Celebrity Cuisine     名人坊高級粵菜  

Reservations are highly recommended.

Environment:
Quite a tight fit. Tables are packed very closely to each other and you can definitely eavesdrop on conversations.

Service:
Not fussy, but warm enough to make you feel quite comfortable. You don't feel pressured to order the many expensive dishes on the menu they don't hard sell anything. You want to eat cheap you can eat cheap happily.

Seared turnip pudding $0 - complimentary A nice surprise at the beginning of the meal! Quite a nice appetizer to whet the appetite - the pudding itself was quite pasty and glutinous. Couldn't see any turnip shreds (which I wanted to see) but it tasted sufficiently of turnip. Thankfully the pudding had enough bacon bits to give it a bit of bite. Yes to conpoy. Not too salty or peppery - good! Slightly caramelized surface - mm delish.

Stewed minced assorted meat in bean curd $140

Celebrity Cuisine is a cosy restaurant with modern-luxury décor. It is a small restaurant with 40 covers, yet the tables are still fairly spaced. As far as I remember, once we sat down, we have no intention of leaving even the food was finished, because the services were absolutely outstanding.

A quick note on the chilli sauce and XO sauce, both were freshly made. The chilli sauce was spicy and tangy. The dried scallops were thinner there the one you get at supermarket, it wasn’t as dry, yet it is full of flavour and texture.

Turnip Cake
The cake was made by fresh turnip and the taste was incredibly strong. The cake was perfectly pan-fried, crisp and dry on the outside, and smooth in the inside. It was matched perfectly with either the XO sauce or chilli sauce. Bird's Nest in Chicken Wing
The chicken wings were grilled to excellence, crispy and a nice colour. The wings were deboned and stuffed with bird’s nest. The texture of this dish is somewhat interesting, the first bite is crispy, and when it reaches your mouth is crunchy. And the vinegar bought complexity to the dish, it was extraordinary!Steamed King Prawn with Soy Sauce
The prawns were pan-fried with the garlic before steaming, hence the shell was crispy. Soy sauce was steamed with the prawns, and the flavour was infused into the shell. It is a nice and simple dish, full of flavour. Ginger, Chilli, Mushroom & Steamed Dragon fish
It wasn’t a special dish, expect the fine ingredient was used. The fish was steamed with ginger, chilli, mushroom and soy sauce and topped with spring onion. The fish was steamed with perfect timing; the meat was smooth and silky. But it lack of freshness, rather disappointed. Spinach in chicken broth with century egg, salted duck egg and garlic
It is the perfect season for eating spinach. The spinach was boiled in the broth together with the eggs and garlic. The spinach was soft and absorbed the flavour. Not a bad vegetable dish to end the evening.Egg white almond tea
The dessert was sweet, delicate and silky, full of flavour of almond. Yet, the egg white brought bitterness to the tea, really not my cup of tea. I love the restaurant inside out. By the quality of food alone, you must be joking that 2 Michelin stars was awarded, but together with the services, why not. The service was just terrific. We were please to have turnip cake, Fruit platter and dessert on the house.

Been to this restaurant three times. Seems to have improved quite a bit recently.
Really enjoyed their soup. Chicken wings stuffed with bird's nest elevate this dish to a luxury level. Nicely executed.
This last visited yielded a useful piece of information. The chef used to work in the Far East stock exchange dining room in the 70s and the early 80s under head chef Leung. So I look forward to tasting the dishes from the old days next time. Some of those old time favorites are:
Red roasted young pigeons, oil poached lion fish fillets, pipa beancurds, and deep fried stuffed crab claws.

This special restaurant is the one I picked to celebrate with my dear mothers and aunts for a happy mother's day. We ordered 燕窩鷓鴣粥, 燕窩雞翼, 琵琶豆腐, 梅菜扣肉, 燒乳鴿, 富哥招牌炒飯, 蒸龍躉腩, 上湯浸菜心 and 生磨蛋白杏仁茶.

The best of cause is 燕窩鷓鴣粥. The bird meat is minced finely and blended so well with the bird nest. The soup base that was used to make this congee (or soup) is also full of flavour. It is very hard to find a good restaurant that would make this dish. Although it cost about 480, but the work involved make every penny worth while.

燕窩雞翼 is as good as every have commented in there. The deboned wing was stuffed with bird nest, and nicely fried.

琵琶豆腐 is very nice. Soft and creamy center and very crispy skin. Nicely done.

梅菜扣肉 is unexpected nice. Usually I would avoid the oil pork belly, but the chef made it so well that even the fat are infused with the flavour of 梅菜. Excellent with a plain bowl of rice.

燒乳鴿. The bird is relatively small, but even the born are favorable. Well marinated.

富哥招牌炒飯. I wouldn't give that much credit to the fried rice. It is pretty normal and close to the one we made at home. Also, the shrimps that are used in the fried rice are those small frozen one. Not too attractive at all.

蒸龍躉腩. A small dish but then belly portion is nice. This type of fish is full of collagen, and the timing of the steam fish are well controlled. It is well made.

上湯浸菜心 is average. But, a good break from all the filling dishes that we have ordered. As they say in French, Comme ci, comme ça.

Lastly, a nice and mild 生磨蛋白杏仁茶 was ordered to end our special dinner. You can taste the western almond that was used to make the sweet soup. The best is that it is not too sweet. Nicely done.

A very nice meal and will definitely come back again for all the good food.

Food is good here, but it doesn't seem to be popular as both times I came for dinner on weekends the place was only half filled. We had about 14 people so we ordered quite a few dishes. My favorites were the appetiser fried tofu, steamed eggplant, house chicken (which I believe you have to pre-order), fried radish cake, oyster in claypot and their house fried rice. Can ignore the bird's nest stuffed chicken wing, the idea sounds fancy but the bird's nest is tasteless anyways so might as well have normal chicken wings. They are famous for their abalone and shark's fin but I didnt get a chance to try.

Not the friendliest service here but the food makes up for this. The restaurant's seating /building configuration is also kind of strange so try to book a room if you have many people. They have many tvs outside which could potentially be noisy though but I think it's a good place to invite people for dinner.

Plans for lunch today fell apart when the majority of people who promised attendance dropped off one by one. A last-minute change of plan was made, and a few of us ended up at Celebrity Cuisine (名人坊) - which earned itself a macaron from the chubby baby.

Dim sum was the natural choice for lunch, and pricing was pretty reasonable. I'm not sure whether it's because we arrived pretty late for lunch, but the quality of the items were below my expectations. I've had a few dinners here and my overall impressions have been reasonably good.

Pan-fried radish cake (煎蘿蔔糕) - there were thin strands of radish but the overall texture was pretty mushy, and prone to falling apart when picked up by the chopsticks. Interestingly I tasted bits of liver sausage (潤腸) inside, which is not normally used. Complemented perfectly by the excellent in-house XO sauce.

Pan-fried baby pigeon (炸乳鴿) - excellent. There was a milky/creamy flavor to it all, and it was very well seasoned...and just a tad too salty for me. Crispy skin with very juicy meat - what little of it there was anyway...

Crab-in-a-box (大良鮮蟹盒) - since I didn't copy the menu items, I'm using my old crappy translation from a year ago. The batter was excellent - full of the oil used to deep-fry it - and the crab roe inside was decent. Best with some Worcestershire sauce.

Deep-fried dumplings (咸水角) - pretty disappointing. The dough outside was too mushy, and not enough filling inside.

Steamed prawn dumplings (蝦餃) - a disaster. Waaaaay over-steamed, to the point the three dumplings became "conjoined" and any attempt to separate them resulted in holes in the skins. The dumplings were huge and filled with prawns, but quanity didn't make up for the shortfall in quality. This reminds me of the ones at Dim Sum (譽滿坊), as those are almost always over-steamed also. Stephen Chow in the movie God of Cookery (食神) would probably have shouted "零分(Zero)!"

Fish marrow with scallions and garlic in claypot (砂鍋薑蔥魚云) - I'm not a big fan of fishhead, so this was never gonna thrill me. The soft gelatin "marrow" behind the gills was kinda nice I guess... but pretty "fishy" even with the scallion and garlic.

Deep-fried seafood bowl (金錢海鮮盒) - very ho-hum. Looks like a stuffed shiitake mushroom, but in reality it's a piece of toast at the bottom, topped with mashed potato mixed with chives, tiny shrimps and some crunchy water chestnut bits, with a few very thin wafers of shiitake mushroom on the surface for decoration. Dunno what to make of this, except that it's kinda like an alternative version of the shrimp toast (蝦多士)...

Honestly, this was a pretty disappointing lunch. Not exactly star-worthy in my view. The chef came out and asked what we thought of the food, but given that he's a friend of a friend, I didn't have the heart to give him my honest opinion...

original blogpost with pictures: http://chi-he-wan-le.blogspot.com/2010/02/whos-celebrity.html

Less than a week after coming for lunch for the first time, we are back this time celebrating a friend's birthday. The 4 of us make an effort to celebrate each others' birthdays every year.
Birthday girl called the shot as to what to order. We tried.
Seafood parcels didn't have much seafood, more of either potato or yam, only one shrimp in the middle and not much taste at all. Pretty to look at only
Deep fried chicken was nice but not unlike what you can find in most good Cantonese restaurants
Salted egg yolk prawns were nice and we only ordered 2 as 2 friends didn't want to eat prawns. They were $120 each, a bit expensive for what it is. It's not as big as it looks in the photo.
Kai lan fried with salted fish was fine
Chuk San braised with bean curd was nice. The bean curd a nice texture and the chuk san didn't have the soil taste Chuk San can sometimes have
Rice in Lotus leaf was the dish that everyone thought was good. Not oily and smelt nicely of the leaf, some crab meat and dried conpoy on top.
Fried turnip cake, fruits and sweet almond soup with egg white was on the house, very generous of them. The fruits were sweet. I don't like egg white in almond soups, so didn't have it and I don't like signature turnip cake. I guess everyone has their favourite type of turnip cake. I don't like this sticky and wet one.
As usualy, we had a good time and birthday girl appreciated the cake I made her.

As my buddy from Singapore was in town, I took 2 half days off to frolick with her in town.

She suggested coming to this restaurant as it was just awarded 2 Michelin stars and is owned by a Singaporean who raves about the food. As it's a big deal, I booked the table for 2 two weeks in advance but still only got the table by the door.

My buddy says chicken wings stuffed with bird's nest and deep fried crab claws were recommended but she wanted to try the dim sum. My buddy is a princess turned queen and what she says goes, so we ordered the following

Turnip cake. Maybe my anticipation was too high, I didn't like it. It tasted gluey and the appearance was grey and not pretty. Our family has been making turnip cakes forever and I didn't like this version.

Long thin spring rolls. These were narrow and long and cut into sections. They were easier to eat than the normal ones as you can put the whole thing into your mouth and no crispy bits fall out. This was the only dim sum that was a bit different. However, some pieces were a bit darker than others, fried for different lengths of time.

Prawn Dumpling- Ha Kau. These were the big varieties so 'in' in the 90s. There were 3 and they were good, as far as big ones go. The skin was thin and not sticky and they tasted fresh. I now prefer the normal sized ones as I do not like one big prawn inside the dumplings. .

Fried kai lan was next. This was the best dish. It wasn't overdone, presented nicely and was not oily, nor did it have mushed up garlic stuck onto the vegetables. The Kai Lan were good quality too. Our favourite dish

Our last dish was Fried crab meat rice vermicelli. We both love crab dishes and so I looked forward to this dish most. It turned out to be a little tasteless, not enough saltiness and the crab meat, though from fresh crabs were not sweet. However, it wasn't oily and so it was OK.

It was a nice lunch, more so because of the company than the wonderful food. It was definitely above normal standard but not among the best dim sum I have had in town.
I look forward to going for dinner here tomorrow as we may be trying more of their signature dishes.

I love Cantonese food but most of the time, where the food is great, the restaurants have very closely packed tables and are very noisy and waiters tend to be snappier.
Celebrity Cuisine is one of my favorite traditional Cantonese restaurants for its high quality ingredients, discrete decibel levels and consistently well-executed traditional dishes. I have been to this restaurant about 6-7 times and quality has been very high throughout. (I apologize for not taking pictures of the food. Cos when the food comes, I do want to get straight to it with my chopsticks instead of whipping out my camera )
Few recommended dishes:
Radish cake (萝卜糕）: Panfried outside, very soft inside with large visible shreds of radish and cubed sized chinese sausage.
Spinach/Fishball congee (菠菜鲮鱼球粥）: Great balanced flavor with sumptious fishballs and delicate fish stock slightly flavored with ginger
Chinese wine chicken (花雕鸡）: Everytime this dish is presented, most of the other tables would turn around and look at what you are eating because the steamy fragrance of the dish rises up and fills the room with this aromatic smell of the Chinese wine. The chicken is extremely tender and flavorful. White meat is tender and the dark meat is richly flavored. And this sauce goes so well with white rice this dish takes 45 minutes to make, so pre-order if you don't want to wait.
Pipa Tofu (琵琶豆腐）： This is one of the best dishes in this restaurant and one of the best Pipa Tofu I've ever had. The Tofu is extremely soft and almost creamy inside with bits of minced pork (I think) and the outside is deep fried crispy but not a bit oily. With salt and vinegar, simply divine. I can eat a few at one go!!
Other dishes like fried beef noodles, fried rice etc are also good but the above are the star dishes in my opinion. Goose stew is also tasty but can be a little tough for the breast meat and a little too bony for people who like easy food (although the sauce is divine too).
Desserts are generally good as well. I like the almond tea and the bird's nest. Sweet potato soup is also very good.
Service is generally polite and efficient. Definitely recommended..Try it and write me back. Enjoy!

I got together last night with one of my winetasting groups, which consists of staff from a local wine shop as well as some of customers. This was our first gathering of the new year, and the organizer put together a great menu at Celebrity Cuisine (名人坊) at Hotel Lan Kwai Fong. There was a ton of food and an abundance of wine, so it made for a really good evening.

The menu:
Appetizers including pan-fried turnip cake (煎蘿蔔糕), deep-fried egg tofu (炸玉子豆腐) and sauteed string beans (乾扁四季豆). The turnip cake was excellent, especially with a bit of the XO sauce from the restaurant. The others were OK.

The snake soup (蛇羹) was pretty well done, looking a bit darker than the ones I've had in recent memory. I refrained from putting too much white chrysanthemem petals and shredded lemon leaves into the soup.

Vegetarian roll (羅漢上素卷) - the wrapped tofu skin and vegetables was a nice palate cleanser after the soup.

Chicken wings stuffed with birds nest (燕窩釀鳳亦) - very well done. The wings were air-dried before being deep-fried, and the skin was so light and crispy.

Crab-in-a-box (大良鮮蟹盒, pardon the poor English translation) - the chunk of crab roe is deep-fried inside a shell made from batter. Kinda interesting.

Giant grouper steamed in bamboo basket (籠仔蒸龍躉) - not a big fan of this dish. The skin of the grouper is very thick with lots of gelatin fat, which gets sticky after being steamed. I would have preferred the skin to be fried. The chilli pepper here provided the spice to this dish.

Prawns stir-fried with XO sauce (XO醬炒蝦仁) - anything done with XO sauce from this place is bound to be good...

Braised abalone and goose web (鮑魚炆鵝掌) - the abalone was small but decent, and the goose web as nice and soft.

Choy sum in broth (上湯浸菜心) - very nice and tender, cooked with the broth of the abalone.

Stuffed duck (福祿百寳鴨) - did not touch much of this dish, as my plate had almost no duck and was all about the stuffing, which was mostly taro .

Chinese-style beef steak (燒汁牛肉件) - the usual pan-fried medallions of beef with lots of onions. Not bad.

Roast pigeon (烤乳鴿) - very nicely done, and a perfect match for the Pinot Noir...

Shrimp and ham fried rice (鮮蝦雲腿炒飯) - really good fried rice with a lot of wok hei (鍋氣). The preserved ham from Yunnan really made the dish.

Almond cream with egg whites (生磨蛋白杏仁茶) - this is such a good almond cream, and the addition of egg whites always take this to the next level. Great way to finish the meal together with the fruits.