Aunt Or Private Kitchen (Ngoh Je) - Ngoh, Ngor, Or...

Deep fried shrimp toasts

Private kitchens (think speakeasies for food) have been "in vogue" for a while. Some attribute its rise to the financial crisis of 1997 when Asia was in a craphole and a lot of people got fired from their jobs. It would appear that a lot of these people wanted to cook, and to sell their cooking, because private kitchens sprung and spread as quickly as mould in a Hong Kong summer.

8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo BOMBANA - Push the gondola out

Rib (for two)

Just look at that. Geezus. Tender, juicy, with the right amount of fat, good bite, excellent beefy flavour. Oh, if I could just eat that off the day-m screen now. It might seem weird that I crave steak from an Italian restaurant (that's not a steak Florentine), but this one from 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo Bombana is better than any I've had at steakhouses in Hong Kong. (Though I'm yet to go to talk of the steak-town, Steakhouse at Grand Hyatt, which I've heard very good things about).

Kin's Kitchen - Hong Kong Cantonese

Smoked Chicken

This was from back in April (I know, I know), but it's worth writing about because they do a nice mix of Hong Kong-style Canto home cooking (in that there are a few "fusion" dishes) and traditional restaurant fare that's a bit hard to find nowadays. It's also worth noting that the owner of Kin's Kitchen is also the owner and founder of Hong Kong's first private kitchen, Yellow Door. While I found the food at Yellow Door (Sichuanese) decent but underwhelming, I feel much better about the food at Kin's. I feel like they have more intimate knowledge about what they're cooking. Plus, you can make bookings for smaller parties as it's just an upscale-ish neightbourhood restaurant.

Shung Hing (Sheung Hing) - Chiuchow Chow

Not bugs! They're mini-clams

Chiuchow (or Chaozhou, or Teochew) is, geographically speaking, merely a city in eastern Guangdong province. Yet it has its own dialect (Teochew and Cantonese are generally not mutually intelligible) and own distinct cuisine*, specialising in seafood, and with a clear preference for the sour, spiced (but not spicy) and savoury, often all at once. This is awfully unscientific of me, but when I see/hear/taste lu shui (滷水), a braising broth/sauce of soy, star aniseed etc., or a more-than-usual amount of white pepper, I assume it's Teochew, or Teochew-influenced. And when you start a conversation about Chiuchow/Teochew food in Hong Kong, Sheung Hing in Sheung Wan will invariably come up.