Papi in Wanchai - Go for the Tripe

Place emphasizes small plates "tapas style" Italian food. Original location in Elements in Kowloon been covered to death by expat blogs. All have missed out the best dish on the menu...The tripe (pictured, dish to the left). Perfectly cooked, soft, tender, not rubbery or hard. Quality of tomato sauce is something one might find in Italy and salted (with Pecorino cheese) to perfection. A dish very easy to screw up, but executed to perfection. Took me back to my study abroad time in Italy, where my host mom made some of the most incredible Italian food... Other dishes not as good. Lamb meatballs fine but pedestrian, ditto bone marrow. Spaghetti Carbonara slightly over-cooked and sadly over salted. Sausage and onion pizza...components all very nice individually, onion went beautifully with sauce and cheese, though would have liked the crust to be more chewy than crispy. Sadly the sausage, though tasty, just didn't mix well with the rest. A solid pizza if they can use another kind. Too full to have real dessert (others say dessert is the best part of the meal here), had the imported gelato, 3 small scoops (1 each of vanilla, hazelnut and cookies and cream). Former two creamy and light, latter pedestrian.

Warm atmosphere, friendly service, well worth going just to have the tripe with a drink.

MC/Visa/Amex Accepted
Reservations Accepted

HKD 250 - HKD 400 per person 
(440 pp spent, no drinks ordered and we over-ordered by 2 dishes)

Shop R011, Civic Square 
3/F Elements Mall
1 Austin Road
West Kowloon, Hong Kong
2811 2681

26/F QRE Plaza
202 Queens Road East
Wanchai, Hong Kong
6979 9690

www.papi-hk.com

The Big Bite 3 HKD (39 US cent) Wings

Place has been covered by the blogs but not enough people seem to know about Tuesday wing night (usually packed but none of my friends in any circle had heard of it).

Essentially, buy a beer (HKD 50 - HKD 70) and you can get HKD 3/wing, a bargain in this town. Has 5 varying levels of spice , with hottest being "Homicide" Not the spiciest wings ever, but pretty painful to eat. No one in my group (I've gone twice) has eaten more than 1. Took me 10 minutes to get my taste buds back. "Suicide" wings (pictured), the second spiciest, much less spicy and pretty good. "Medium" or 3rd on the list are standard wings, pretty good. Menu also has chili fries, poutine and a variety of burgers and hot dogs neither of which I have tried. Fries pedestrian but offer a decent balance to spicy wings. Beers include Molson and some crafts, like Rogue and North Coast.

Note older post from May 2013 on Champs Sports Bar - what I think are the best wings in HK but expensive at HKD 70-80 for 6 wings.

Cash or Octopus Card only
No Reservations

HKD 80 - HK 150 per person

Shop 4B, G/F Kar Fu Building
196 - 202 Java Road 
North Point, Hong Kong
6979 9690

Kosher Meal

Dinner

Appears that purity/separation from other (potentially non-kosher) food is taken very seriously. See first photo below, the red label lists the meal's contents individually. The tray, itself is as big or bigger than the seat's tray table, and is heavily saran-wrapped. The main course (just above the red label in the first photo) is heavily wrapped and sealed separately from the other items, but within the tray. In other words, can be tough to unwrap the tray and then the main; risk of making a mess is not to be underestimated. Then you have to somehow get rid of a large handful or saran wrap while the flight attendants walk around with the dining cart. In short - the logistics of getting to the food are not ideal.

Now to the food. Appetizer is a sort of spiced potato salad with tuna. Edible. A sort of dense but decent roll (beats the airline standard fare) with non-dairy spread (mixing meat and dairy is a big no-no in the Kosher diet). Main is a "beef casserole" more like a sort of salted roast beef with carrots, sauerkraut and potatoes. Very edible though was not a fan of the potatoes. Dessert was a kind of artificial-tasting cake, which I didn't mind, had a caramel topping. 

Overall, not too shabby. Happy eat again, minus complex logistics of unwrapping the whole thing and worrying about where to throw out saran wrap. A close second to the Hindu meal previously reviewed.

Date of travel: November 2013
Flight: BA 293 - LHR (London Heathrow) - IAD (Washington Dulles)

Hindu Meal

Warning - This is what I believe, a liberal interpretation of what is permissible in a Hindu diet, one could call it a Hindu non-vegetarian meal. Many Hindus do not eat meat or fish of any kind. It appears that CX's definition for this meal is that  beef or pork won't be used but that fish/chicken will be. Folks who are strictly vegetarian or want such an Indian meal should go for the Asian/Hindu vegetarian meal (code AVML) instead.

Dinner

Now down to business...Best airline special meal ordered to date that's been reviewed here. Pause

Was more than edible. Main dish of Fish Jalfrezi, fish was dry (nothing new here), but curry more than serviceable. Airline rice in the middle and on other side, a sort of curried/spiced potato. Soft and pretty flavorful. Standard dinner roll and butter, ditto fruit. Dessert was some kind of Kesari - like thing (a sort of sweet cream of wheat with clarified butter, plenty of sugar and food coloring) pretty tasty, but like most other Indian desserts, a heart attack inducer.

Date of travel: November 2013

Flight: CX 636 - SIN (Singapore) - HKG (Hong Kong)

St. Roque 34 Cafe in Macau

Note: Not in HK, but Macau's close enough, easy to get to and this place is delicious and not well known.

A place we stumbled into after our reservation at Albergue 1601 was not honored. Were told on the phone that no reservations were taken. Arrived to a near empty restaurant around 1130am on a Sunday and were told  it was full. Apparently full of bookings (didn't they say they don't take them?) and despite our efforts to say that we were told no bookings were taken on the phone...

Walked around nearby charming area and came across St. Roque 34 Cafe. Small, charming place and easy to miss. Ordered chicken stew, fish curry, croquettes and a "hamburger." Croquettes (pictured below) are minced cod and deep fried. Crispy and light outside, moist and flavorful inside. Perfect. Chicken stew and fish curry flavorful and full of different layers of spices though without overdoing it. Not Asian style and worked well with both rice and bread. "Hamburger" was the star, 2 patties which appeared to be pan fried, with crisp edges on the outside, but moist, tasty inside and not heavy. Was not beef, tasted actually like Indian-style tuna cutlets mom used to make but apparently (we found out later) was pork. Oops. Very tasty and a mistake worth making. Repeatedly. Was topped with a dollop of a sort of thousand island-like dressing sauce on which sat a fresh shrimp. Served with salad. A must try. Lots of stuff on menu needs 24 hours advanced notice but looks tasty.

MC/Visa accepted (I think - we used cash)
Reservations accepted

HKD/MOP 150-200 per person 

Rua S. Roque, N. 34, R/C Macau (near Igreja de. S. Lazaro)
澳門聖祿杞街34號文輝大廈地下. 
 +853 2835 4011 / +853 6640 8385

Phone transition

To add to the previous post - just an illustration (below) regarding why I had to go through a phone transition. 

Gluten Free Meal

Dinner

First - apologies for the poor photo quality. Currently in the middle of a phone transition courtesy of my clumsyness (or fat fingers). 12 days ago, I may or may not have dropped my phone at a crosswalk, whereupon said phone fell on the street as the traffic light turned green, 4 cabs ran over it. R.I.P. Anyhow...

Best part of meal was the rice cakes. Says a lot. Rice dry and overcooked, chicken dry and flavorless. Bell peppers edible, mushrooms the kind of standard stuff often seen in airline breakfast omelets. Fruit may have been past its prime... As expected everything was very bland. Funny thing, lady sitting next to me had low calorie meal which had the same chicken and mushrooms but different veggies and of course, the ubiquitous airline roll and some interesting looking dessert.
 

Date of travel: October 2013
Flight: CX 636 - SIN (Singapore) - HKG (Hong Kong)