The best wanton noodles in Bangkok

"You must try the wanton mee near Platinum Mall guaranteed more than 1 bowl"  - so read the message I received as I landed in Bangkok airport.  Huh? The land that gives us tom yum, green curry and pad thai, and I'm to go look for wanton mee?  Okaaayyy.... trusting the messenger, I verified this with the local guide and he kindly offers to take us there for lunch.  And it was a good thing too since my texted directions consisted only of "turn right at hotel, walk towards McDonald's and turn into a side lane".  Wah, very helpful.  Do you know how many side lanes or soi there are?

Ladies who lunch at maze by Gordon Ramsay

I've been meaning to post this for some time now, but was caught out by my recent trip which had me packing light ie no laptop ergo no posts.

As you can tell, I belong to the worker ant class, thus on the rare occassions that arise, I'll leap at the chance to do the 'ladies who lunch' thingamabob.  Having a day to kill with nothing more taxing than packing to fly back to KL, my friend Y and I decided we'll do our ladies of leisure impersonation and indulge in a long leisurely lunch, scattered with alcohol-fuelled sparkling conversation and observations ;p 

So off to Maze we went.  The restaurant is under the Gordon Ramsay brand and located at the swanky area of Pearl-Qatar, specifically at Porto Arabica. It boasts of an European-Asian influenced menu (hah! must mean fusion) and has fantastic views of the West Bay from the open terrace.  Although it was too hot to dine alfresco, there were a couple of diners working on their tans and lunch - and probably frying their brains too!

They only offer a set menu at lunch, so that took away difficult decisions - useful for ladies who lunch.

The menu stayed quite true to its claims of Asian influence - it included at most 1 Asian ingredient which played a mainly supporting role.  I gathered that the menu gets refreshed frequently.

 My plan was to go for the non-familiar and be more adventurous with selections.  I started off with the compressed watermelon, feta cheese mousse, walnut rocket salad with black sesame dressing, while Y had the seared tuna nicoise salad, olive powder, confit potato and kenya beans.  To me, watermelon and feta is an odd-sounding combination - a juicy wet fruit and salty cheese?  I must say after tasting this, I was won over.  The watermelon was very chilled, and its icy sweetness complemented the feta cheese mousse for a very refreshing summery salad.  The rocket salad  was lightly dressed in olive oil sprinkled with black sesame seeds (the Asian touch), and clearly was in a supporting role.  There was no mistaking the watermelon-cum-feta as the main stars of the dish.  Y was very happy with her selection and you can see how pretty it looked.



clockwise from top - watermelon and feta salad, seared tuna nicoise salad, pan-fried snapper, beetroot and goat cheese risotto



For mains, it was beetroot and goat cheese risotto, zaatar, roasted pine nuts and parsley crisp.  Clearly, beetroot risotto was something different.  Y chose to go for the pan-fried snapper, chickpea fries, tomato butter sauce and crushed peas.  The risotto came in all its violent purple glory, topped with crumbled goat's cheese.   Not a dish for the faint-hearted, the risotto had the sweetness from the beetroot cut by the faintly redolent cheese.  If parmesan puts you into a coma, forget about goat cheese.  I absolutely loved this dish for its flavours, and the zaatar added just a little spice to zing up the risotto.  Just a little.  The snapper was a nice safe choice, with the fish still juicy and sweet.  The chickpea fries was mashed chickpeas shaped into fingers and fried.  The crushed peas were more like mushy peas, but full of taste and sweetness.  A healthier variation to fish and chips, perhaps??



clockwise from top left - nougat glacee with raspberry sorbet, macaroon with creme chiboust, apple compote & apple sorbet, hummus & olives, turkish delight & chocolate chip cookies



I'd had enough of cheese by then, so that effectively removed the cheese platter choice from desserts.  I went along with the nougat glacee, lemon frangipane and raspberry sorbet.  Y chose the macaroon, creme chiboust, apple compote and apple sorbet.  We couldn't figure out where the Asian was in the desserts, but at that point we were beyond caring and just anticipating the goodies.  And boy, did they live up to expectations!  I have no idea what a glacee is, and  I would describe it as an ice-cream of sorts on a bed of frangipane.  The flavours were more or less from the same family ie berries and not too contrasting.  Y thought the macaroons were fine and again the flavours were kept very much together with apples as the theme.

Even though we declared ourselves stuffed to the ears by then, we still found some space for the complimentary turkish delight and chocolate chip cookies - which was a nice touch to end the meal.  Bread, hummus and olives were also complimentary at the start. 

All in all, we declared lunch a huge success - good times, great tastes, even better company!  Service while not overly friendly, was courteous and efficient.  Yes, it's rather pricey at QR140 per person without drinks, but the food, its quality and ambience all serve to make this a worthwhile treat on occasions.

Address:

the maze by Gordon Ramsay

Porto Arabica at Pearl-Doha

Cool, cool desserts in HK summer...

If you think KL is hot, think again.  Summer in Hong Kong is worse.  It's muggy, humidity is in the high 80s and temperatures stay in the 30Cs day and night.  It just doesn't let up, and the heat emissions from all the vehicles just makes it worse.  Hot air permeates every single pore in your body.  I just had to duck into every other shop for its 'free' air-conditioning to cool-off.  Cheap, I know, but what to do?  It was that, or total melt-down.  No air-con, no eats - that was my mantra and I didn't care how delish its rated to be.

It was a no-brainer to head down to Tin Hau for desserts first.  I found this little tong sui place when I stayed at L'Hotel Causeway Bay a few trips back.  We were totally bowled over by its tong sui.  Its called Ching Ching Desserts.  I only noticed later that for a little hole-in-the-wall, it had a stream of luxury cars parked outside and it's crowded.  It's now on our must-stop-to-eat-every-trip list. 

Like most HK eateries, the tables are tiny, you perch on even tinier stools and you'll be elbowing or shouldering your neighbour.  So be prepared to stack your bags on your lap if you drop by in the middle of a massive shopping haul.  Its conveniently located too - just about a 5 minutes trot from the Tin Hau MTR station.

Gluttons that we are, between the 2 of us, we ordered the walnut cream with tofu pudding, mango on tofu pudding (tau fu far) and to top it off, a half-and-half of black sesame and almond cream. We would have ordered more, but were too embarrassed.

The tofu pudding is unlike what we get in Malaysia - it's ultra smooth, but also a little more firm and bouncy.  Very nice.  The mango topping which was essentially some pureed mango and mango chunks were deliciously cold and the entire concoction just glides down effortlessly.  Not too sweet.



Tofu pudding with mango puree







Tofu pudding with walnut cream



Big Dog just loves their walnut, almond and black sesame desserts.  Regardless of the heat, he had to have them all, so he compromised with ordering the black&white which is black sesame and almond cream and having the walnut cream with tofu pudding. Sinful but oh-so-good.



Black sesame and almond cream



Ching Ching Desserts

77 Electric Road,

Tin Hau, Hong Kong

Nearest MTR : Tin Hau