The New Territories is a bit of a strange place to go to for a gwailo like me. For the most part, the NT is mainly residential, with the exception of a few picturesque national parks and hiking trails. My best friend in HK lives in Tuen Mun, quite a far distance from Kowloon Tong. We both loooove food, and we made a pact to dine with one another at least one night a week. Given the distance between us, we settled on meeting somewhere in between our two respective train stations. Whilst I first suggested Tsuen Wan, she was insistant that I come out to try the food in Yuen Long. Boy was I surprised.
Price: $200 HKD (total)
Rating: 8/10
The first week we dined at Kam Tin Sushi, a busy japanese eatery just off an arterial road in Yuen Long. We ordered two types of Sushi, Salmon and Fatty Tuna (which is soooo hard to find in HK), as well as agadashi tofu and tempura (not pictured).
The sushi was great, the rice was nice and moist and the fish tasted soooo fresh compared to some of the big sushi chains (genki, itamae, sushi express, i'm lookin' at you). The actual cuts of fish were really long making them a little harder to eat.
The agadashi tofu was great, lightly battered and fried with scallions, bonito flakes, and a nice soy and mirin sauce, with piping hot tofu on the inside.
Price: $100 HKD (per head)
Rating: 9/10
The second week the dinner date was at Tai Wing Wah, a veteran cantonese restaurant in Yuen Long serving up very homely kind of food, mostly packed with families.
An old canto vegetable classic up first, water spinach with egg and peanuts. Quite nice and a bit different from your average Choy Sum with Oyster Sauce, and very healthy too. Good thing it was healthy considering the other dishes we ordered.
Roasted crispy skin pork belly with mustard and sugar. Yep, Mustard and Sugar. You get a ramekin with each, and you get some of the fatty pork belly, dip it into the mustard and then into the sugar. Sounds gross, is actually delicious in a strange way.
Some communist beer to wash it all down.
The next dish was by far the biggest surprise, and the health conscious should perhaps turn away now. Tai Wing Wah are famous for their 'pork oil rice' - I somewhat mistakenly assumed that this would just be a fried rice dish, but nope, I was wrong. My friend ordered it, and you're given a fairly small bowl of plain white rice. Okaaaay. You're then given a bottle of extra premium soy sauce (the vintage champagne of soy sauces), and then a plastic bottle of a thick red oil. That's the "pork oil" and essentially, its just pig fat. And oh my god... it is delicious.
You mix a bit of the soy sauce and the pork oil in with the rice to your liking. The end result is hard to describe. At the end of the day its just a bit of rice, soy sauce and fat but its so delicious. The pork oil gives it a subtle meaty kind of taste, and the soy sauce adds a bit of saltiness. Given how terrible it all is for your arteries, you really shouldn't have more than one bowl of the stuff (and the staff advise of that), but it's so freaking delicious I could have happily eaten 4 bowls. Had I done, I might not be still living though.
For dessert, the biggest freaking Mala Gou (steamed sponge cake) i've ever seen, it was absolutely massive! The appeal of this dish is that it just takes like a sponge cake fresh out of the oven, it's light and airy and sweet and it's woofed down in a matter of minutes.