叁去壹 Sam Hui Yaat

It really startled me when a Singaporean friend mentioned that she wanted to visit 叁去壹 or San Hui Yaat. I didn't realize that this place had become so well-known (or is it?). I stumbled on this ghetto old school dimsum eatery many years ago when Little Demon and I were still young, foolish and hormonal enough to think that we would make it as a romantic couple.

We had heard of a mythical 24-hour dimsum place in Sai Ying Pun and were determined to find it. At the time, Little Demon still hadn't started doing graffiti, and he was just a common delinquent, while I had quit a retail marketing job and was surviving as a freelance editor/writer. In other words, we had a lot of time on our hands. We'd spent the night entering abandoned and half-finished buildings (one of my favourite things to do is to go out late at night to visit newly-built office buildings that are still unoccupied. I love it when there are still tapes of Xes on the glass windows and the light is left on in the lobby but it's completely empty. It's so post-apocalyptic).

When morning came, we still hadn't found the 24-hour dimsum place (although we eventually did find it another time, and it was a real disappointment), but we stumbled on Sam Hui Yaat instead.

I was a bit hesitant to post this up because it's really local in every way. The flavour of the food is not for those who are used to commercial or Westernized dimsum. It's very old fashioned, probably very similar to how dimsum used to taste back in the 1960s. Also, if you don't speak and read Cantonese, you're fucked. It's not for tourists, basically.

However, I thought I'd share it anyway because I like this place so much.

One of the things I forgot to mention before is that when you enter any busy Chinese eatery, you should already have your fingers up indicating how many of you are in your party. That will save a lot of time and humiliation for you.

There is a per person charge for tea at Sam Hui Yaat regardless of whether or not you drink tea. Don't worry, it's only HKD3, although I do my best to drink as much tea as possible to make the charge worth it.

I felt a bit uncomfortable taking pictures because they don't really welcome it here. But the uncle said I could take a couple.

These places always remind me of my childhood in Taiwan. At any moment, I feel like an auntie is going to come over and pull me out by the ear for doing something naughty.

I wanted something fairly light, so I ordered salty fish and pork patty on rice. It's comfort food to me because the pork is so fatty and the saltiness of the fish really sets it off. The fish is awfully boney, though, so you'll be spending most of your time pulling bones out of your teeth.

I love the little metal container it comes in! So clever!

I'm going to buy some of these metal container things next time. Next time I have guests over for a meal, they're going to be eating out of these babies.

I was still a bit hungry so I also ordered chicken feet. They make it a bit spicy here, which I like.

Sam Hui Yaat offers mostly dimsum, but you can also get the usual rice and noodle dishes here. From what I understand, the most popular items are their scrambled egg and beef rice (I was almost going to have it but I've been eating too many eggs lately) and fried pork chop noodles (not a fan of noodles). My brother had the fried noodles before, and he said it was pretty good.

Sam Hui Yaat is on Pokfulam Road. I forget the street number but you can't miss it.

巴依 Ba Yi

I walked by 巴依 Ba Yi last year when I was lost in Sai Ying Pun, and I vowed that I would come back because, peeking through the windows, I saw a headless-but-otherwise-whole roasted lamb with a ribbon tied around its neck.

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.

星級味皇 Delicious Cafe

The name of the restaurant is a bold claim, no? I saw this restaurant from the bus, and I was intrigued by all the pictures of their Hainan chicken rice. There are televisions on the bus which usually show advertisements, but they also have a food review programme that's hosted by this chick who always wears frilly blouses. Anyway, she gave this place the thumbs up, so I had to check it out for myself. I'm always on the search for good Hainan chicken rice, after all. It's like a unicorn, you feel me? Although perhaps that's not a good analogy because of the virginity issue and all that.

I don't know why, but that chicken looks so...forlorn. I feel sad for it and want to eat it at the same time. It's a very confusing feeling.

When you enter, the staff tell you that there's more seating in the back. I get the feeling that this place must be packed during lunch and dinner rush.

They even put tables in the hallway leading to the main dining area! This place has got to be popular.

Like an idiot, I sat in the hallway section instead of here. That lady is giving me some hardcore "What the fuck?" face.

There were many options for chicken. Salted, boneless, plain, with ginger sauce, spicy, etc. You could order just the chicken (probably for takeaway) or have a chicken and rice combo meal.

The combo meals or lunch sets. I ended up choosing the boneless Hainan chicken rice. You see, I need the special rice where it's boiled in chicken fat or something. It's at the top right of the menu below. Do you see how the rice is yellowish? That means it's been saturated with broth and fat. The other pictures only show plain rice.

While chicken is obviously their piece d' resistance, there were many other options. I'm interested in coming back to try these and the curries.

My meal came with a choice of soup or hot drink. If you're in the mood for soup at a Chinese place, I really strongly recommend not ordering the Western soup. That's just expired Campbell's with extenders like cornstarch and God knows what else. Get the Chinese soup because, at least, a real animal was boiled to make the broth.

Today's soup was spinach! Delicious! I love spinach.

I have no idea what this is. A plum?

I ended up dropping it onto the floor. Fuck me. And yes, of course, I picked it up! I'm not rude!

Look at the lovely colour of that rice! There was an option to have chicken leg meat rather than white meat for an additional HKD5, but I wanted to see whether or not their white meat -- which I normally never eat, blech -- was any good. If a restaurant can do a good job with shitty white meat, then they'll be able to do marvels with delicious dark meat.

The sauce was marvelous, by the way! It was slightly spicy and not overwhelmingly gingery.

For those of you who have been to Bangkok, the taste is very reminiscent of that famous boneless chicken eatery. Don't ask me what it's called, I have no idea. But this is definitely not Singaporean-style Hainan chicken.

However, it was still actually really good. Yes, I know there's a feather / chicken fluff on the wing. I still ate it. I was pretty amazed at how well they de-boned the chicken, by the way.

They even left the gristle! Yum, yum!

Obviously from the photo below, I enjoyed my meal a lot. It was so cheap, HKD37 for all of that. Definitely a great place to have lunch, it's too bad this area is so polluted with all the construction and buses going by, though.

Delicious Cafe is at 153 King's Road in Fortress Hill, just below King's Centre (I think that's what this building is called). It's across the street from the Fortress Hill MTR Station Exit A. You can call them at 2802 6622 for takeaway and delivery, too!

Mido Cafe, Part 2

My friend was visiting Hong Kong for the first time, so I took him to Mido Cafe since it was so close to his hotel. You may want to read the first part here.

Rather than ordering the usual chan teng food that you can get anywhere, I decided that it would be a great time to get Mido's specialty, which is baked rice with topping.

We got baked pork chop rice.

And baked spare ribs rice. My favourite! These are all tomato sauce-based, but you can get a cheese-based sauce with baked seafood rice. It's quite good, as well.

We stayed a bit past closing time since the staff are so nice.

Pretty, huh? I wish I could live there.