Feast of Mushrooms

With pictures of mushroom dishes flooding my social media feed, I don’t need further reminder that late summer/early fall marked the prime season for Chinese mushrooms. And I had the first taste of them this year at a recent dinner at Ming Court of The Cordis, with a series of vegetarian dishes by chef Yuet-faat Li using many kinds of seasonal fungus imported from Yunnan Province, as well as plant-based “meat” Omnipork introduced by the Green Monday team in Hong Kong.

Casual Japanese Wine and Dine

A few weeks ago I had a good time at Kappo Ro Ann, the Japanese restaurant specializes in Kumamoto cuisine, so I thought I should also check out Sara, its sister restaurant under the same management on the other side of the harbor, and this time with a few more friends. Similar to Kappo Ro Ann, Sara focused on the ingredients and cooking from one particular region in Japan, and in this case, it’s Saga Prefecture in the northern part of Kyushu.

Impromptu visit to a new restaurant

A spur-of-the-moment thought the night before led us into making a booking for lunch at the new restaurant Arbor the next day on a Saturday afternoon, and we were glad to have gotten the last table at such short notice.

Gimme Meats

We met up with our friend V who came back from Singapore to visit over at the Soho restaurant Meats on a Sunday evening last month. As the name of the restaurant suggests, meat is their specialty and apart from their a la carte menu, they also have a chef’s menu (called Give Me Meats) with various dishes passed around the table for sharing and that’s what we went for.

Cooking demo plus lunch

I fondly remembered my dinner at the “new” Theo Mistral a few months ago with excellent casual Italian dishes – the type of food I don’t mind having more often – with the restaurant was first open (after a makeover) and their namesake chef Theo Randall was in town to oversee its opening. And I was happy to be back again, this time for lunch on a Saturday at the kind invitation of the hotel with Chef Theo making a return from UK and was there to show us a few tricks in a cooking demo before we got to sit down and eat.

Kushikatsu Dinner

We came across this little izakaya in Causeway Bay specializing in Kushikatsu, when we were looking for a casual bite in the area on a Friday evening. When we found out there’s no space at the yakitori joint we frequented in the area, we made a call to this restaurant called JunG39 with short notice and asked them to save two spots at the counter for us while we made our way over.

Juicy Meat Feast

Just to prove a point that omnivore diet is still pretty much in style and being the front and center of our current food trend, the all-you-can-eat beef feast at Rhoda on a Wednesday night was filled to capacity the moment tickets went on sale a few weeks ago (gone within days after details of the event was posted, we were told). De la Valley is a new meat purveyor in town trying to bring in artisan steaks from various producers in South America directly to restaurants and retail customers so they collaborated with Chef Nate Green’s Rhoda for this special, one-night-only menu to introduce many of their meats.

Kumamoto Kappo

We bemoaned the closure of Ebi no Hige last year, the restaurant specializes in ingredients and cooking from Niigata Prefecture with casual but well-executed dishes, but I was glad to know there were a few new restaurants taking on a similar concept of showcasing the cooking of a specific region in Japan (known as Kyodo Ryori 郷土料理). One of such is Kappo Ro Ann in TST, which I visited recently for an invited dinner tasting.

Provencal Seafood Lunch

A few Sundays ago we made a quick walk down Nathan Road after morning church service to eat at Rech at Intercontinental Hong Kong. We were here last year when it first opened and liked its menu and dishes which leaned towards seafood done in classic French way, and we were happy to check out their weekend brunch offered as prix-fixe menu with choices for each courses.

Super Fancy Potluck

I was scratching my head over what to make when I went to a potluck meal recently. A few friends came over to our place to eat previously with each bringing a dish over to share, and this time, we went for a repeat at a different venue with a few others to join for good fun, with no others than the culinary team of Caprice with the meal held over at the private room at the back of the restaurant after their lunch service.

Beef Donburi at the Market

On my last day in Kyoto, I spent time at Nishiki Market in the morning for some grocery shopping and to replenish my kitchen cabinet. The place was crowded as usual – with more tourists than locals these days – and after getting what I needed (some vegetables, rice and a few kitchen gadgets), I had lunch at a small restaurant nearby inside a narrow alley just a couple of blocks away.

Kyoto Kappo Dinner

Thank God Jiki Miyazawa wasn’t that far away from the metro station when I had to brave the rain to walk to the restaurant for my dinner on the second night of my Kyoto trip this time. I made the reservation at this Michelin-starred restaurant just a few days before my trip and glad that they could accommodate with such last minute notice. The restaurant was just tucked away right behind the main street of Shijo Dori and the shopping district (and not far from the Nishiki Market too) so it’s very easy to find.

Luxury Bento

Thankfully I didn’t make much plan for my short trip to Kyoto, ‘cause otherwise any plan would have been severely disrupted by the heavy rainstorm covering almost my entire time there (sad to be the worst in the region for decades). But for a few things that I planned at the last minute, I decided to have lunch and pay a visit to a new hotel, and an old friend.

Morning in Himeji

While the heavy rain pretty much washed out my entire holiday in the Kyoto/Kansai region in early July, at least there were a few (relatively) dry spells so I could spend some time doing some sightseeing, including a morning at Himeji, a town in Hyogo Prefecture not far away from Kobe and Osaka.