Sunday Yumcha: Zi Yat Heen

Sunday afternoon we made our way to Four Seasons Macao for lunch at their Chinese restaurant Zi Yat Heen. We have been here once many many years ago when we stayed at the hotel over Chinese New Year holidays and we were curious to try the place again, this time courtesy of their PR team who made the arrangement.

Unusual Thanksgiving Dinner

We celebrated this year’s Thanksgiving at an unusual venue of a Japanese-style Izakaya. I have been to Okra in Sai Ying Pun headed by New Orleans chef Max when it first opened earlier this year and loved some of the dishes there, and over Thanksgiving they were doing a special menu for “Friends and Families” to celebrate “Thank Immigrants Day”, as he called it.

Back to the Familiar Ground - Caprice in the Winter

I caught a breather of freedom tried to overcome the misery of losing CYY to the great land of Tokyo temporarily for the weekend with a trip to Caprice's dining room with friends S and J. I had a great time at a brand-new restaurant the night before, but was just as happy to be back at the familiar ground, excited for the dishes that was to come.

One Star Wonton

It's been a long long while since I last visited Ho Hung Kee, definitely not after they moved out from their old shop on the street level into a large shopping mall a couple blocks away.

We weren't all that surprised when we arrived at the restaurant during lunch hour on Saturday we saw quite a crowd waiting outside for a table, with a majority being out-of-towners. In retrospect we should have come earlier or use the new system to let us pick up a ticket ahead of time through an iPhone app. Anyway, turned out it's only a quick 15, 20 minute wait before we were seated at one of the booths on the side of the restaurant. The interior and set up was a clear upgrade from their old shop, with more modern décor, more space, bigger capacity and more comfortable chairs with kitchen now hidden at the back instead of near to the shop-front, yet it's still on the casual side like a typical local chachaanteng.

Butcher in Residence

We dropped by On Dining one Friday evening when Parisian butcher Hugo Desnoyer was in town to present a few special dishes at the restaurant, using the meat produced by his shop, of course. I managed to get out of office fairly early, so 30 minutes before our reservation time, I was already there, having a pre-dinner drink at the bar upstairs to catch a breather from a hectic work week. Soon I was joined by other friends as we moved to our table downstairs.