Food to Try in Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong

This time around, we decided to hop over to one of the many islands in Hong Kong and we selected Cheung Chau. To get there is fairly easy as we took the MTR to Central station and follow the signboard to get to the pier. The ferry departs from Pier 5 and there are two types of ferry, the fast and the slow one, alternating half and hour each. Prices for the fast ferry is double of the slow one but we reached the island in approximately 40 minutes.

I had researched for some of the food to try in Cheung Chau and here are some of the food. Can't really recall the address of these places but since the island is quite small, all these eateries are within the town area. Cheung Chau is also famous for their bun festival which occurs every year in May.

Here's are some of the food that we tried

My parents trying out the fishballs and fish cakes

 
1. Fish balls, all types

甘永泰魚蛋

We tried a few types of fishballs at this shop and I quite like the salmon and cheese flavour. There are many flavours and many stalls selling fishballs in Cheung Chau. When we ordered, they will deep fried the fishballs for us. Overall, the fishballs are ok but a tad too salty for my liking. The stall is at one of the square not too far away from the jetty. When we were there, we saw some locals bought the fresh fishballs.

The dessert we ordered

Check out the real mango filling

2. Dessert

允升甜品

Originally, I wanted to try this Tin Yin dessert but found out it was closed on Monday. So we proceed to try another shop in the list. We ordered the Mango mochi, fruits tong sui and tau fu fa. Personally I love the mochi the most as it was huge and the mango filling is actually real mango filling instead of paste. Highly recommended just for the mochi.

Queuing up to buy the red bean pancake

Enjoying our pancake

Check out the red bean filling

3. Red Bean Pancake

故鄉俱樂部  Hometown Members Club

We actually stumbled into this place by accident after we took a stroll at the beach nearby. It was my mum who saw the signboard indicating red bean pancake and we decided to try. It was one of the best red bean pancake I ever tried. The filling of the red bean is the similar to the filling of the red bean pau that my grandma used to make. The only thing I regret was that we only bought two to share among three of us. Should have bought 1 each. 

4. Seafood

There is plenty of seafood restaurants along the coast and most offered lunch set which gives 3 dishes with one vege dish. I felt the food was quite meh though the prawns were not bad. I would not recommend to try them as the seafood in Malaysia was much better and cheaper. 

My dad insist on trying the 'put chai kou' aka bowl pudding

We only managed to try a few of the food in Cheung Chau as we were still full from the dim sum breakfast in the morning. There are plenty of street food in the small town and we saw many stalls selling mochi.

I quite like Cheung Chau overall as the island is quite laidback and not so touristy as there are many locals still living in the island. Highly recommend for a visit to Cheung Chau if anyone heading to Hong Kong. A nice change from the bustling city and a nice place just to chill and eat some pretty good mochi.

Best Food to Try in Hong Kong

Just came back from a 4 day food trip to Hong Kong which the main aim of the travel is to eat as much as we can. As my parents are huge Cantonese food lover, we had like 5 meal per day. Here's are some of the best food we savored for the 4 day trip.

1. Dim Sum
Dim Dim Sum 
112 Tung Choi St, Mong Kok (there are a few branches ie in Jordan and Wan Chai)
Hands down this is one of the best dimsum we tasted in Hong Kong. We reached the restaurant around 3.30pm on Saturday and had to queue about half an hour to get a seat. But the wait is worth it as this restaurant had the most innovative dim sum we ever tried. Some of the must have dim sum are the chu cheung fun with prawn spring roll, pineapple polo bun, wasabi 'ham sui kok', piggy buns. Do try their ice milk tea.

Polo Bun with pineapple filling

Wasabi 'Ham sui kok'

Piggy Bun (must have!!)
I won't disclose the filling here

Love this prawn roll in chu cheung fun

Ice milk tea
Notice that the ice is actually outside of the cup to prevent dilution of the tea

 Luk Yu Tea House
Hong Kong, Central, Stanley St, 24-26
The Monday morning before we embarked for Cheung Chau Island, I decided to bring my parents for a traditional dim sum experience. I was thinking between Luk Yu Tea House or Lin Heung Lau but went with this instead. My dad claimed that this is best dim sum he had, while my mum and I preferred Dim Dim Sum than this. And we got a shock of our life when the bill came to about HKD 550 for 3 person for 8 types of dim sum. So if you want more affordable dim sum, I won't recommend this place.

The egg tarts are quite good and this 'siew pau pastry'

Dim Sum in Airport
You can just forget about the dim sum in the airport. Not worth the money or the stomach space

2. Wanton Mee
Mak's Noodle 
77 Wellington St, Central
We had this no.1 wanton mee in Hong Kong on our second last day and it totally surpassed every wanton mee standard we had. Definitely one of the best wanton mee we had in Hong Kong minus the alkaline after taste. And I read that Mak's noodle are the origin of wanton mee.

Mak's noodle. The portion is smaller than other shop

Dad giving his thumbs up for the best wanton mee in town

Mak Man Kee
51 Parkes St, Jordan
Mak Man Kee actually opened a branch in 1 Utama in KL but I did not have the chance to try. So I wanted to try in Hong Kong, the origin place. I quite like the noodle but my parents were not too keen as there are some alkaline aftertaste.

Mak Man Kee 

Dad enjoying his wanton mee

Shek Kee Wanton Noodle
UG, 386 Portland St
We had wanton mee from this shop 6 years ago when we stayed at the nearby hotel. Back at that time, I did not research much on food and hence my parents still think highly of this place and this time my dad requested to go back for the noodle. We felt that the noodle is too hard.

3. Dessert
Kai Kai Tong Sui
29 Ning Po St, Jordan
I got to know about this dessert shop from another blogger and apparently it's one of the Michelin star street food acknowledged not too long ago. The shop is actually relocated due to the enormous hike in rental after being awarded the Michelin star. Read this in a Bloomberg article which depicts why sometimes having Michelin star award is not all good. We ordered the mango dessert, red bean and black sesame and added extra tong yuen. Nothing too spectacular but the tong yuen was good.

the tong sui that we ordered

Yee Shun Milk Company
513 Nathan Rd, Yau Ma Tei (there are a few branches but this is the nearest to our hotel)
I classified this as dessert as we had our supper here instead of breakfast/tea. We ordered the steam milk with red bean and the french toast. We actually went back on the last day of the night coz I was craving for their steam milk.

Steam milk with red bean

French toast, love this so much

Steam milk with ginger. Love the silky smooth texture

Cha Chaan Teng
1. Australian Milk Company
47 Parkes St, Jordan (it's just a few doors away from Mak Man Kee)
We had breakfast here on a Sunday and I had to drag my parents out early morning to avoid the crowd. We managed to get a table within 5 minutes in queue and I gotta admit that the staff are rather rude but we enjoyed the food especially the scrambled eggs a lot. It comes with a breakfast set with macaroni soup and tea/coffee and the portion are rather huge.

Macaroni and ham soup

One of the best scramble egg

Polo Bun
1. Kam Wah Cafe & Bakery
47 Bute St, Mong Kok
The butter melting in the piping hot polo bun. Need I say more.

Egg Tart
1. Tai Cheong Bakery
35 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central
We did not try much egg tart in Hong Kong. Only this and the egg tart from Luk Yu Tea House. The egg tarts here are so so and I have tasted much better ones in Malaysia.

Kind of meh to me

Overall, I am quite satisfied with all the food that we managed to had during this trip. A piece of advice though, go for the famous places during off peak hours. We were quite lucky that most of the time we reached before a long queue is formed and the most we waited was 30 minutes for a table for Dim Dim Sum. If I had to choose my top three food for this trip, it would be Dim Dim Sum, Mak's noodle and Yee Shun steam milk.

I will do another post covering food in Cheung Chau island.

Recommended Dessert in Hanoi

One of the reason why I enjoyed Vietnam is because of the food and the pho. Ok, mainly because of the pho and the dessert. I am getting a bit nonsensical here, haha. You see, before we left for the trip, I gave the task of food to my travelmate and she is the one who dictates what and where to eat most of the time. We tried a few places but majority of the time, we just spent sitting at those small portable food stalls eating pho. I can only read pho ga as chicken pho and most of the time, we just ordered those.

But I am not gonna dwell much on pho and bun cha and those stuff. What I wanted to share here is more like the dessert we had while we were in Hanoi. We did not try much but these two are my top favourite dessert.

Fruit Ice Kacang style at To Tich
To Tich is a very short road and once you turned into the junction you can find many of the shops selling similar kind of dessert. Look for the one with the most people. There are plenty of choices on the menu and you can even order this topped with ice cream. Price starts around VND 25,000

Photo from internet courtesy of Alexis Fong
The fruit ice kacang. Do not judge the dessert by it's bowl, it's one of the best I had so far

The location of the shop
Photo courtesy of Alexis Fong (ripped from the internet)

Coconut Icecream with sticky rice at corner of  Hai Ba Trung and Phan Chu Trinh road
This shop has no name and basically it's at the corner of the two roads. You won't miss it as it was quite packed

Mango sticky rice with pandan flavour

the famous coconut ice cream with pandan sticky rice topped with coconut flakes

The shop, look for the green rooftop

Food to Eat in Shih Lin Night Market, Taipei

Opera going on when we reached Shih Lin night market

The temple in Shih Lin

Temple

Finally, it's the last entry on food in Taiwan. This time, it's all about food in the night market in Shih Lin. Actually, the title kind of misleading as it combines food from Shih Lin night market and also the breakfast shop that we love so much which is nearby to the hotel we stay in XiMenDing, Good Ground Hotel. Not exactly a hotel I would recommend but this shop, I totally recommend it. 

To get to Shih Lin night market, take the MRT and stop at Jian Tan station instead of Shih Lin station.

one of the famous bun

the sesame bun

the famous potato and very long queue too

eating at the road side in Shih Lin

the most spicy curry ever

only Leng can take this

the Japanese restaurant where we had the curry (in XiMenDing)

dessert stall in Shih Lin

our dinner, not too tasty

 The place we had the best breakfast, located in Xi Men Ding near to Good Ground Hotel

If you notice, that most of my food photos were taken from Leng, my travel mate as I was too busy eating than taking shots of the food.

More of must eat night market food in Zi Qiang night market in Hualien and Feng Jia night market in Tai Chung here. 

Jiu Fen 九份, Taiwan (25 March 2011)

the crowd


narrow streets of Jiu Fen

Jiu Fen is located about an hour away from Taipei. Jiu Fen used to be a mining town back in the 1950s but today it was considered one of the hot tourist spost in Taipei.

Hence, we decided to join the crowd and went to JiuFen for a day trip from Taipei. To get to Jiu Fen, we took the MRT to Songsan station and took a bus (Keelung bus). Look out for bus going towards JinGuaShi 金瓜石

The winding and narrow streets of JiuFen is full of shops and restaurants catered for the tourists. Some of the famous food here are the taro balls, ice cream popiah and lots of shops selling mochi. JiuFen is also a perfect place for photographers as the town is picturesqure in every corner. It's a pity that we didnt stay on for the night view as it started raining in the afternoon.

To get out of JiuFen, walk towards the 7-11 store and wait for the bus going towards Taipei.

view from the top

a woman selling fried mushroom


the place we had Taro balls


delicious 'kuih'


the famous teahouse in Jiu Fen




every street is a postcard view!