Harbour Kitchen     港灣茶餐廳  

Went to the convention centre for an exhibition last weekend. Need to grab lunch before going to the exhibition halls. Perhaps it was lunch hour, there were 3-4 groups of people quieing for table when we got there.

Ordered shredded pork fried noodles, sweet and spicy pork neck fried instand noodles, roasted pork, kaya polo-bun, iced coffee and hot ribena with lemon.

To our surprise, after the drinks are being served, the kaya polo-bun was served first. Weird, because this is supposed to be the desserts (sweet). We didn't start eating but decided to wait for the mains to come. Minutes laters, all other food was served.

The sweet and spicy pork neck fried instant noodles was good (instant noodles always the safest choice), not spicy, overall was ok, just a little too salty and oily. But the shredded pork fried noodles was not good all. It was starch gravy with some shredded pork and veges poured over oil-fried noodles. The gravy was plain and little, not enough to cover the noodles. Luckily, they provide some chilli sauce to go with it. Otherwise, the whole dish was pretty much tasteless. I didn't finish the dish because it was plain and dry.

The roasted pork was fine - average, not bad but nothing fanstatic to be mentioned. As for the kaya polo-bun, I didn't taste any kaya in it but found some pineapples cubes. Felt weird too, based on my understanding of polo-bun, it actually doesn't have any pineapple ingredients. It was called polo-bun aka pineapple bun in chinese (菠蘿包) for its golden yellow, bumped surface which looks like pineapple. Thus, I am not too sure if this restaurant is trying to be different by adding pineapple cubes in it.

As a whole, it was quite a pricey lunch for such kind of food standard. We didn't enjoy the food especially the shredded pork fried noodles which was pretty much tasteless. Other than that, environment was alright and its service was just fine (they are not charging service charges/tax, so, can't complain much).

My friend hosted a gelato booth in the food exo in the HKCEC last week, so we paid her a visit and walked around the expo at the same time. We went to the Harbour Kitchen at the HKCEC for tea before walking around.

There was a great flow of people flushing in and out of the expo at 2pm, so there was a short queue in front of the restaurant. Upon arriving the restaurant, I immediately spotted the pastry window display and had my time in choosing between Pineapple Bun and Chicken Pie.....Chicken Pie won at last.The Chicken Pie had the perfect look - golden brown crust. I hold no resistance in golden brown pastry, they are simply a work of art. The pie crust was slightly sweet in taste and was quite light on the palette. The chicken cream filling wasn't that tasteful as I thought it would be. I haven't had Chicken Pie for a while so I could not make any comparison. I need to try the famous one in golden fung and several other Chaa Chan Tengs before I could draw any valid conclusion.

Came here to attend an exhibition 1 day.
Ordered a Hong Kong Style Tea (Hot) and a Fried Beef Noodles.

- The HK Tea was too weak to be honest, not a hint of tea flavour or aroma one that its normally associated with.

- Surprisingly, the Fried Beef Rice Noodles was of a high standard.
The individual strands of rice noodles were coated with darkish soya sauce and not clumped together like siamese twins (as in most other places), the noodles were of the medium width and thickness variety. The beef pieces were no overly marinated in 'artificial tenderisers' either, it had a natural texture and beef taste as well as absorbing just the right amount of sauce. Came with Beansprouts which were surprisingly crunchy but still gained from the 'wok' flavour. In fact the whole dish had a fair bit of 'Wok Chi' as well.

This whole dish was a little bit oily however, probably from liberal use of pork lard.
Overall the execution of this dish was excellent and better than the hyped dish I had at 何洪記, but perhaps not as deeply flavoured as the one in Happy Valley's 正斗 (kind of surprised between the 2 shop's differences, even with wonton noodles). The other foods avail here however probably aren't that flashy, as someone else dining with me didn't particularly enjoy his food (some baked rice from memory).

RATING = high 4 for 'Fried Beef Noodles' only
low 2 for HK Milk Tea.

They are trying to make money from the exhibitors & guests, 4 of us paid $300 for a lunch.