Adventure #205: Baba Soul Food (Phuket)

This year, G's mum turned 70 and the whole family celebrated it with her in Phuket.  We had the birthday dinner at Baba Soul Food at Hotel Sri Panwa. 

The hotel was beautifully lit.  We had pre-dinner drinks at the lounge, taking in the lights, the breeze and the band.  There were 14 of us including 4 children.  So, when the menu came, I was a bit over-whelmed.  Luckily, they produced an iPad menu, so if we liked what we saw, we just ordered it.  Once again, we ended up ordering way more than we can eat!

Between taking photos of the dishes, passing them around and feeding the little ones, I can hardly remembered what the dishes were.  I only remembered that there were a lot of food and that most dishes were delicious.  It was definitely worth a visit!

I will attempt to name the dishes from the online menu.

 

Poh Pia Karee Pup - Deep fried potato and onion spring rolls served with Baba's chili dip

Thod Man Ghoong - Deep fried shrimp cake served with Baba's chili dip

Moo Manao - grilled pork with a spicy lime chili dressing

Yam Mamuang - spicy green mango salad with a local "yam" citrus dressing

Tao Hoo and Hed Hom Thod Samoonprai - deep fried tofu and shitake mushroom with garlic, shallot, kaffir lime leaves

Tom Yam Ghoong Lai Seur - Spicy coconut milk soup with tiger prawns, local herbs and lime

Tom Som Pla Kra-bok - Phuket style clear mullet soup with lemongrass

Phad Pak Boong Fai Dang - Stir-fried morning glory with chili and soy sauce

Poo Phad Manao - stir-fried Andaman crab meat with lime sauce.

Phad Cha Pla Meuk - Stir-fried squid with Thai herbs and spices served on a hotplate

Khai Jiew Poo - Andaman crab meat omelet

My favourite dishes were the stir-fried Andaman crab meat with lime sauce and the mullet soup.  Great food, great decor.

Adventure #204: Restoran Long Grilled Fish Seafood (Jin Jang)

This December when we were home in KL, my brother Alex took us to his new found food joint in Jin Jang.  Don't think I have ever been to Jin Jang before!  Anyway, over the course of 2 weeks, we were there 3 times and here are some of the dishes we tried.

濕奶油日本螺 Clams in cream sauce, so sweet and delicious.  A must have!

鴛鴦腸 Intestines cooked 2 ways.  I preferred the deep fried ones.

有機豆付 Organic tofu, again cooked 2 ways.  Not much difference from a fried tofu, the colour though is rather unusual.  Again, preferred the dry one with dipping sauce which tasted rather like the cream sauce above.

We tried crabs cooked 3 different ways:

奶油蟹 Crab in cream sauce.  Yum!

燒蟹 BBQ crab. This is their signature dish.  Excellent! Another must have.

咸蛋黄炒蟹 Crab with salty egg.  This should have been a great dish but the egg yolk were stuck to the shell making it less tasty.

燒浦魚 BBQ stingray. Another good dish.

They have 2 fried rice. This is 海鮮炒飯 seafood fried rice.  This one had chopped salted fish on top, so can be a bit too salty.  The 啦啦炒飯 fried rice with clams was way better. Dry and full of flavour!

We also tried other non-seafood dishes but they were not good at all, especially the fried vegetables.  Suggest you only eat seafood dishes here.

Adventure #203: Chung Kee Dessert

After the hotpot, no one wanted to go home so we drove to Tsuen Wan in search for dessert.  We found one on the net and when we got there (at close to 11pm) it was pack with people waiting for a table!

檸檬芝士木糠布甸  This one looked pretty good.

心太軟 with mango ice cream (can pair with other flavours). This is one of the signature dessert and it was very good. And only $37!

Most of the dessert are very local with fruits and sego but they do have a couple of interesting dessert.  The 心太軟 was excellent.  If you are in Tsuen Wan, definitely worth a visit.

 

Chung Kee Dessert

85B, Hoi Pa Street

Tsuen Wan

Tel: 2323 1929

Adventure #202: 傲嚐

Since the beef hotpot dinner in 2012, I had wanted to go back again and therefore had been waiting patiently for the owner to find a new shop. A couple of weeks ago while reading a food magazine, one of the featured restaurants sounded remarkably like this beef hotpot place, so I gave them a call and bingo!

It's a few weeks before Christmas and everyone else's social calender seemed to have already been filled. But I managed to find a couple of friends to venture out to Tsuen Wan again for a beef hotpot experience.

The new restaurant is still in Tsuen Wan and still in an industrial building, although a different one. It is now much bigger (at least 3 to 4 times the old place) but unfortunately that made it less personal and more noisy.

When we got there, we noticed that most of the tables were not having hotpot but were having seafood instead. So we asked. It seemed that this new restaurant is a joint venture between 2 chefs, one specializes in beef and the other in seafood.  And since we already booked the hotpot set, that's what we will be having. 

For starters we were served chilled abalone and chilli cucumbers. Refreshing but I was a little disappointed not to have the beef tartare.

Next came the prawns.  Looked better than they tasted. Not too sure about that seafood chef now.

Next came the 聖子 which went straight into the pot.  That was fresh and sweet.

Then 3 types of beef came.  The red one in front was I think from the cow's shoulder, the whitish one on the right was 胸軟骨 some kind of soft bones or cartilage from the cow's chest and the one at the back, I had no idea!

Next came 3 types of balls - beef, squid and meat.  Not a fan of the balls.

Again, some part of the cow, the lady wasn't very specific.

This I believe to be 金錢展.

And this I think is from the neck 牛頸肉.

The experience this time was very different from the last.  The lady who served us was not very specific in what she gave us, maybe because she didn't know as the chef wasn't there that night. As such, we were rather disappointed and doubt if we will try this again.

Room 409, 4/F, Wing Hing Industrial Building
83 Chai Wan Kok Street
Tsuen Wan
Tel: 9029 6518

Adventure #201: Xia Fei Society Shanghaiese Cuisine

Today is Saturday as well as G's birthday. As always on a Saturday, we were in Central for kids weekend classes. And today we wanted to find somewhere for a quiet meal between classes. I looked up and saw the sign for 霞飛會館. I had read good reviews about this place, so we decided to give it a try.

It was Saturday in Central and it was just before lunch time, so the restaurant was rather empty - just the way we like it!

As this is a Shanghaiese restaurant, selection for dim sum is not extensive. We ordered a selection of dim sum to try and the quality of the food is very good.

雞絲粉皮

蝦仁炒蛋

蔥油拌面, almost as good as Xiao Nan Guo

小籠包

窩貼

蔥油餅

牛肉餅, very juicy!

The food quality was good. A great find in Central. G went there again a couple of months later for dinner.  He said the quality of dinner was just as good.

4/F, Century Square
1-13 D'Aguilar Street
Central
Tel: 2522 7611