Hong Kong: Swagat Indian Restaurant

I know, I couldn't believe it myself. We're in Hong Kong, walking around Tsim Sha Tsui looking for some place for dinner, then this Indian guy pops up from nowhere and started dragging some of my mates to his restaurant nearby. When you're heading a delegation where at least half of the delegates are Indian, you know you don't have much decisive power when it comes to Indian food. I made a weak plea to go somewhere else, "But we're in Hong Kong!" but they all looked so homesick you just gotta give in to them. We did not intend to go to Swagat actually, but the original restaurant looked so dodgy that our front scouts made an about-turn and brought us here instead.


Swagat is a really small restaurant, with a dimly but aethetically lit interior and soft Indian music humming in the background. The twelve of us took almost half the restaurant though, that's just how small the space is. It's air-conditioned too. The only reason I'm saying all this is because the building that this restaurant is housed in is terribly crowded and run-down, holds quite a few cheap hostels and guesthouses, and has its lion's share of dodgy characters. I was contemplating sticking to soft drinks and trying to last past dinner, but then I decided not to be a wet blanket and allowed my friends to order whatever they wanted for our table.

Papadum



A typical Indian cracker that is usually served as an appetiser. It came with a few sauces, which included Indian achar (spicy pickled condiment) and a minty gravy (the green one in the picture above).

Tandoori Chicken




"Chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices". This was pretty good, the chicken wasn't too dry and was adequately tender. I especially like the marinate that was teasing all your taste buds at every bite and chew.

Butter Chicken



"Barbecued chicken in a rich tomato gravy with butter". I have to admit that the food was turning out much better than I had expected, and the butter chicken here was another winner. The gravy was sufficiently thick and it complemented my butter naan wonderfully. The chicken was soft and tender too.

Mutton Rogan Josh



"Tender lamb pieces cooked in Kashmiri spices". The Indian guys from my delegation were on a roll. All the dishes were so familiar to them and they had on very satisfied smiles as they poured through the menu. Me, Bernadette and Ce Zheng, Chinese as we are, were the amused but curious minority for the time being. But I'm glad we had them around, because all the food they were picking turned out to be splendid. The lamb pieces were very tender, as have all the meat dishes been, but I preferred the butter chicken because it was sweeter.

Naan


"Baked soft leavened bread". Soft and fluffy indeed, but I prefered the butter naan which had (obviously) a fuller and more buttery taste to it.

Bhatura


"Deep fried puffed bread". I always like things deep fried, so this was good stuff for me. Think roti prata but a more puffed version.

Service
Very friendly and personalised. The fact that our Indian friends could converse in Hindi with the boss made things a whole lot easier of course. The manager was probably so happy that he had foreign Indians coming to his humble eatery that he nicely waived our service charge.

Price
HK$55 for the tandoori chicken
HK$60 for the butter chicken
HK$58 for the mutton rogan josh
HK$10 for a serving of naan
HK$10 for a serving of bhatura

Place

Hong Kong: Royal Desserts

The third and final stop of our foodie night with Parthenia. We all wanted something to cool off our throats, so it was the best time for cold desserts! The exterior of the shop looked very promising indeed, with all the colourful pictures of the desserts on offer. I'm going to name the desserts by myself though (haha), but I'm sure the pictures will be good enough for you to have an idea of what we all had.

Chocolate Soufflé with Ice-Cream



I'm glad to have chosen the soufflé, because this has got to be one of the best desserts I've eaten in a long time. While the two scoops of ice-cream were ordinary, the soufflé was served warm and was very soft on both touch and taste. The chocolate in it was delightfully hot, and I was cooing in delight as it spilled out and I scooped it up with my spoon and into my mouth. The chocolate was so smooth and it felt so good as it slid down my throat... ooh la la.

Sliced Mangoes with Ice-Cream


The foodie representative from Hong Kong had this, and we found the mangoes to be very fresh and sweet. There were a lot of assorted jellies that certainly added flavour and even more sweetness to this dessert.

Iced Mango with... More Mangoes


One of the girls had this, and she found it to be pretty good. That's a lot of ice to get through though hahaha. Like Parthenia's dessert (above), this had assorted jellies hidden at the bottom as well.

Mango Rolls with Mango Puree



The third but the best of all the mango desserts. Mango slices in glutinous rice wrap with thick and super sweet puree. This was so good we all ordered one more (there were however a total of four chocolate soufflés being ordered as well, making the soufflé the dessert of the night).

Chocolate Pudding with Ice-Cream and Sliced Bananas


I was told the pudding was a bit too diluted and not chocolatey enough. The fresh bananas and chocolate fudge sauce did help a bit though.

Boring Dessert


We were joking that this has to be the most boring of the lot, but Nayan tried to convince us that it was the "best" dessert of the night. Try harder friend haha! Grass jellies and ice-cream, that's all there is to it.

Price
HK$35 for the chocolate soufflé
HK$25 for the sliced mangoes with ice-cream
HK$26 for the mango rolls with mango puree
HK$25 for the chocolate pudding with ice-cream and sliced bananas

Place
Kowloon City. I know, it's huge, but it's near Cambo Thai.

Hong Kong: Islam Food

We were pretty excited to see food catered to Muslims because it's pretty much a rarity in Hong Kong. Anyone can tell me what's the name of this restaurant, because I'm quite sure it isn't "Islam Food" haha.


We were here for a delicious snack as Parthenia promised us, and when we asked her what we were going to have, she pointed to this review above. Golly, we were hungry already.

Fried Beef Dumpling


Again, I'm making up the name of this food. But gosh, if they had this is Singapore, I would eat this everyday (and get terribly fat while at it)! So what is it really?


Well, think of it as deep-fried "roti prata", with moist, tender minced beef in it. The beef is very well-marinated with herbs and spices by the way, making this a most satisfying snack.


One thing though. When you bite into this dumpling, the sauce spills out, and I mean, spill out. It was quite amusing watching my friends trick each other on the first bite (and laughing gleefully as the tricked victim back off in surprise) and how they subsequently bit much more carefully into the dumplings.

Price
About HK$10 per piece.

Place
Kowloon City. I know, it's huge, but it's near Cambo Thai.

Hong Kong: Cambo Thai

I'm glad to have met a fellow foodie in Hong Kong! Her name's Parthenia (picture above, far right), and I was talking to her at the Hong Kong Model United Nations Conference Grand Dinner when she told me that she likes visiting websites on food and restaurants before trying them out with her friends. Foodie meets foodie!


So on our foodie night (with most of my delegation making up my entourage), Parthenia took us to Kowloon City to try out this famous Thai restaurant that has been covered in a good many magazines, newspapers, blogs and websites. At first, we were wondering why we were going to have Thai when we were in Hong Kong, but then we saw this:


Wow, so many reviews (for now, we're assuming they're all ravingly good reviews haha)? The other thing about this restaurant is that it covers half of the street that it is on, taking up around eight or more units. All of the units had customers, and all of them had colourful articles and reviews all over their windows. We decided to try a few dishes, and Parthenia herself urged us to order just a few dishes because she was bringing us for snacks and desserts after dinner.


Parthenia was telling us about a common practice in restaurants in Hong Kong, and that's about washing your utensils before you eat. There's a small jug of warm water on the table, so what you do is pour some of it into your bowl and onto your plate, and from there wash your chopsticks and spoon. It was definitely something new to us. A few minutes later, one of the waitresses put a small container on the table, to which we poured the water back in. Interesting eh?

Phad Thai


Yes, we're really eating Thai food in Hong Kong. The phad thai was quite good actually, it wasn't too moist nor was it too spicy, and the grated peanuts added the crunch to the noodles. If you want to know one of the better phad thais in Singapore, I would have to say Thai Express does a pretty good job at it.

Mixed Seafood



I'm making the name up, but you can tell what it is if you read the menu above. Soefie spotted the line "A dish for celebrity" and insisted we order it. This actually turned out to be the highlight of our dinner! This dish is both sweet and spicy, with a good variety of ingredients. And oh, Liyana felt that a chopstick in the picture would make it more artistic haha. It was also because everyone couldn't wait to get their chopsticks into such a delicious-looking dish!

Spicy and Sour Seafood Soup


We thought this would turn out to be the typical Thai "tom yum" soup, but it wasn't exactly so. One thing though: this soup is really really spicy! The restaurant uses chilli padi (some Westerners know it as "bird's eye chili pepper"), which is probably the hottest form of chillies around. It still tasted great, so as much as some of us were hissing from the spiciness, we were still enjoying it anyway haha.

We also had fried rice and sambal kangkong, the latter of which tasted very good. Just in case anyone is considering visiting this restaurant, here are a couple of pages from the menu!




Service
Good. But they couldn't really understand English, so luckily we had Parthenia there with us!

Price
HK$43 for the phad thai
HK$45 for the mixed seafood
HK$95 for the spicy and sour seafood soup
HK$38 for the sambal kangkong

Place


Somewhere in Kowloon City, I don't know the exact address. I think if you enlarge the picture above, there's some contacts and addresses at the top. That's if you know how to read Chinese haha.



The restaurant(s) has two different signboards, but we were assured they are all the same.

Hong Kong: Das Gute

I was wondering if I should write about Das Gute at all, but the custard coronet was so good that I would be doing injustice to it if I choose to ignore it. Das Gute is the name of a bakery chain in Hong Kong (think Breadtalk in Singapore) and the displays are so attractive that they make you want to buy and try every single thing!

Custard Coronet


We have Sun Moulin's Custard Coronet in Singapore, so Hong Kong's answer has to be this surely. The custard is very smooth and thick, while the bread was adequately soft. The chocolate helped to add another flavour to this already delightful snack.

Price
HK$9.

Place
Sha Tin New Town Plaza.
Also: Citylink Plaza opposite YMCA.

Hong Kong: Mido Cafe

I first learned about this Hong Kong cafe from a Lonely Planet travel guide, but it was only after I had returned from Hong Kong and gone through the Internet that I realised that this is a pretty popular place among locals and tourists alike.


The cafe is old, but it has that antique prettiness that is hard to come by in a place that has modernised so rapidly over the last half of a century. The furniture seems to be the same ones from fifty years ago, and some websites have mentioned that this cafe has been featured in the scenes of many Hong Kong movies.


We were initially stunned to see the "menu" pasted on the table because it was covered completely in Chinese characters. The boss (or so it seems) could speak and understand English very well though, and gave us (thankfully) menus with the all too familiar English words. The above is just one side of the English-version to the menu, but it looked really promising. There were fourteen of us, but we were sitting at separate tables and I didn't get to take pictures of all the food. Here's what I managed to take at my table.

French Toast


French Toast never looked this decadent. Deep fried toast with eggs and butter. It was freaking unhealthy and oily. But we loved it.

Beef Fried Rice


It was a pretty big portion, so it filled me up nicely. The rice is very soft and moist though, but it went well with the generous serving of minced beef.

Baked Seafood with Rice


In Singapore, anything "baked" means lots of cheese, but it doesn't seem to be so for this dish. Chetan said this wasn't too bad, and it's pretty worth it because you got fried rice instead of plain steamed white rice.

Baked Pork Chop Rice



Ce Zheng said this was "ok". Looks good, doesn't it?

Drinks



The drinks, as do the furniture, are so retro and old-school here!

Service
Very friendly and helpful.

Price
HK$18 for the french toast
HK$35 for the beef fried rice
HK$73 for the baked seafood with rice
HK$48 for the baked pork chop rice

Place
63, Temple Street, Yau Ma Tei
Yau Ma Tei MTR Station, Exit B2

Additional Comments
1. The first picture of this post is a collage from a collection of pictures from this website:
http://gregwee.blogspot.com/2008/05/retro-mido-cafe.html.
2. Opening hours: 8.30am-9.30pm; Tel: 852-2384-6402