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2017-02-19
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Man, somehow I never knew that the Belcher's were so huge! Anyway, I recently came here for a dinner after an HKU talk. The graduate students had been to this place a number of times, but they are from places like Italy and afraid of spicy food, so I don't in general trust them to find Chinese restaurants that are good. Well good job, grad students!Embarrassingly, I live right near a ton of Chiu Chow restaurants, but I've only ever been to one of them, once. I'll be frank, I kind of always thoug
Embarrassingly, I live right near a ton of Chiu Chow restaurants, but I've only ever been to one of them, once. I'll be frank, I kind of always thought of Chiu Chow food as lame Cantonese food. This wasn't blow-your-mind great stuff, but most of what we got, I liked, and I could see going back here.
First up was the soya goose, and this was very good. It had a reasonable amount of tenderness, was not too fatty, and not overly salted.
Then came the green beans w/ pork. I thought this was a relatively weak rendition of this dish. The Sichuan version of this dish is always my favorite, with chilis, Sichuan peppercorns, and sometimes pickled mustard greens. This was reasonably bland; I even think they used my least favorite beans: the light-green yardlong beans (vs. the dark ones, which are fantastic). Still, it wasn't terrible.
The oyster omelet was a monster, but very crispy all over and not badly fishy. Even if you hated oysters I think you could have dug this. I thought it was one of the better oyster omelets I'd had.
We got a whole fish. I forget which part of the menu this was on, I assume some part titled 'whole fish' or some such. It was fine. Not quite as tender as I'd ideally want and I wound up swallowing a bone--obviously not the restaurant's fault, but I feel like I'll forever harbor a grudge against this fish. Pretty good though.
Finally was this noodle pancake thing: favorite dish of the night. On the outside it was crisp and crunchy. Sometimes you get crispy noodles; I don't tend to like them, because they don't have the softness and chewiness of noodles. These were just crispy around the edges, with softer interior noodles, a really good flavor, and some add-ins as well. The add-ins were vinegar (thumbs up) and bizarrely enough, sugar, which latter I did not try. Instead, I mixed them with some of the chili oil from the table, and they were pretty boss. Would order this again/ 10. Look, is it authentic? Why are you reading an English review if you want to know that? I have no idea. But they've got Chiu Chow classics (the omelet, the goose, for instance), the staff speak Chiu Chow (at least, according to one of the grad students). And anyway, the food is pretty good. There's an English menu... I don't think they really expect many gweilos to show up on any given day, but it is worth a go and I highly recommend that noodle thing (can't recall the name, but it's the one that says it comes with vinegar and sugar).
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