Shinya Shokudo - Food Manga Du Jour

Shinya Shokudo book 1, via official website

Sweeping the Asian food manga (comic) circles in the past year or so is Shinya Shokudo (深夜食堂 or Shinya Shokudou, and seemingly called Midnight Dining in English), a Japanese comic about a late night diner in the notorious nightlife district of Kabukicho, Tokyo. I'm not a comic obsessive, but since Les Gouttes de Dieu, this is the second food or wine-related comic I've been stuck into. In fact, it's the second comics series I've gotten stuck into in at least 5 years, full stop.

40 hours in Singapore - 3 Hainanese Chicken Rices

Yet Con

I found it pretty amazing that I managed so much on my 40-hour trip to Singapore without feeling physically disgusting or even having to pop any PPIs. This post is about the three chicken rices I had over two days (for other stuff, like a bak kuh teh I never thought I'd like but ended up loving, see here).

Yet Con
25 Purvis Street
+65 6337 6819

Chicken - Yet Con

I wanted to come here on my last visit, but arrived too late (8pm). This time, I came at 3pm. Believe it or not the restaurant was still 40% full.

The Miele Guide 2011 - Public Voting Opens & Why you should vote

Click me!

If you're an Asian foodie, you've no doubt heard of The Miele Guide. And if you're like me, you'd think that this guide, launched back in 2008, isn't quite as representative as it should be, with Singapore's Iggy's and Hong Kong's L'Atelier de Robuchon alternating between top 2 since the guide's inception (remember, that means top 2 in the whole of Asia).

So, a day or two after the whole World's 50 Best thang, you're thinking, "another day, another award". Yes, and no. The difference is, you get to vote for this one. You also get to add to the list of restaurants if the "panel" hasn't included them already. I don't know the stats but I think it's been heavy with votes from un certain démographique*, y'know, plus, I think native votes from Hong Kong have been wildly under-represented. It's time we tipped the scales and ruffled this guide's feathers a little.

There is a selfish ulterior motive though (not so ulterior now that I'm telling you I suppose?). Supposedly they will 'reward' the blog with the most click-throughs some interviews the winning chefs, and there's a gala dinner involved too (where the chefs are supposed to cook for you - but I thought they'd get to take a rest and receive their awards all dolled up and stuff?).

I've done a fair number of chefs' interviews, but they've all been for 'serious' publications and never this blog (where I can - and have - gone crazy and said stuff no editor would ever want to publish). I would love to ask the chefs some really ludicrous questions (ok, the kind PR peeps are probably not going to let me win now... not that I was going to anyway...)

To vote, click the Miele pic in this post, or the banner on the right hand side. Voting closes 16 May [edit] 30 June 2011.

Look, I'm not going to win this click-thru thing, but I'd like to think that we can shake things up, and your 10 votes might just do that.

P.S. Suggestions for ludicrous questions very welcome. If I don't get the chance this time, I might wrangle a few out of someone/somewhere later ;)

P.P.S. Do you find it disturbing that I'm doing this? It's not like Miele's paying me or anything (just to be clear...) 

* The Miele Guide is published by Ate Media, and one of its founders is Aun Koh, aka the blogger Chubby Hubby, and we all know how much they love Iggy's, and Singapore in general... 

Taichung - Hassen (Ba Qian) medicinal spicy hotpot

Pretty snazzy sauce station, hey?

This post is from my trip to Taichung, so it's way way way overdue, but I have to get it up because it's one of those things that no-one's really heard of but I think everyone needs to try.

Mala, the numbing spices common in Sichuan and central China, and loved in Taiwan, is pretty common in hotpots. You've probably had it before. But mala hotpot with medicinal herbs? That's definitely news to me. So when we saw it on the menu at this super sleek hotpot restaurant, Hassen (or in Mandarin, Ba Qian), we just had to try it.

Taichung - Chun Shui Tang, the birthplace of Bubble Tea

Of course, when we were planning this trip, the task of researching places to eat fell into my hands, and after some digging, I came across 春水堂 Chun Shui Tang (nb. this is standard pingyin/romanisation, not the pingyin they use in Taiwan), said to be the teashop that invented bubble tea (or boba). Who would've thought?

Taichung - Caffeine Fix at Orsir

The Taiwanese are passionate about their caffeine - there are tea shops every three steps, and coffee shops probably on every second street corner, some of which are sadly Starbucks, but there are treasures like Orsir amid the blah.

Taichung - Street Eats

Lu shui from Da Lu Tong, Fengjia night market

Before I left on this trip to Taiwan, it had been around 4 months since I'd left Hong Kong. Now, Hong Kong is a fabulous place, but for an incorrigible plane hopper, it'd been too long. When friends asked if I wanted to go to Taichung to go cycling, I immediately said yes. (Cycling? Me? Yes. I was that desperate to get away, I would have said yes to a marathon... well, maybe not, but you get the point).

For me, Taiwan's all about the street food. I know there's Taiwanese cuisine, and nouveau kaiseki-style eateries popping up all over, but eating streetside - that's what it's about to me.

It's all in the family - My dad's Beijing tips

While I was stuffing my face and consequently trying to work it off on a bike in Taichung (<< click on Taichung for more on that...), my dad and one of my uncles joined Facebook and both decided to add me. I guess that's what long weekends do to people.

So finally today I checked out my dad's profile page. He actually posted status updates... about food! One of which I shall post here - I'm sure he's happy to share...

Some popular posts from my old blog

Hong Kong

Old-plated: Gaddi's

Steak a break: Lawry's the Prime Rib

A matter of time: Yin Yang

Lost in Translation: Freshness Burger

The Sweet Life: Sweet 19

Elsewhere

e_ting in Taipei (May 2008)

Berlin (Jan 2008)

Milan (July 2008)

Singapore: FiftyThree

amuse gueule: potato chips with yogurt powder

We allowed ourselves one "fine" meal in Singapore. It was a toss up between Iggy's and FiftyThree. The former has been around for a long time and is generally known as one of the best fine dining establishments in the Lion City. I think they were even awarded best restaurant by the Miele Guide. I heard lunch there was a bargain (as fine dining goes) and was eager to try, but alas, they were full every day we were there. The latter is the newest endeavour of the venerable (well, in Singers anyway) Les Amis group, who also own Cepage in Hong Kong. I liked Cepage, but the reason why I wanted to go to FiftyThree was because I'd heard that the chef had trained at The Fat Duck, Noma, and several other notable eateries. They were full almost every day too, as they only have seven tables, but were able to fit us in for lunch, even though I'd wanted to go for dinner. The chef, Michael Han, kindly devised a special menu for us, which would include both lunch and dinner dishes.

Singapore: Miscellaneous eats

I arrived in Singapore on a late Thursday night a few weeks ago. Before that, the last time I landed in Changi was when I was about ten years old, which is longer than I care to remember... So this was all new to me - the airport, the streets - nothing looked familiar at all. It felt strange, as if my last visit was just a story my parents made up.

All this means I prepared for this trip like it was a completely foreign place. I trawled the internet, asked friends and family, and consulted travel guides. I tried to go to as many places on my list as possible, but in reality, given the horribly wet weather and our nice hotel rooms, we stayed in and were lazy and not entirely adventurous...

We landed, dropped our bags, and went for supper at Makansutra Glutton's Bay, Esplanade, which was recommended as one of the best places for hawker food. It started raining as soon as we got off the cab so we hid under the umbrellas at the open air hawker area and quickly gorged two plates - satays, which were wayyyyyy too sweet for me (but seems to be the norm in these parts - had similarly sweet satays in KL a month before) - so sweet that I've started calling them meat lollipops. The second thing was this stir fried carrot cake (actually turnip, but carrot and turnip are sometimes called the same thing in Chinese), full of sweet (maybe a bit too sweet), thick soy sauce goodness. The cake was soft without being mushy, and maybe even a little elastic/chewy.

Chin Chin Eating House on Purvis Street - this wasn't on my list at all - we had wanted to go to Yet Con for chicken rice, but were lazing around in the hotel for so long that we got there just as they were closing. Hungry, we went into the first place we saw - Chin Chin across the street. The auntie recommended we have their 'famous' pork chop - we saw a prize they got from a certain "Green Guide" for their pork chops specifically - but it was a complete flop (I guess that can only mean that the reviewers of the "Green Guide", whatever it is, have vastly different taste from yours truly). We were luckier with the mutton claypot (above) which was kind of like a rich, Malaysian-style bah kut teh (as opposed to Singaporean BKT which tends to be lighter and more peppery) with mutton instead of pork ribs.


For our final dinner we went to Jumbo on Dempsey Hill, as I felt guilty that we'd not had crab in Singapore. Pepper crab really isn't my thing (crab in general, isn't) so I asked around for the best place for chilli crab - Jumbo seemed to come up most, although for convenience (we were staying on Sentosa at this stage) we didn't go to the one on East Coast. In hindsight, maybe we should have because I was quite disappointed with our meal here. The crab didn't taste fresh at all, the sauce was too tart, but otherwise it was quite flat and bland... The second photo is of something I've forgotten the name of, but it's basically a Chinese cruller (yau za guai in Cantonese or you tiao in Mandarin) filled with shrimp paste, coated in sesame seeds and deep fried. It sounded like the perfect crossover of the super-crisp and elastic, gluten cruller and the Eurasian favourite, shrimp toast, but alas, the cruller lacked any kind of gluten 'stretchiness' and the shrimp paste almost tasteless. In short, I wouldn't go back.

Our last meal - a lightening quick chicken rice after we grabbed souvenirs for our hungry Hong Kong friends who specifically requested that we get them barbequed pork slices from Lim Chee Guan. We wanted to walk to Maxwell Food Centre, but I had stupidly packed my map into my luggage and no one around us was helpful with directions, so after a sweaty detour down a random Chinatown street, we settled on Tiong Bahru Boneless Hainanese Chicken Rice. For SG$2 I got a small plate of decent chicken rice and for another $1, a weird barley cordial (which was nothing like the refreshing barley beverages I had in Malaysia) that tasted like cold, sweet rice pudding. I think it was our cheapest meal in Singapore, and it was far from the worst.

Singapore: Bak Chor Mee

So it's not the prettiest looking bowl of noodles, but it was one of my more memorable meals in Singapore.

Everyone, from contributors at foodie forums, to local Singaporeans, to my picky friends and colleagues, told me that if I was going to 'do' a food court, it would have to be Food Republic at Wisma Atria. No one gave me a specific stall name though - the general advice was to join the longest queue.

The queue (simple spelt as "Q" in Singapore - very cute) was only second to that of Sergeant Chicken Rice next door. Neither had more than 8-10 people at a time - there were probably 3 people ahead of me at this Bak Chor Mee stall, but it did take a while, because there was only one little old man manning the stoves. You choose a dish (usually some combination of noodles, mushroom, pork mince, dumplings, fish balls), pick a noodle and pay the auntie. The auntie then puts all your raw ingredients into a bowl and puts it in line. As you're lining up, you'll see the numerous newspaper clippings of the little old man - he seems to be quite the noodle man. When it's your turn, you arrive at a glass counter, facing the little old man, and he cooks the contents of your bowl to order. There, you can tell him how spicy you want your broth to be and he'll adjust the sambal as appropriate.

The noodles were cooked just right - springy, tender but not mushy, the soup savoury, in a thick, rich, Chinese bean paste like way, with a hint of chilli (I asked for a teeny weeny speck). The dumpling wasn't great, but the fried fish ball and soy-braised Chinese mushrooms were delish. The latter came out of a tub of soy-like marinade around the stove, which the chef would add clear broth to every so often - I like to believe the marinade tub has never been cleaned out and that traces of the first ever marinade made is still there. After all, that's how Chinese noodlemakers are supposed to keep their broths 'living'.


Our set came with a deep-fried tofu, which was surprisingly good - I liked the intense soy flavour combined with the spring onion, and the weight/density of the tofu - and still warm and crisp on the outside - that's rarely the case in Hong Kong eateries - they pre-fry everything and just dish 'em out.

No culinary revelation, but it's always nice to know where you can get a totally satisfying bowl of noodles.

Bak Chor Mee stall
Food Republic
4/F Wisma Atria
Orchard Rd
Singapore


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Gone porkers - Yut Kee, Kuala Lumpur

Amazing roast pork from Yut Kee

This wasn't our first stop in KL, but it was certainly the most memorable. This kopitiam (coffee house) is as old as the hills and deservedly famous.

While I was trawling the blog of the good folks at Eating Asia, I stumbled upon their post on Yut Kee's rolled pork roast, a relatively recent addition to their repertoire (read the full story from EA here), and only available on Fridays and Sundays. When I checked my itinerary, I jumped with joy when I found we'd be in town on a Friday.

So, Friday came and I made sure everyone was ready to go by 11.45am, because apparently the roast comes out around this time and is sold out by 1pm (actually earlier, as I would later learn). According to trusty Google Maps (you must know that I'm being sarcastic there...) Yut Kee was just a couple of streets away from our hotel (Hotel Renaissance, which by the way, is okay, if you stay in the West Wing), but I had to make sure it was walkable, and the concierge at the hotel confirmed this, "10 minutes walk, this way," he said, pointing in the direction we should head, and lo and behold, two treacherous crossings and a bit of sweat later, we arrived at Yut Kee*.

We faced an almost-empty restaurant - there were maybe two other tables of two or three diners, having some combination of kaya toast, kopi and boiled egg. I think I might have been just a wee bit disappointed at that point as I was expecting it to be heaving with throngs of hungry KL-ites, since it seemed Yut Kee had some sort of a cult status. But then I saw them. The rolled roasts, placed under the open air, as if to seduce fickle gastronomic souls like mine, on a foldaway table by the cashier, on the shop's terrace. There were four of them, caramel-coloured cylinders of porcine goodness, with a fifth one under the hands and knife of an expert carver auntie. I watched as auntie's swift motions released each slice from the main body, then making it lean at a helpless, limp angle and finally, allowing it to lay flat on the carving board, a diminuitive coin of stuffing exposed. I could almost see the slice blush at the efficient drama of its birth.

"Two slices per serve, you many serves you want?" Auntie asked, after I stood there looking like a five-year-old, drooling.

"Six," I declared without consulting the five others (yes there were five others, I wasn't ordering six for myself, greedy as I appear to be...)


The pork arrived, 2 slices a serve as promised, on plastic plates with house-made white wine apple sauce on the side. Seeing such a 'western' thing on crockery so typical of a kopitiam/cha chan teng was an interesting contrast. The flesh was pink, flavoursome and juicy, and the crackling had a brittle, caramel-like quality to it, in that it wasn't fragile, but extremely crisp - it would break into shards rather than crumbs. The skin had been evenly pierced and scored pre-roasting, so that enough air bubbles formed on its surface to gain that incredible crispness. We cut the slices up into smaller squares, like Canto-style roast pork and ate it with chopsticks (in keeping with the plastic plate tenor!). I've been back in HK for more than 2 weeks now and I'm still dreaming about it - probably one of the most satisfying dishes I've had in a while.

Another awesome dish here was the belachan fried rice - but I'll put that in a later post and keep your thoughts lingering on that pork. If you go to KL, make sure you're there on a Friday or Sunday, and don't you dare miss this (or at least don't tell me if you do).

*There was clear Chinese signage too, which to us, native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese, read "Yick Gei". (The slight phonetic changes between the Malay and Hong Kong varieties of Cantonese never fail to intrigue - I have yet to investigate...)

Yut Kee
35 Jalan Dang Wangi (from Dang Wangi monorail/Jalan Ampang, heading away from KLCC, turn right into Dang Wangi, cross the bridge and 1 more street, you'll soon see it on your right - about 5-10 mins walk from Dang Wangi monorail)
Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
+60 3 2698 8108
8am-5pm, closed Mondays and last Sunday of the month, pork roast available Fridays and Sundays from about 11.30am, I'd get there before 12.30pm.


View Yut Kee in a larger map

e_ting's Australasia's top 20

Following my harsh criticism of the Miele Guide, I decided to make my own Asia's top 20 list. Actually I don't know if I can come up with 20. I'm going to cheat and put Australia in too... And I can't really rank them... I tried, but there were like 5 in 8th place... I guess that means that they are all absolutely essential. There are so many more that I would like to have put in. Here's to hoping that one day, I will write my own food guide.

So, here goes, in alphabetical order:

Amber, Hong Kong
Bing Sheng, Guangzhou
Da Dong, Beijing
Du Xiao Yue, Taipei
Gaddi's, Hong Kong
Gang Nan Chu Zi, Shenzhen
Grossi Cellar Bar, Melbourne
Grossi Florentino, Melbourne
Isetan depachika, Tokyo
Jacques Reymond, Melbourne
Ji Cun, Guangzhou
Kwei tiao hawker stall behind YWCA, Penang
Le Normandie, Bangkok
Maisen, Tokyo
MBK Food Court (not the international one), Bangkok
Ming Court, Hong Kong
Pork knuckle braised in sweet soy sauce stall, Sukhumvit Soi 8, Bangkok
Sarti, Melbourne
Tsukiji - random sushi place, Tokyo
Zhang Sheng Ji, Shanghai

Miele Guide released: Asia's top 20 restaurants

The Miele Guide has been released. The publisher is Ate Media, helmed by Chubby Hubby Aun Koh and wife Tan Su-Lyn. It's supposed to be an "authoritative" guide on Asian restaurants. Interesting choice of word. I've rambled on about my thoughts on the voting/selection process already, and in short I don't think the guide is very representative of Asia's 'best' restaurants (a slippery word in itself), but anyway, here are their top 20, and my commentary (if any):

1. Iggy's, Singapore
I've personally not been, but have made my parents (the very people who have made me a passionate foodie, no less), who were in Singapore a few months back, try it on my behalf. Both came back sorely disappointed and said it was nothing compared to Amber (Landmark Mandarin HK) or Le Normandie (Oriental Bangkok). An unofficial forum post on Chowhound indicated a change of chefs earlier this year.

2. L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, Hong Kong
Been several times, dinner is good, lunch is pretty hopeless, especially for the price, but it's not my pick for HK's top Mod Euro/Mod French restaurant...

3. Les Amis, Singapore
Amusing that two Singa restos made it into the top 3, anything to do with the origin/publishers of the Guide?

4. Gunthers, Singapore
Another Singa resto...

5. Mozaic, Bali
Never been, but many sources indicate that the quality plummets dramatically if the head chef is not in.

6. Robuchon a Galera, Macau
First resto that I am in total agreement with.

7. Garibaldi, Singapore
Singapore... yet again...

8. Yung Kee, Hong Kong
Can you get better roast geese elsewhere in Asia? Yes. Can you find a more famous roast goose restaurant in Asia? Probably not.

9. Hutong, Hong Kong
Apparently foodies who voted forgive the bad (very, very, very, bad) service for the excellent food. I'm less forgiving, personally. But that's because I'm a bitter person.

10. Antonio's Fine Dining, Phillippines
I'm ashamed at how ignorant and uninformed I am. I'd never heard of this restaurant prior to seeing this list.

11. Caprice, Hong Kong
See my thoughts here.

12. Zuma, Hong Kong
Hello? Japanese-ish food in Hong Kong... I don't get it.

13. L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, Tokyo
So, it was graced by Michelin...

14. Bukhara, India
Never been, but arguably the most talked abou restaurant in India.

15. Grissini, Hong Kong
I strongly dislike it. Period.

16. Nobu, Hong Kong
Another Japanese-ish place in Hong Kong. Hmm, makes me think Japan wasn't even in the running (but it was. Bizarre.
I like their lunchtime bento boxes; don't really like having dinner there. I'd go, but it's not top 20 in my books.

17. M on the Bund, Shanghai
Never been. I usually don't have enough time in Shanghai to get bored of Shanghainese food. Shang food is probably my favourite Chinese cuisine, so naturally I fill up on it as much as possible while in town...

18. Fook Lam Moon, Hong Kong
A Hong Kong classic. Not my favourite, but I understand how it should/could be in Asia's top 20.

19. Zanotti Il Ristorante Italiano, Bangkok
Certainly not a personal 'must', but good if you are in town and sick of Thai (how could you?) I suppose. Give me a gapow moo, som tum or sweet soy braised pig's knuckle on rice instead anyday.

20. Kyubey, Tokyo
Ugh, so predictable. I don't know if it's overhyped cause I've never been, but something makesme think that some people who voted had never actually been to eat there and just chose it cause they recognised the name.

Actually that could have been the case for many of these places.

The people who produced/published the guide are prepared for the list to be controversial, but I didn't expect this...

One of my main no-no's about this guide was that only large cities were sampled to represent the whole country, e.g. only HK, Macau, Beijing and Shanghai represented China (actually maybe only BJ and SH did and HK & Macau were on their own? No matter) - how about Guangzhou, Chongqing, Suzhou etc., that are also home to spectacular restaurants? From what I've read from their website I found no proper justification.

I also wonder who the target market is - to me, it seems like it's not Asian residents but visitors to Asia, which renders it similar to a Lonely Planet guidebook for silly tourists. If you were creating a guide, would you want it to be the Lonely Planet of your category? I wouldn't, but maybe they would, because after all, LP sells heaps. If this is their aim, the irony is that only a scanty few of the their top 20 serve local cuisine. I can't help but lead myself to the conclusion that this guide is for scared, non-Asian tourists with quite a bit of money. Not my type of guide, but I this is undoubtedly a big market...

I've commented already on the, in my mind, disproportionate number of Singaporean restaurants that made it... Can anyone explain it? I love Singapore for its hawker food, and I don't think HK would be worthy of that many in the top 20 either. Can't really get my head around it apart from publisher's/voting population bias (since the guide is published by a Singaporean company I suppose the voting would have been more widely known/more talked about in Singapore, hence more residents from that region - who of course would be most familiar with their city's cuisine - would have voted). Democracy is indeed a flawed affair.

The Hong Kong Michelin Guide will be coming out soon too, so it'll be interesting to compare these two "international" views on Asia/HK. (Oh, and the Mobil Guide is out for HK too, but... it's the Mobil Guide...)

Lastly, I think the happiest person is Joel Robuchon, who's sitting at three of the top 20 restos in Asia. And he's not even Asian. Felicitations, Monsieur Robuchon~

P.S. I think this has inspired me to write my own 'Asian Top 20'... so until next time folks...