I've sadly been treating Hong Kong with less than the respect it deserves lost in the age old disdain of a local that's slurped noodles here as a child. 2012 has seen me here twice already and each visit has delighted me with something new and hitherto undiscovered.
The first is courtsey the now Flying Dutchman, who managed to unearth and procure tickets for a performance of the Saturday Night Jazz Club which promised a quirky program with renditions from the era of Swing and a rather more eyebrow raising hip-hop, rap and break dance performance. No idea of what to expect, the swing band set the mood and got us bopping before taking rather a bizarre turn with the Philippino big band leader with his wife ((?) we suspect!) launching into Lady Gaga, but still good fun. But the piece de resistance was without a doubt, the Korean hip hop band - yes, blond haired mops on boys with suspenders et al with cool dance moves a la ghetto but all theirs and the Taiwanese rapper who launched his rap to Take 5! Incredible. I have never seen a fusion of jazz and rap, and not only left me gaping and laughing in awe with the sheer beauty of it, but I have to take my hat off to the genius who even contemplated that this might be a good idea! Just brilliant and while the performance ensured we lost our dinner reservations, I've never been happier to sacrifice my stomach for some undiscovered soul. A bravura performance and a superb evening!
This weekend saw us in a feeding frenzy of dimsums, first at Maxim's followed by an entirely unnecessary and inappropriate Madarin High Tea at the Mandarin Oriental when my search of chocoalte mousse was thwarted post lunch. Why we thought the dainty fingure sandwiches, petit patesseire and mini quiches were (a) not very much and (b) prelude to teeny scones is beyond me. Naturally, they only breed full size scones and persist and handing out one plain and one fruit to the accompaniment of clotted cream and a most hideous rose jam (or so I hear.... suffice to say I wondered why they'd put ketchup next to the cream, and the brave Ms. M bravely recoiled at it's attarness and waved her hands around for strawberry jam). Naturally, such an incident deserved complaints right up to the UN, and the only way to mollify the situation was to ensure lashings of strawberry jam. Feeling sick, we wound our way up the hill to the hotel to glam up a tad for drinks at Sevva of the magnificent views over Central and hte Harbour. Sadly, the frostbite nipping our butts had us heading indoors to finish our drinks before a lazy scouting of all LKF had to offer topped by strawberries and and chocolate fondant.
Sunday, saw us trek over to Kowloon and a rather well kept Michelin secret. A tiny, hole in the wall dimsum restaurant, cleverly called One Dim Sum that snagged the coveted Michel start last year. You can find it through the queues outside and the neighbourhood populace cannot be overly thrilled with the influx of foreigners to their local diner. As we waited and planned our meal checking with panic far too often if our number had been called, they handed out take away parcels in copious quantities to cars and people that would pull up and patiiently wait till their doggie bag was announced with a flourish. All the tables are the same size and are re-configured with the greatest efficiency to seat tables of 1 to 8 and what can I say except it was worth the wait. The best baked bbq pork buns I've ever eaten (and I'm not a fan) along with the best steamed Chiew Chow dumplings (the same ones at Maxium had the texture, but this one had flavour exploding in your mouth with hte first bite!). Naturally, we had to order seconds, and for the princely sum of HKD 135 (that's about 10 quid), stumbled out looking like overstuffed dumplings.
Plan B was to attempt to reduce the resembles to a dumpling so we elected to walk to the next station, and stumbled upon the goldfish market which had some of the coolest fish I've seen in any tanks including one with an oversized braniac forehead (that just looked so wrong!), hordes of turtles, plastic easter island statues (clearly something fish are fond of?!), albino frogs, kelp and underwater greens in plastic bags and artifically coloured fish that looked like they got into a fight with a box of Faber Castell crayons and lost. From that to Wan Chai and the spanking new Convention Centre sat on the bay overlooking Kowloon, Causeway Bay and Central (rudely interrupted by a softee), pretending to be Yann Arthus Bertrand as we watched batches of dough buns being fried, then getting distracted by a signboard for a dive shop on the 2nd floor.... A manicure, pedicure and massage later, I was prepared to call this a rather successful weekend.
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