Issaya Siamese Club, Hong Kong - Smoke and Mirrors

Choo-Chee Salmon Rom Kwan at Issaya Siamese Club, Hong Kong

Let me start by saying this: Issaya Siamese Club is a gorgeous looking restaurant.

Nothing sloppy about Paste, Bangkok

Prawn, galangal peanut relish and pomelo on betel (cha-plu) leaves 

It's a funny coincidence that I'm writing up this blog post in Sydney, because this was the city that the chef-owners behind Paste were before opening earlier this year (well, calling it Sydney is probably a stretch, as they were in Mittagong). We came on the recommendation of fellow food & travel writer Gloria @foodandtravelhk, who described Paste's steamed rice as the most fragrant thing ever (well, the literal translation was "so fragrant it has no friends" that's Cantonese slang for you). If they can make plain ol' steamed rice worth talking about, then it was good enough for us.

Cooking class with the lan in Bo.lan - Part 2: Chicken relish and Eggnets

Chicken relish (rear) with fried fish

After the panang curry, we moved on to the other two dishes on the agenda - chicken relish and egg net rolls. I didn't properly transcribe Dylan's recipe or ingredients list, but hopefully the pics will give you a fair idea of what was going on.

Cooking class with the lan in Bo.lan - Part 1: Panang curry

Thai Panang Curry

I joined the Amateur Gourmet group on Meetup less than a year ago - they're a great bunch of foodies in Hong Kong who meet to go out and try new restaurants, do potlucks, food-oriented holidays and basically anything food-related and fun. The organiser, V, is super on-the-ball with what's on in the food scene, and had the great vision of bringing over Dylan Jones from the highly acclaimed Bangkok restaurant Bo.lan to guest chef for us foodies in Hong Kong. (He's the "lan" in Bo.lan" - Bo is his partner (in life and the restaurant) Duangporn Songvisava, aka "Bo").

Ruamjai Thai - Kowloon City Searching

Minced pork and basil stir fry (krapow moo) with rice

Kowloon City is known as Hong Kong's Little Bangkok, brimming with Thai restaurants. In recent years, it's also become known as something of a destination for gourmet grocery shopping, probably due to its proximity to well-to-do residential areas like Kowloon Tong, and its relative ease for car parking (rather, stopping the car - having a driver wait). If you want to buy crazy expensive Japanese watermelons in the shape of Hello Kitty, top of the range beef etc., you'll probably find it in these parts. It's also home to what was one of my favourite Chiu Chow restaurants, Cheong Fat. They've become a bit sloppy nowadays, but that's another story for another day.