Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Food Trips 2
Featuring food from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Singapore, and Turkey. In chronological order; i.e., as I ate them. See the pictures here.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Bishkek, Day 1
Currency: Kyrgyz Som (KGS)
USD 1 = KGS 43.40; KGS 1 = PHP 1.11
It is Sunday today so I have one rest day in Bishkek before the work starts tomorrow. I arrived at FRU around 2:30am today but got out of the airport around one hour after because of the long lines for visa on arrival and immigration. Tourist season + inefficient immigration procedures = nightmare.
The weather here is very pleasant, around 30C right now but at night it's about 20C. As I wrote during my last time here, Bishkek is a very walkable city. We just spent the last few hours walking around the city centre and the main city landmarks, which are near the Silk Road Lodge in which where we are staying. Not a bad small hotel, although I think it's quite overpriced given its amenities (EUR 105/night). I would've liked to post more of the pics I took today, but the hotel internet is EUR 4.00 for every 100MB of traffic.
Had lunch at the Arzu Cafe, around five minutes walk from the hotel. It serves good Central Asian food-- we had plov (below), mutton shashlik, and shorpo, all washed down with Stella Artois beer made in Kyrgyzstan (much better than the original, in my opinion).
I also bought qute a few grocey items at the Beta Stores, which is a 15-minute walk from the hotel. Beta Stores is a relatively upscale supermarket/department store in Bishkek, but a lot of products are very cheap compared to the costs in Manila. Here are a few price indicators:
1.5 litres mineral water = KGS 17.00
95 grammes fruit yoghurt = KGS 11.00
50 grammes green tea (in 25 tea bags) = KGS 28.00
1 kilo shelled walnuts, unsalted = KGS 351.00
1 kilo dried sultanas = 208.00
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Mass-Produced Goodness
Mass-production and good food are two concepts you don't often see in the same sentence, but here are a few products that made them compatible. See the pictures here.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Hung Wan Cafe & Bakery Shop
My Dear and I ate at a lot of places when we went to Hong Kong but the one place we miss the most is this bakeshop, located just across the Metropark Hotel Mongkok where we stayed. We were hooked on the place after I bought a few buns and an egg tart on a whim, and it quickly became our daily breakfast place.
The venue itself isn't really much: think old-school small Chinese restaurant complete with dingy never-been-scrubbed walls and tiles and, if they had a restroom, you'd probably not want to use it. Really a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, the kind that probably existed since the 1920s, possibly even earlier, and has never been touched by any kind of interior design. It's the kind of place that won't be on any tourist map-- the Hong Kong Tourism Board won't exactly consider its grimy interiors as the island's best representative-- but it is very popular with the locals, who we see every morning when we have breakfast. It's the kind of place that has been around forever making the same things over and over until perfection; unfortunately, cleanliness and ambience aren't among their priorities.
The staff are friendly and they try to accommodate, but they don't speak any English. The menus aren't in English either. If, like us, you don't speak a word of Chinese, ordering will be done via pointing, gestures, and, mercifully, a few common English words. In our case, that one English word was "coffee". Regular tea is served on the house. Oh, bring a jacket-- the aircon is always on full Arctic blast even if it's 20C outside.
Its menu is not so varied-- noodles, baked buns (sweet and savoury), pastries-- but the few things they make they make very well. Our favourite is what we call in Manila as Spanish bread: golden brown top with sesame seeds; perfectly chewy texture; right amount of butter, sugar, and dessicated coconut for filling. They also make great egg tart (nice crumbly crust, subtly flavoured custard) and ham and egg bun (they don't scrimp on the ham or egg)-- in fact, everything we ordered was just superb. By some mysterious method, Hung Wan got the texture of their bread just right. Hong Kong, by the way, makes great breadstuffs, and Hung Wan was the best of them all. Each order of bun or pastry costs between HKD 4 to HKD 7; the Spanish bread costs HKD 5.
The coffee, which is the only drink we knew how to order, wasn't too bad either. Each order is freshly brewed using what looks like an old cheesecloth which has seen better days and some pre-War-looking metal pitchers and steamers. Only old-school coffee making here; no espresso machines in sight. Ordering "coffee" means you're served coffee with heavy cream and sugar already mixed in. I actually prefer black coffee, but I didn't know how to order it in Chinese. In any case, the standard coffee, which costs HKD 10 a cup, is quite thick and heavy-- the closest analogue I can think of is that thick Spanish-style hot chocolate. No coffee in Starbucks has this depth of texture. It was pretty good, actually, and really picked us up for a long day of walking.
Bottomline, best bakeshop ever. If you can get over the looks of the place. Here are the scores:
Quality = 9.0
Size = 7.5
Taste = 9.5
Ambience = 2.0
Service = 6.0
Value = P406.90
Price = HKD 20 = P133.60
Sulit Rating = 2.91 > 1
Here's their address and contact info, lifted from their takeaway plastic bag:
Hung Wan Cafe & Bakery Shop
726 Shanghai St., Mongkok, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Tel. 2392-6038, 2393-7852
The venue itself isn't really much: think old-school small Chinese restaurant complete with dingy never-been-scrubbed walls and tiles and, if they had a restroom, you'd probably not want to use it. Really a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, the kind that probably existed since the 1920s, possibly even earlier, and has never been touched by any kind of interior design. It's the kind of place that won't be on any tourist map-- the Hong Kong Tourism Board won't exactly consider its grimy interiors as the island's best representative-- but it is very popular with the locals, who we see every morning when we have breakfast. It's the kind of place that has been around forever making the same things over and over until perfection; unfortunately, cleanliness and ambience aren't among their priorities.
The staff are friendly and they try to accommodate, but they don't speak any English. The menus aren't in English either. If, like us, you don't speak a word of Chinese, ordering will be done via pointing, gestures, and, mercifully, a few common English words. In our case, that one English word was "coffee". Regular tea is served on the house. Oh, bring a jacket-- the aircon is always on full Arctic blast even if it's 20C outside.
Its menu is not so varied-- noodles, baked buns (sweet and savoury), pastries-- but the few things they make they make very well. Our favourite is what we call in Manila as Spanish bread: golden brown top with sesame seeds; perfectly chewy texture; right amount of butter, sugar, and dessicated coconut for filling. They also make great egg tart (nice crumbly crust, subtly flavoured custard) and ham and egg bun (they don't scrimp on the ham or egg)-- in fact, everything we ordered was just superb. By some mysterious method, Hung Wan got the texture of their bread just right. Hong Kong, by the way, makes great breadstuffs, and Hung Wan was the best of them all. Each order of bun or pastry costs between HKD 4 to HKD 7; the Spanish bread costs HKD 5.
The coffee, which is the only drink we knew how to order, wasn't too bad either. Each order is freshly brewed using what looks like an old cheesecloth which has seen better days and some pre-War-looking metal pitchers and steamers. Only old-school coffee making here; no espresso machines in sight. Ordering "coffee" means you're served coffee with heavy cream and sugar already mixed in. I actually prefer black coffee, but I didn't know how to order it in Chinese. In any case, the standard coffee, which costs HKD 10 a cup, is quite thick and heavy-- the closest analogue I can think of is that thick Spanish-style hot chocolate. No coffee in Starbucks has this depth of texture. It was pretty good, actually, and really picked us up for a long day of walking.
Bottomline, best bakeshop ever. If you can get over the looks of the place. Here are the scores:
Quality = 9.0
Size = 7.5
Taste = 9.5
Ambience = 2.0
Service = 6.0
Value = P406.90
Price = HKD 20 = P133.60
Sulit Rating = 2.91 > 1
Here's their address and contact info, lifted from their takeaway plastic bag:
Hung Wan Cafe & Bakery Shop
726 Shanghai St., Mongkok, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Tel. 2392-6038, 2393-7852
See the pictures (and this review) here.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Ferrero and Fraud
This is one tough case to crack: Ferrero accused in hazelnut fraud. Ferrero SpA is the company that makes Ferrero Rocher, Nutella, and tic tacs. In a nutshell, if the banks' lawyers are to be believed, it is a 22.8-million-euro shell game perpetrated by Turkish hazelnut companies with Ferrero's consent. Ferrero denies the charge, saying it had nothing to gain from the Turkish companies' actions. And this, of course, results in a big, er, Nutella-load of lawsuits and legal fees.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Hong Kong, Day 2: Stinky Tofu
It's our second day in Hong Kong (see previous posts here and here) and our feet are killing us. Started the day with some breakfast at a Honk Kong-style pastry shop then went up to The Peak, followed by some brief shopping at Causeway Bay, a long walk along Nathan Road, and a lot of shopping at Ladies' Market (see my Dear's post here).
We've had a lot of good meals here at the Fragrant Harbour and hopefully I'll get to writing about them soon, but as the title suggests this post is about my experience with stinky tofu. I've heard a lot about this delicacy from travel show hosts, particularly Andrew Zimmern, Anthony Bourdain, and Janet Hsieh. It's reputed to be one of the world's more adventurous foods, often placed in the same level of funkiness with balut and century egg. Now, I like balut and century egg, so I thought stinky tofu shouldn't be that bad.
So there I saw stinky tofu on one of the street stalls around the Ladies' Market, deep fried and sitting on a strainer-- two large, greasy pieces skewered on bamboo satay sticks cost HKD 15.00. It was crisp and golden brown, not unlike the other deep-fried tofus we get at Chinese restaurants or at home. It did start reeking its fermented smell at that point, but it's still ok. Nothing horrid. Yet.
The real assault starts on the first bite-- it has the same texture as other fried tofu, but with the taste of what I think would be the taste of thick cotton socks used for one week straight on a trek through a humid jungle then left in a cupboard with raw fish for a month. No, I have to correct myself-- the stinky tofu was worse than that.
Being true to Zimmern's philosophy I finished one piece, which was all I could take. I just had to throw away the other one, and if you know me you'll know that's something I do not do with a light heart. The worst part was the aftertaste-- it stays with you in your stomach for a long time and, several hours and more than a few drinks and dishes after, I can still taste it especially when I have a burp.
So, yes, my adventurous tastebuds have met their match. I wouldn't want to have to eat (or smell) stinky tofu again, but I have to say I'm glad I tried it. At least I can relate with Zimmern, Bourdain, or Hsieh when they say how disgusting it is. Being a foodie isn't all about gourmet dishes and haute cuisines. Sometimes, well, stinky tofu happens.
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