Eatery hopping in Hong Kong

I have written an article about restaurant hopping in Singapore once...where we did each course of a meal in a different restaurant...drawing from the specialities of each. Recently, I had a try of this in Hong Kong

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click on the Hong Kong skyline above for a larger photograph.

A good friend/makan buddy and I found ourselves in Hong Kong at the same time for different reasons...and we decided we needed to have at least one meal together. After much deliberation...as foodies are bound to do...we have poor resistance to the lure of good food...we decided on Yixin. This is based primarlily on the recommendations of Jason Bonvivant a foodie bloger in Hong Kong whom I have been following for a while.

But I planned to have a cuppa ristretto first before going for dinner, so on my way out of the Star Ferry at Central, I stopped at an old favourite which I found several years ago while searching for beans in HKG...Zambra.



A double ristretto



A bit long for a ristretto. More like a double espresso...and even that a bit long. But nonetheless tasty, and nice mouth feel. Fixed the coffee needs for the day.

A short walk away is the traditional Yixin restaurant



We zoomed in on the 3 famous dishes...we had a vegetable dish as well...dou miao.

First the duck...



Pipa ya as it was called...featured a nice delicate crisp skin hiding the juicy succulent duck meat within. The serving above was for half a duck.

we also had the char siew that Jason raved about



But I found this to be a disappointing. The meat was very fat...we discussed this with the waitress later, and she confirmed that this was their best cut, and very popular with the Hong Kong people. I guess, our taste buds differ here. There was no crisp, burnt bits. The meat which was there was very fat (yes, I did mention that before), though very tender.

And the interesting dish called Fried Fresh Milk with crab meat.



I am not sure how this is done. But this turned out surprisingly tasty. Light, without the slightest hint of grease. The fried milk tasted very nice. And complemented the crab very well. Nice dish. Reminds me of the egg yolks and scallops I had at Restaurant Ten some time ago. BTW, the wonderful Restaurant Ten at Purvis Street is now sadly closed...the owners decided to ply their trade in China.

Back to Yixin...the servings were very large...too large for 2 grown, hungry men. Perhaps we needed to be a table of 6 to consume what we ordered.

But yet, we needed to look for dessert...and I remembered a dessert store I chanced on when I was in HKG last...somewhere along Pacific Place...to ease the large dinner, we walked...and found Xi Yan's dessert place.



Somewhat nondescript, but almost fully packed. The place served full meals...but we had ours. So I ordered a poached pear with tofu ice cream.



Quite exquisite. The tofu ice cream was quite a nice flavour...unusual, but for me excellent. The pears were nicely poached in syrup. And nice.

Interesting dinner...starting with a coffee at an old favourite which turned out to have lost some of its glitz, to a restaurant picked from a blogger's recommendation, and dessert in a place I have had great experience in the cooking in Singapore. Not bad for a night in Hong Kong.


Cafe Zambra
Shop 1. G/F.
239 Jaffe Road,
Wanchai, Hong Kong

Yixin Restaurant
G/F Shanghai Industrial Investment Building,
48-62 Hennessy Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong

Xi Yan Sweets
Shop 1, G/F, 8 Wing Fung Street, Wan Chai Hong Kong
2833 6299