blame it on the end of year mad rush to get everything done
checklist:
- Christmas shopping - nope
- lose ends at work - nope
- end-of-year clean of apartment - yup
- end-of-year drinks - yup!
- booked a restaurant for Christmas dinner - nope
maybe the "mad rush" thing wasn't such a good excuse!
in between the end-of-year drinks i did manage to find the time to dine on some Peking Duck (北京填鴨).
for a long time i has been meaning to go to the famous "Spring Deer" restaurant here in Hong Kong but it's so hard to get a table as they are always fully booked.
when i called i was told that i could only get a table after 9:30pm.
late, but at least i could get a table.
so after a quick call to friends to see if we could hang-out that long for dinner i called back only be to told that they were now fully booked.
no~~~!! how could they be when i only called up like 5 minutes ago!
when i desperately told this to the guy on the phone he said "OK lar~! i book you table"
so along comes 9pm and we are all starving!
we though we would try our luck and turn up a bit earlier, see if they could squeeze us in somewhere.
the well-hidden entrance
it worked! we got in at 9:20....10min is huge difference when starving!
as imagined the place was packed! and believe me they weren't here for the atmosphere or the decor... it had to be the duck.
but first up was this yummy egg white dish (賽螃蟹) which although looks pretty bland is absolutely amazing and a chinese white cabbage and smoked ham (火腿炆津白), also very good.
then came the spiced dried beef (蒜香牛絲) with sesame seed pockets (叉子燒餅) which reminded me of some kinda western dish... but i can't quite put my finger on it.
mmm. spicy pizza?!
finally when we were all starting to get full, along came the duck.
i did ask for half a duck but was told we could only order a whole duck.
as with tradition, the waiter slices off the crispy skin at the table (just in case, for those of you who haven't eaten Peking Duck before, only the skin with a bit of the meat is eaten. don't ask me what happens to the rest of the duck....)
so how to eat this imperial dish? easy.
spread some hoisin sauce on the thin crepe-like pancake, add some crispy duck with alone with a few slices of cucumber and spring onion and then wrap. beautiful.
wash it down with some beer is even better!
actually this restaurant is also very well known for its shark-fin soup.
we planned to order it but the waiter said we had probably ordered enough, he was right.
i'm kinda glad too as i don't agree with the method of collecting the fins....
fins are cut from living sharks and because shark meat is worth much less, the finless and often still-living sharks are thrown back into the sea to make room on board the ship for more of the valuable fins. when returned to the ocean, the finless sharks, unable to move, either die from suffocation or are consumed by other sharks or animals.
point made.
this restaurant is like stepping back in time a bit and definitely worth trying.
book in advance!
Spring Deer Restaurant (鹿鳴春飯店)
42 Mody Road
Tsim Sha Tsui
Kowloon
Tel: 2366-4012 or 2366-5839
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