scratch the 买东西, do the 吃东西 II
what is a trip to Hong Kong without roast? dw loves 腊味 and he was naturally delighted with the entire dish. the dish came with a liver sausage, it had a strange metallic taste which i couldn't quite get used to. almost every other travel guide included 镛记 in the must-try list, so we gritted our teeth and waited among the crowd for a table...for almost an hour. the amount of foreigners in the queue should have alerted us in some way or another, but we failed to pick up any signals.
we had ordered a goose leg, but were served a half a goose. it was fatty and tasty, though nothing spectacular. we had ordered another dish - claypot chicken and pork liver, which was sadly overcooked. dinner came up to around 100sgd, and that was when we took a closer look at the people around us. yep, about 70% tourists, 30% locals + foreign friends. the classic case of restaurant profitability - mediocre food, brilliant marketing efforts with tourists as the targeted consumers.
i had ordered two pairs of whimsical cufflinks (scrabble tiles and vintage ace of spades playing cards) as Christmas presents for dw but they did not arrive in time. to make up for the lack of Christmas gifts, to celebrate the end of his nasty stint at a bank, and to thank him for the emji fujita concert surprise, i did some research online and planned a dinner at Spicy Crab Under the Bridge. i couldn't play out the entire surprise because i am wired with hopeless map-reading and directional skills so in the end, it was really dw who navigated us to the restaurant along Lockhart Road, literally under a bridge. we had the option of having our dinner at the rougher "no service charge" hole in the wall or the more atas restaurant version. we settled on the hole in the wall, because picking at crabs is nothing glamourous anyway. we shared a crab, and it was fried to goodness with garlic (those lovely golden bits you see in the picture above) and chilli. we also had spicy gong gong, another one of dw's favourite seafood. so after the crab arrived, my hands were too busy going at the claws, the roe, the skinny legs...that i forgot to photograph the other yummies - a huge crayfish with fried garlic and onion, and broccoli with home-made fried and silky egg tofu. nevermind that the graphics are lacking, at least i remember the mindblowing flavours...we paid a reasonable 80sgd for this dinner, and left the place rubbing our tummies and grinning like cheshire cats.
we travelled up to the Peak after the seafood dinner, thinking that we would be able to beat the crowd at such a late hour. big mistake, we queued again and again, we had to dash to get seats on the peak tram and then jostle for camera space with the rude and annoying tourists (from the land not too far away from Hong Kong). in the end, we gave up and settled for coffee with a view at Pacific Coffee. the foam on the cuppacino amused me greatly, and we spent the rest of our evening giggling and poking fun at each other. we left just before midnight, and basked in the joy of each other's company under the bright lights of the terribly feng-shuied Bank of China Building, the good feng-shuied HSBC and Standard Chartered buildings.
and because it was our last night in Hong Kong, dw managed to find room in his stomach for 3 sticks of grilled cuttlefish and 1 stick of smelly toufu.