Finally, I had work near the Sai Ying Pun area, so I thought I'd pop over during lunch and see what was up.
It's such an adorable restaurant. This is the little outdoor foyer for the smokers.
There is a mural on the walls, and this sad donkey seems to be contemplating his potential fate as dinner. He does look delicious, though.
The interior of the restaurant is quite cute, too. However, there is a pervasive smell of roasted lamb. When I visited a friend after eating here, she said that I smelled like a goat. And it was true.
However, the headless whole roasted lamb was not present. Apparently, you can only eat it at night.
My only complaint about the location is that the restaurant is across from a public toilet, and I could smell it. My nose is really, really sensitive (I can smell if women are menstruating, for example) and that kind of made it difficult to enjoy my meal.
You can see from the pictures and articles on the wall that this place has been reviewed a lot.
There were so many delicious things to choose from the menu that I had a bit of choice paralysis. But since I only had forty-five minutes to eat, I decided to just choose a lunch set.
Yes, your eyes are not lying to you, they serve horse and camel meat! I can't wait to try!
Braised camel feet!
I also wanted to try some of that Vigur Patent Make Wine -- I mean, COME ON, the name alone! But something tells me that it's got aphrodisiac qualities, which would spell disaster for the young men of Hong Kong.
In the end, I chose to have some jujube tea.
They have a wide selection of yogurt-based drinks. I think I'll try one next time, although I'm not fond of yogurt.
I chose spicy lamb with rice (only HKD30!) since this place is famous for its lamb. It was pretty good, although some might find it rather oily. It wasn't as spicy as I hoped it would be, and perhaps was a bit on the salty side, but it brought back some nice memories of my trip to China with my brother, eating lamb skewers from a Xinjiang dude who thought we were also Uyghurs. God knows why because we don't look like Uyghurs at all. At least, I don't think so. He was so shocked to find out that we're more or less Han, and he insisted on taking a photo of us to show his friends.
It came with a slightly sweet sauce.
You know, I'm not super fond of jujubes because my mom has experimented using it in random desserts that were less than pleasant, but I quite liked this tea. It was only an additional HKD6 with the lunch set.
Yeah, it does look like a cockroach died in it, but it tastes mighty fine. I'm definitely returning to Ba Yi to eat there during dinner. I want to try the headless roast lamb and the camel meat. Maybe even the horse, although since it's sausage, I find it a bit suspect. Ba Yi is at 43 Water Street in Sai Ying Pun. Definitely worth the trip if you've never had Xinjiang food before. Not quite the real thing but pretty tasty, anyway.
