Signing off 2015

Signing off 2015 with a collage of all the food memories throughout the year, as this has became kind of my tradition taking a trip back the memory lane for the past 12 months.

Through the Red Door

When my friend M told me about his supper club project at The Fringe Club a few months back, to be honest I was both curious and secretly, a bit doubtful at the same time. To start with, as far as food is concerned, I wasn't aware of anything serious going on at the venue ever since Michelle Garnaut left her legendary namesake restaurant behind a few years ago. And I haven't heard much of this new supper club - called Red Door Dining Lab - despite it being in operations for a while already and I considered myself to be kinda in the know of any new and exciting restaurant openings. The lack of information added to the sense of mystery and also, skepticism.

Breakfast at The Pen

We always have this ideal Sunday morning in our mind which starts with a leisure breakfast at The Pen followed by an easy walk to church down the Nathan Road on a Sunday morning. But in practice we often opted for the second best, but a much easier option instead, which was to sleep in until we must get up to be on time for church.

The Pit-iful Smokehouse

Last week, I went for dinner with a very high expectation at a private barbecue kitchen inside an industrial building quite literally in the middle of nowhere on the island side as our group's pre-christmas celebration. Some friends of mine loved the turkey they made at a pop-up event during the thanksgiving weekend, and from the pictures on their Facebook page everything looked good and proper. Maybe after all these years Hong Kong finally got a legit "artisanal smokehouse" as the place claimed to be, or so I thought. Well sadly from what I have tried on that night I reckon it was quite a far-fetched statement, and it's more like another living proof that just by putting "artisanal" in your logo doesn't mean you are necessarily any good or know what you are doing.

Family Style Issan Dinner

 

Chachawan may no longer be the newest Thai restaurant in the hippiest neighorhood in town these days, having open more than a year ago right on Hollywood Road, but it's still buzzing as ever, even on a random Monday evening that I managed to pop by for dinner with some friends who wanted to say goodbye to Chef Adam Clift on his last day there before he moves on for the next gig.

With the seven of us going as a group, we went for quite a number of different dishes, all served in family style - just came up a little short of "sweeping" the whole menu. The portion of the dishes was decent, good enough for going around with everyone getting a fair share of food. Most of the dishes were spicy but not unbearably so, and I do love the bold flavors - a good kick of spiciness and acidity which brightened up the dishes served. Chachawan was known to serve the authentic Thai dishes from the northern region, known as Issan cuisine, best known for the liberal use of spices, especially chili.