Peking duck with bird's nest soup dinner set, Peking Garden, Taikooshing, HK

There are 4-5 cards that I would recommend getting them - Citibank, HSBC, Hang Seng and Bank of China (BOC).  Each of them offers various dining benefits for bargain meal set.  This time it's Peking Garden with BOC.  Just only HK$800, you can get 2 cold dishes - beef slice and vegetarian rolls, stir fried scallop with squash, bird's nest soup,  Peking duck (super sized), sweet and sour pine nut fish, cabbage with wild mushroom, sou lon bao and a walnut sweet.  Just the Peking duck, bird's nest soup and the fish cost HK$800.  It's good for not just 4, but 5-6 persons.  Besides, all the food are above average.  What a bargain meal.

龍騰軒，酒仙橋店, Beijing, China

This place is about 10 min. walk from East Beijing, but the walk (due to the heavy smog and the cold) felt like a 30 min. walking distance.  Ordered a Beijing duck at RMB128 with 3 dishes of skin with meat, skin only and meat only.  The duck is quite crispy though the side dishes seem a bit not too appealing.  The other dishes (the jelly fish and the sitr fried veggie) weren't too good either.  So we could finish all the 3 dishes of the Beijing duck. 

HK break - Spring Deer restaurant 鹿嗚春, Tsim Sha Tsui HK

This restaurant is always full. You need to have at least a few weeks' advance booking, or come here by chance after 9:30pm for a table. I took the latter one and in fact I had (Chinese saying for "unlucky to get a table") "the closing-door soup" quite several times already.

1. the table. I really like the Chinese name of this restaurant - very bright poetic and vibrant lively. In direct translation it should mean "Deer singing for the Spring coming".

2. I haven't tried this but the Chef is very skillful in finishing the cutting in less than 30 seconds. Yes, 30 seconds and that's the essential part that Beijing duck should be sliced quickly so as to keep the warmth of the meat and juicy.

3. Cold platter HK$50. Very nice and chilled. Please click the photo and see how average of the thinly sliced. That really amazed me and made us humble to the basement floor.

4. Beef with Beijing scallions HK$58. Again, the cutting is perfect. Beef and the scallions cut in average same size.

5. Mixed Casserole HK$60. The food here isn't in much complicated seasoning. It's pretty raw style cooking but that's the difficult part. Heavy sauce and seasoning would cover up something most people may not find out.

6. Spring Deer serves only one fried rice HK$50. You may find it too simple but after you taste it, you know why it needs to be simple. If the eggs are fresh, just sprinkle some salt in the final step. That's the magic spark in this simple fried rice. Somehow I don't know why most Shanghai and Beijing cuisine restaurant use those frozen shrimp. Quite discouraging to me.

7. Ok, one more time to show the proper Siu Long Bao (HK$50) even thought this is a Beijing cuisine restaurant. Also, this is the classic portion and style of Siu Long Bao - 10 pieces.

8. Walnut sweet HK$48. At first, I doubt if it's walnut. Yes, it is and it's a fresh one. Why it looks white is because the thin brown peel 核桃衣 was taken out. I guess I haven't seen this over 30 years. What a long lost friend! Taking out that thin brown peel wouldn't make the sweet a bit bitter. However, the sugar they used is not that refined. So that made it a bit "dry" (旱). If they use the white crystal sugar (白冰糖), this could be 100 marks! Now it's 99 marks. *remarks: photo 9 - not because of its good business, Spring Deer would make all the tables so packed to each other, like most other popular restaurants do. Also, they don't expand to more branches. That's good to keep in quality. Check the last 2 photos and see how they put their names on the outside.

Diving into macro food

Time to go check a world we may overlook in our daily life. A mini-world in macro with vivid color and details. All the below photos were taken at F2.8 at ISO 100. Luckily the restaurant has a pretty strong light on the table (at Peking Garden, basement of Pacific Place Admiralty). *In general, the food below is at average but just Thai Basil (opposite to Peking Garden) was so full house that I had to switch to this place.

1. cucumber, veggie chicken and peanuts as appetizer.

2. Drunken chicken (with dried rose petals on top), HK$88.

3. Jelly fish (head part) in sesame scallion oil, HK$78.

4. Tan Tan noodle, HK$38.

5/6. Sesame pastry with mixed seafood, HK$128.

7. Turnip/cabbage rolls with fish meat bits, HK$88. (*please click the photos for a larger view.).

1

King Join 京兆尹, Taipei, Taiwan

In stepping into a new decade, things have already repeated themselves. Gone back to places I haven't been to for years, in Bangkok, in HK and in Taipei too. This place offered some very classic Peking dim sum and cuisine as a legacy from the late Ching Dynasty. It has been 100 years since Ching Dynasty got overthrown, and I was told the shop was run by the royal chef who served the dim sum section for Empress Dowager. This royal chef family fled to Taiwan during the split up of the communist and republican parties in the late 1940's. There the royal chef family introduced their house recipe of some very classic Peking dim sum.

1-5. The shop was once closed down due to some financial problem, but was re-opened 2-3 years ago. Everything is still the same, except the menu offered even a wider choices and some lunch set menu starting from TWD365 (appro. US$13).

6. the entrance.

7. This is a cute sign for implying to visitors from not pushing the door too hard, as in the meaning "palm air punching to open".

8. appetizer.

9. pumpkin soup. Pretty nice as it's with some crunchy nuts.

10. Veggie noodle soup. The chef did a good job from not putting too much salt and sugar to cover the nice flavour of all these rich vegetarian ingredients.

11. Meat sauce noodle, another nice noodle and it has a colorful mix of veggie and beans. It told the old time Chinese cooking using more variety of veggie and beans to get a balanced diet.

12. Braised mixed veggie. A bit surprising for me to taste 菱角 (don't know the exact English term), and it is pretty nice.

13. Stir fried baby spinach. Quite surprised with the way they use ginger slices to stir fry this veggie.

14/15. 洛神花涷 (guess it is quite close to Roselle), very nice jello.

16. Osmanthus roll 桂花涼糕, all the sweet dim sum are not sweet at all, nice smooth texture.

17. Chinese hamburger 燒餅, as you can see, the bun is with many layers. Very nice too.

18. Siu Lon Bao, actually I was told Siu Lon Bao should be a mini bun like this, in the Northern part of China.

19. 碗豆黃 & 驢打滾, the 2 typical Peking dim sums. Very smooth texture and again not sweet at all. Next to it is the black plum drink. Very nice too.

20. Milk pudding - this is a must for a dessert. Don't know how they could make this pudding so silky smooth and again very little sweet of it so that the original milk flavour can be tasted. Of course, some very nice milk is used. Otherwise, it would just expose the poor ingredients used. So the bill for 2 persons is about NTD800 (appro. 28).