Waking Up Is Hard To Do!

Today's lunch was supposed to be lunch at my favorite Japanese place in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my butt out of bed before they closed since Japanese places always have their siestas in the middle of the day. For the record, it wasn't cause I was lazy that I couldn't get out of the bed, but rather because it was so freakishly cold that I couldn't get out of bed. Anyways the end result was that I missed my Japanese food and had Ding Tai Fung again. Click here to check out my last post on them. I'm only going to post the new dishes we tried from them today.

Spicy pork vermicelli with chili sauce. Amazeballs!

Look at all the ginger. I hate ginger but the only time I'll use it is with vinegar for xiao long bao. By the way, we got the crab roe xiao long bao today as well.

Left is my order of "dan dan" mian aka Taiwanese style noodles in spicy, peanut sauce. Right is stir fried peas.

These are the black sesame buns I really wanted to try last time. They were delicious! The second picture is really smokey. That's how hot it was inside!

Delicious. I really don't know what I'm going to do once I get back to L.A. The Ding Tai Fung there will never be able to compare. In fact, I think the one in HK is actually better than the one in Taiwan as well.

Later at night... Grandpa brought some some egg tarts & wife cakes.

Here are some egg tarts and wife cakes from Tai Cheong in Causeway Bay. The egg tarts were okay. The wife cakes were blah though. I've definitely had better from Taiwan. 老婆餅 literally meaning wife cakes is a traditonal Chinese pastry with flaky skin. It's made with winter melon, almond paste, and sesame. There's an awesome legend behind it where basically a husband reunites with his wife after making these cake pastries after she was sold off as a slave. Ya da ya da. It's supposed to be romantic. Just eat them! Too bad the ones from Tai Cheong kinda sucked.

Talk about false advertising on the box. Grandpa should have know better. Anything with English on it can't be awesomely good. It's just a fact. You'd rather eat stuff that you don't know than eat something that is perfectly translated because that equals commercialized! Word.

Happy Eatings!

Ding Tai Fung Goodness With a Complimentary Hint of Rude Chinaman

(DTF's menu.)

Greetings from Hong Kong. Yes, I am in Hong Kong once again even though I was here less than 3 weeks ago. I'll be blogging on food in Hong Kong, Singapore, & Taiwan for the next few weeks until I get back to L.A. and continue blogging on food there. Anyways, I'm back to celebrate Chinese New Year and being the good foodie that I am, I got off the plane and headed out to eat food right away! What location did I choose to make my first stop of my Hong Kong trip? Ding Tai Fung! So there's Ding Tai Fungs all over the world. Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Los Angeles, to name a few. The original Ding Tai Fung is in Taiwan. I've also been to the one in Beijing but they recently opened 2 shops in Hong Kong so I had to go try! Their servers are all from Taiwan! Super legit! Awesome. If you go during the lunch or dinner the lines go out the door. We got there at 3PM so we walked right in!

This is "shao rou". It's basically a cold pork that is grinded together into this rectangular shape and is dipped with vinegar with ginger.If you recall, I ate this at another place last time I was in Hong Kong.

Shallot & green onion dried noodles. This basically Chinese ramen but without a soup base! Chinese ramen is called "la mian." Delicious!

This is steamed tofu in crab sauce. So delicious! I bet you are drooling right now.

And the famous dish finally comes out! This is what DIng Tai Fung is known for... their Xiao Long Bao. We ordered 2 baskets of these dumplings. 1 was the plain pork one and another was with crab meat. They were so good that they melted in your mouth.

Here is what we had for dessert. The outside is the same thin skin used for the xiao long bao but for dessert they put red bean paste inside. It comes out steaming hot for a perfect end to an amazing meal!

You guys are probably wondering why I titled this post Goodness With a Complimentary Hint of Rude China Man. So obivously as you just saw my table ordered some bomb ass food. There was a family sitting next to us that were tourists from Mainland China. The dad physically got up out of his seat took his son to our table and stuck their head to point and examine what we were eating. Um seriously? Chinese people have no concept of personal space yes I know that already but seriously? I'm eating... get your head out of my table. He could have just tapped us and asked politely what we were eating and we could have recommended him something but he decided to take it upon himself to check it out.

Anyways, for all my buddies reading this at home that are drooling over these awesome dumplings there's a Ding Tai Fung in L.A. It's definitely not as good but it's still pretty tasty. The L.A. location is at 1088 South Baldwin Ave. Arcadia, 91007.

Happy Eatings and please don't stick your head at my table. I know I have impeccable taste in food but for real.