Adventure #126: Paul's Kitchen

Wandered over to Central, wanting to have the tomato macaroni at 勝香園 but there was already a queue there when we arrived. Didn't want to waste time waiting, so we wandered off and walked past Paul's Kitchen.  Paul's Kitchen is a Western restaurant, so we were a little surprise to see that it was offering Malaysian cuisine for lunch.

For lunch, Paul's Kitchen launched Paul's Kitchen featuring Teck, serving Malaysian set lunches. 

The set started with a simple yet delicious although not Malaysian salad with vinaigrette dressing.

The nasi lemak was almost as good as home. Not enough sambal though, had to ask for more.

The fried kway teow was OK but I think the dish was constrained by its main ingredient - the kway teow was not smooth like those we have at home.

An interesting dessert - pandan flavoured sponge cake - to finish off the meal.

Food was OK. A possible destination for those home sick days.

Paul's Kitchen
G/F, 16 Gough Street
Central
Tel: 2815 8003

Adventure #74: 怡寶

It has been a while since the Malaysian road trip and the older one is missing her Ipoh ho fan.  And lucky for her, I just happened to read that a new restaurant has opened in Wanchai called 怡寶.  According to the magazine, the chef is a returning Hong Konger and had worked in Malaysia for 4 years.  Amongst it specialties (it claims) are Ipoh ho fun and bean sprout chicken!

Even if I know it will never stand up to the food we recently had, for the older one, we had to give it a try.  We here we were at Labour day.



The Ipoh ho fun looked good.  The soup was tasty (very close to the real thing) and the chicken soft.  Unfortunately and understandably the chef didn't use ho fun from Ipoh for this dish.......so, a poor imitation, only good for those really home sick days



I wish they would just called it chicken rice.  The rice is well cooked and the chicken soft. Once again this dish cannot be made without bean sprout from Ipoh!

Call me picky but once again this restaurant is for locals who have not been to Ipoh.  The specialties from Ipoh are its ho fun and bean sprouts which are both of superior quality.  To use anything else is just an insult to the taste buds.

怡寶
G/F, Kwong Ah Building
197 Johnston Road
Hong Kong
Tel: 2892-1386

Adventure #30: Sabah

Today we were at Wanchai getting some stuff for the new flat.  And since we were there, we went to try out (again....we were there years ago and the food did not entice us to return) the most well known Malaysian restaurant, Sabah.  After much disappointment over the years, we almost never go for Malaysian food (other than the 蝦麵店) in HK.  However, we have heard quite a few positive comments on Sabah recently from some fellow Malaysians, so here we are.

The first alarm bell - the menu has all sorts of curry including curry rogan josh.....how is that Malaysian?

The second alarm bell - when G ordered a 涼粉 drink, the lady asked if he wanted coconut milk in it.  G just stared at her, totally horrified.

I guess after such a long time in HK, the menu/food had become a bit (we hope only a bit) localised.  However, since we already sat down, we might as well go through with it.  G ordered a fried kuey teow and I ordered Malaysian curry chicken with roti.....and......

The fried kuey teow was definitely not up to standard

Curry chicken was not as good as the ones my helper cooked

The roti was the only thing close to the real thing....

Oh well, back to our golden rule, only have Malaysian food in Malaysia!!!

Sabah Malaysian Cuisine

G/F., Shop 4-5
98-102 Jaffe Road
Wan Chai
Tel: 2143 6626