East meets West Menu plus the fireworks

It's no secret that the best vantage point to watch the festive fireworks display - as they do every year on the second day of Chinese New Year over the Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong - is at the terrace of The Peninsula, with an unobstructed harborside view and right in front of the fireworks action. That's something we realized when we came with our friends for a festive celebration at the hotel a few years ago.

Ad Hoc Dinner at Neighborhood

The other day I was asked by a friend what my go-to restaurant is in town - I thought about this question for a moment, and other than a few places near where we live that we go regularly and a couple places that I felt was a bit snobbish to say, the first one I could think of was Neighborhood, a French bistro-style restaurant in Soho that we adore much. It's good for almost every occasion and at any time of the evening; it's comfortable and reasonably priced, and the food never disappoints - in fact I couldn't recall having a bad meal or even a bad dish there.

The Timeless Savarin

When our friends R and A asked us to bring a dessert to dinner at their place recently, I decided to do something simple yet classic, making use a small set of readily-available ingredients in the kitchen (hence saved me another trip to the supermarket in a cold winter day).

Friendly Omakase Dinner

One random evening in late January we went on a weeknight date to the Japanese restaurant Kishoku in Causeway Bay inside a commercial building right behind Times Square (courtesy of the restaurant's PR team). Well we have come here on several occasions before but strangely, never both of us together, and I haven't been back since a new team of chefs were brought in a few months ago.

Snake Feast in the Cold

I certainly picked the best time for a traditional snake feast when I joined a group of foodies and wine connoisseurs to eat at a specialist restaurant in Kowloon in one of the coldest weeks in town on record.

I have had snake soup a few times already during the season but it didn't stop me from signing up for yet another snake feast when i saw the notice for the event from Slow Food Hong Kong - this time at the famous Shia Wong Hip Restaurant in Shum Shui Po. There were a handful of snake restaurants in the old district of Shum Shui Po in Kowloon, and Shia Wong Hip is the one I go quite regularly, for they are one of the few remaining licensed  establishments in town to sell live snakes, hence they keep a good supply of the freshest meat for their dishes.