked in and dropped our stuff. 

The New Man Wah

Other than the new Mandarin Club on the 23rd Floor, February also marked the opening month for two restaurants at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong. One of which was Man Wah, the Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant which went through the renovation and now with an expanded space and totally different décor, and that’s where we dropped by for lunch right after we checked in for our staycation weekend.  

Yum Cha Omakase

It’s great to have run into Chef Jayson at his restaurant Man Ho at JW Marriott during our visit on the last day of January, especially on the heel of double good news for him personally and professionally this month. And that also meant we didn’t have to decide what to eat and just asked him to help sort out the menu for us.

Morning Hotel Dim-Sum

When lunch became the "new dinner" and the most important meal of the day, I guess breakfast is now the "new lunch". One Harbour Road at Grand Hyatt is one of those restaurants now with an extended opening hour from early morning on, so we dropped by one weekend for a leisurely breakfast.

Beginning of Another Staycation

We couldn’t think of a better way to start our staycation at Four Seasons with lunch at the Michelin-starred Lung King Heen. It seemed like centuries ago since we last set foot here but nothing much has changed at this fine-dining Chinese restaurant – I admired the consistency of execution by Chef Chan Yan-tak and his team. 

Star-studded Lunch

For a while Forum in Causeway Bay remained the only Michelin 3-starred restaurant that I have never visited in all of Hong Kong/Macau, but I finally managed to cross that off the list a few days ago when our friends J and P organized a lunch there and asked us to join.

Post Party Dim Sum

We were sorting out where to eat the day after the Michelin Gala dinner and at the end "settled with" Jade Dragon under the same roof. Well I suppose "settled with" may not be an appropriate description, given the restaurant just kept the highest 3-star rating at the Michelin Guide for 2 years in a row.

Weekend Chinese Lunch

I probably do fancy western meals far more often than I do with Chinese ones, and perhaps that's why it's been years since I last visited Duddell's, and probably only my second time ever when I went for lunch a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon to try some of their new Cantonese dimsum and dishes at this upscale restaurant in Central.

New Chef, New Dishes, Same Look

My lunch at Man Wah was pushed back by 2 weeks because of Typhoon Mangkhut which hit us in mid-September, but glad we could finally re-schedule and made that happened before the October 1 long weekend. I am an admirer of Chef Wong Wing-keung’s cooking at Yee Tung Heen of The Excelsior, and recently Chef Wong moved across to its sister property at Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong to be their new executive chef at the Chinese restaurant (where he used to work as sous chef before his post at Yee Tung Heen). MO’s PR team has been arranging meals at the restaurant to introduce their “new” executive chef to the media, and hence I was invited to one of them.

Second Dimsum Lunch

The next day after our dinner at 102 House and subsequently a late night supper at a local joint (for bowls of comforting congees and a few street food dishes), we met up with Jimmy and Chef Xu again for more local food before we headed home, this time at the legendary White Swan Hotel by the Pearl River bank for a second dimsum lunch in as many days while travelling to this town.

First Dimsum in Guangzhou

We swung by Foshan/Guangzhou for a quick overnight trip to meet up with our friend J who’s meeting the chef and owner of a private kitchen there (more on that later). But before the dinner, we had a great dimsum lunch at Mandarin Oriental Guangzhou, opened only in the last few years joining a long list of high-end hotels making its presence in this capital city in Guangdong Province, only 2 hours away via train from Hong Kong (commute time will be further cut in half once the direct high speed rail began service some time late this year or next).

Trying Something New

I didn’t expect the restaurant would be full when I made a booking for lunch at Chun, the Chinese restaurant at the new MGM Cotai hotel right next door from where we were staying, so glad that we did. After 2 spectacular meals at the City of Dreams complex right across the street, I figure it’s a good idea to check out something new before we headed back home, and MGM Cotai is the newest addition to this area at the time of our visit (since then, the Zaha Hadid-design Morphus has just opened its door 2 weeks after)

Overdue Encore at Chef Tam's Place

We went for a repeat of last year’s birthday celebration with a weekend stay in Macau, and dined at the same restaurant on Saturday night as the highlight of our itinerary. But before we got to that, we went to visit a few restaurants as well – with temperature soaring to mid-30s during day time, there’s nothing better to do to hide away and eat (or gamble, I guess, though we didn’t quite manage to do that this time since we were too busy eating)

Comforting Dimsum Lunch

It must been passing down from family, but I always found dimsum dishes to be my ultimate comfort food. Many times there’s nothing more satisfying than a steamed basket of simple har gau (shrimp dumplings) or siu mai (pork dumplings) appearing at the table. A couple weeks ago I was at Golden Leaf of Conrad Hong Kong and had just that and a few more for a casual lunch there.

Yumcha at Ritz Carlton Shenzhen

We spent the maximum amount of time in our hotel (up until when we were required to check out) chilling in our room and at the library before heading out for lunch during our staycation weekend in Shenzhen. It’s been a while since I last spent significant amount of time in Shenzhen and I am amazed at all the new hotel and restaurant openings in town for the last decade or so – still not at the same rate in the neighboring Macau but now they have all the global hotel brands you could think of making a presence here with different ranges from the most luxurious to the simple boutique hotels.

No-brainer Dimsum

I woke up one Saturday morning wanting dimsum. Seventh Son in Wanchai was not the first restaurant came to my mind, but a few phone calls later, we got a table there at noon and there we went. It’s probably our first time coming over for lunch and it’s surprisingly not crowded at all, unlike other Chinese restaurants at this time of the day.

#DimSumDuets

For all the how-many-hands dinners we have attended, the Dim Sum Duets series by Hong Kong Tatler Dining (now with the hipster-like name T.Dining) was by far the most impressive, and we said this not because our friend C was organizing it. For 4 evenings in November, four different chefs known for their innovative cooking were paired up with two chefs specialized in traditional Chinese cuisine for a series of pop-up dinners featuring new dimsum dishes.