Bun Me

Yes, Pisco loves Bun Me.  I went last week and tried the lemongrass chicken banh mi, and it was excellent.  Tender chicken, with strong lemongrass flavor, made a great base for the sandwich.

However, the accompanying coffee was vile.  Thin, flaccid, and bitter, perhaps its only positive quality was that it was piping hot.  On your next visit, grab the banh mi to go, and head over to nearby Café Little for your cuppa.

Duke’s Burger

Pisco walked by Duke’s Burger and noticed that they had closed (or were, perhaps, transforming).  That is all.

La Taste

When you’re in the mood for a banh mi, skip La Taste and head over to Bun Me, whose version is better on every dimension – meats, pickled veggies, spread, and especially the bread.  The dry, toasted baguette they gave me had lost its elastic crumb and with it, all hope of mediocrity.  The bread is the first thing that touches your lips – it had better be good or else it’s an uphill battle.

However, the pomelo/shrimp salad was delicious, with toasted cashews adding a nice counterpoint to the copious fruit in the bowl.

Review: Amante

Pisco had a light lunch, and his growing hunger kept asking for pasta as darkness fell.  I’ve walked by Amante several times per week since moving to Sheung Wan, and always wondered what it was like.  It seemed a bit pricey, a bit ex-patty… but let’s give it a try.

We decided to sit at one of the two outside tables, since the industrial-strength air-con was running full blast inside.  The tiny outdoor area is a rare al fresco area (for Western joints, let’s say), and as long as you can tolerate an adjacent table full of smokers and the exhaust of passing taxis, you’ll enjoy it.  If you are sensitive to those particular bouquets, you might consider moving away from Hong Kong.

We ordered a starter of mozzarella with tomatoes and basil; the mozzarella was fine, but the tomatoes were a little tasteless.  New Jersey this is not (in so many ways…).  The salad as a whole was fine, if small.

We ordered the two pasta dishes on the menu – spaghettini alle vongole and a seafood linguini.

The linguini was quite good – lots of shrimp, scallops, and squid floating around in a not overly-large bowl of linguini, along with crispy chopped red and yellow peppers.  The linguini had been cooked fifteen seconds past al dente, unfortunately, but quite good nonetheless.  A simple dish, executed competently.

The spaghettini was also good, with a large helping of clams nearly covering the pasta.  The pasta was a bit too salty and a little overcooked, but the portion was sized appropriately and it did the trick.

Aside from teaching the chef how to cook al dente pasta, Pisco has only one suggestion for the fine folks at Amante: for the love of Italy, please stop using the battery-powered pepper mill.  Every time the waiter reached over the table to use it, one thought passed through my mind: “Don’t tase me, bro!“  It is as loud as it is tasteless, so please upgrade to a manual grinder.  Thank you.

One starter, two mains, and a bottle of Pellegrino lifted 440 HKD from my wallet, making this a good bet for the occasional dinner, but probably not a regular outing.

Now, does anyone know where I can find a good carbonara in this town?

Food: B
Ambiance: B (upgrade to B+ without smokers)
Value: C
Service: C- (upgrade to B without the taser)

Amante
80 Bonham Strand East
Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
2827-8277
[map]

Taipei: Shilin Night Market

Pisco just returned from a walk through Taipei’s Shilin Night Market – what an experience.  It’s the largest night market I’ve ever seen – probably two or three times larger than my previous reference point, the Richmond Night Market near Vancouver, completely packed with lost of people (mostly young), buzzing with excitement (and scooters), with delicious foods everywhere.

Here’s what I remember eating:

• Slab of deep-fried chicken, around the size of a frisbee
• Fried bun with pork and veggies, which dripped all over my treasured Beer Lao t-shirt when I bit into it
• Grilled squid on a stick, powdered with something sweet and spicy
• “Cool noodles”, a small bowl of noodles with cucumber in a light peanut/sesame/citrus sauce.  This was the star dish of the night and it rocked my world with its simplicity, cool relief, and flavors as bright as they were deep.
• A large, softball-sized bun filled with minced meats and a handful of spring onion, baked in what appeared to be a tandoor to this untrained eye.  I swear I saw this stall on TV, and the bun was superb.
• Deep-fried fish paste with boiled egg
• Papaya milk
• Warm sugarcane juice

Each dish was around TWD 30-50 (USD 1-2).  There are probably hundreds of stalls, and you can tell the good ones since they have lines of people waiting, while the mediocre or new stalls watch plaintively as their neighbors rake it in hand over fist.

It’s a highly recommended experience.  I can’t wait to go back.

Sous-vide steak

A nice primer on cooking a sous-vide steak over at Serious Eats.

La Taste

Pisco heard about La Taste, a new Vietnamese restaurant in Central, from a local weekly.  Normally there is a certain amount of pride we take in visiting new restaurants before they are well-publicized, but that’s not always possible.  Pride can’t stand in the way of a good meal, so we headed down to Stanley Street in the rain tonight.

La Taste is located on the second first floor, and as we walked up the stairs, smooth R&B filled the air.  The main dining room has a white and mint green (avocado? pastel? who knows…) color scheme, and it’s very calming.  The menu is on the simple side, with six or seven pages with 5+ dishes on each one.  I initially had intended to follow a one-week vegetarian/flexitarian diet, but one look at the menu and I crumbled.  Four dishes were ordered: lotus root salad with shrimp, grilled shrimp paste on sugarcane, grilled chicken skewers on vermicelli salad, and soft shell crab rice paper roll.

The lotus root salad came first and we immediately realized we had over-ordered.  A large bowl of sliced lotus roots appeared, dressed with a nam pla-based sauce, with tiny bits of red chili pepper sprinkled throughout.  Several decently sized shrimp, possibly poached, lounged in the salad, which was very tasty, light, and filling.  The chili added just the right amount of heat; it’s a very well-executed dish.

The grilled shrimp paste on sugarcane arrived next.  I had no idea how to eat it – wrap in lettuce and dip in the accompanying loose peanut sauce?  Eat it like a corn dog?  Sensing my confusion, the server came and instructed me to wrap and dip.  Perhaps experts could make this work, but it was beyond me.  The actual shrimp paste was tasty, but I could not get the hang of eating it correctly.  I am sure it would taste better with the right mix of basil, mint, and peanut sauce, but I doubt I’ll order it again.

The grilled chicken skewers on bun were heavenly.  For some reason, grilled chicken in Vietnamese joints is always spectacular.  Tender, juicy, and slightly sweet, the two skewers came with a large bowl of bun, filled with pickled veggies and ground peanuts.  The salad had quite a full flavor profile, and I wondered if there was chicken broth in it; whatever it was, it was very satisfying and much more filling than most other bun salads I have tasted.

The soft shell crab roll was quite average by comparison.  The pieces were a little too large to be comfortably eaten in front of someone, and since it’s a roll,  you don’t really want to pull it apart.

Pisco hears that this place compares favorably to Nha Trang (apparently the chef used to work there), but not having been there, he cannot say for sure.  Whatever your reference point, I think La Taste clearly holds its own and provides a very good experience at very reasonable prices.  They are open until 11pm most nights.

The meal totaled HKD 206 for four dishes and one drink for two people.  You could easily get away with two dishes and walk away satisfied, but you’ll probably want to order more just to try more of their fine creations.

La Taste
1/F, 34-38 Stanley St.
Central, Hong Kong [map]
+852 2815 8863

Singapore Airlines, and relativity

Pisco walked onto his Singapore Airlines flight today, sat down, and crossly thought “my, those seatback screens are tiny”. When he learned that all 15 films played at the same time, and were not on-demand, he became positively ornery.

In my mind, SQ has always been one of the best airlines in the world, until today.  I guess Cathay, with its 10″ screens and 100+ on-demand films, takes that crown (for the routes I travel, at least).

How quickly the experience of something new and wonderful destroys the warm perception of yesterday’s amazement.

StudioCX 1, KrisWorld 0

Louis C. K. says it even more eloquently.