Chin has been raving a lot about some restaurant that serves really good pork dumplings (xiao long bao) and handmade noodles (la mien) for a really long time in an attempt to get us to visit him. The bad news: it’s in Sha Tin, which is close to his school in the boonies. The only time we’ve ever ventured that far was just to visit his campus, and we’ve never gone back since. I felt kinda bad that we haven’t visited him and he’s always coming down to Kowloon to meet us, but his area in the New Territories really doesn’t have as much to do as we do over here.
Chin met up with Peter, Leanne and me at Langham Place in Mong Kok so that we could eat some snacks at Honeymoon Dessert. I got kind of full from that, but some people were still hungry, so we began to contemplate whether or not we should head over to the Xiaolongbao restaurant in Sha Tin for Chin, or find somewhere closer to eat in Mong Kok. We turned around and looked towards the food court, and Chin pointed at a restaurant a couple of feet away from us saying, “I think there might be here one as well.”
We all gave him the “REALLY?” look, and headed to look at the restaurant exterior to check. “Is it the same place?” we asked him.
“Yeah it is, the inside looks almost the same. The name is a little different, because it doesn’t have the two characters 上上 in front of it, but the rest is the same.”
We stank-eyed him for almost making us go to a place that’s about 25 mins away by MTR, when we had the same restaurant in the mall that we are always roaming around in.
Here’s a picture of Chin and his fail (because we love him and think we should always document them):
The food was a little pricey compared to what we normally ate, but was bearable because we went with family style. We ordered what Chin recommended: the szechuan dandan noodles, which are spicy and sweet noodles with peanut sauce.
Peter and I ordered our own bowls of spicy & sour soup with noodles, which we regretted because we realized that it turned out to just be the restaurant soup we get back home for free at Chinese restaurants, with noodles in them. Spicy & sour soup is good on its own, but when you add noodles to them, it’s just weird because of the stickiness.
You can tell that the noodles are handmade if they’re so long that you can’t even pick them up to put in your bowl.
The waitress felt sorry for our difficulty in picking up the noodles, so she came zooming over with a pair of scissors and made life easier for us by cutting the noodles.
Here are our wonderful xiao long bao, which were hand made as well.
This restaurant is very similar to Din Tai Fung back in Arcadia because of the handmade dumplings and creepy window set-up that lets the public watch the cooks make noodles, but the food tastes much better than Din Tai Fung’s.
After dinner, Chin and Peter wanted to get some SK-II skin care items, and Peter was talked into buying some pricey products that are a lot cheaper here than back home. Peter was a bit self conscious to take a picture with his SK-II bag because he and Chin were the only guys holding them, but seriously, girls like guys who take care of their skin!
The rain came down as we went outside, but we wanted to hit a shopping mall called Trendy Zone because I wanted to find a jewelry store where I could make Tom’s dog tags. I almost got an “Abbey Road” shot here, but Chin ruined it, just like he ruins everything. I hate you, Chin. :D
Male HK fashion is a little weird. Some things look alright, but scrunchy pants like these aren’t very attractive.
Trendy Zone was a perfect place for me to make dogtags, where I got to pick the color of the tag, the string, and the font I wanted for the words. Late birthday gift/ Christmas gift for Tom: CHECK!
Our last stop of the day was back at another expensive restaurant for sushi, because we all don’t know how to do anything but eat. Chin has a deep abyss for a stomach, and kept grabbing a bunch of different plates without checking the prices. Look at that sad loner piece of cod roe sushi sitting on the plate.
By the way, getting better at sneaking pictures at inappropriate places. Most of the stores in HK don’t like it when we take pictures of their items, so I’ve refined my sneak-attack skills. This panda is awesome, as are my skillz.
