Last week I was so excited to be able to visit one of the famous award-winning local restaurants "Tung Po" located in the public wet market in the North Point district of Hong Kong Island.
The restaurant occupies an area on the second floor and serves Guangdong "Dai Pai Dong" cuisine in large-table format. If you want to go local in Hong Kong then this is the place to go - the place is packed full of customers (you need to book at least a week in advance to get a reservation and have patience with their telephone answer system which seems to have only one line open from 2.30-5.30pm daily.)
Classic and interesting! It was a funny experience - sitting on small plastic stalls, the odd blast of some classic hit pop music accompanying the general throb of happy diners, enjoying local dishes served with our BYO wines. Whilst the owner was busy opening beer bottles with chopsticks, we were playing with our new toy: the air pressure wine opener. It was incredibly simple to use, once we worked out how to open it. A waiter noticed our first few failed attempts and was itching to help us by using his trusted waiter's friend - but no, we were not going to give in. This opener consists of a needle which is inserted into the cork attached to a pump with which you manually pump air through the needle, the pressure causing the cork to pop out. At the price of $178 HKD (roughly £14 Sterling) from Winebuff. This is great value, easy to use and if you are opening very old bottles of wine a great way to get the cork out whole!
The air pressure wine opener.
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Back to the food and wine - our menu was a mixture of their most popular local cuisines as well as some Western fusion ones - look out for the American oyster with port wine - delicious! Below are the wines - all tasted blind paired with the complex, multi-flavoured Hong Kong Style cuisine, challenging yet fun!
The Wine
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Wine1: 2012 Chablis 1er Cru Vaillons, Verget
Wine2: 2012 Pouilly Fuisse La Roche, Verget
Wine 3: 2009 Pauillac de Latour
Wine 4: 2010 Farr Vintners Pauillac
Wine 5: 2002 Pinot Noir Kistler Vineyard
Wine 6: 2007 Le Gay Pomerol
Some of the food
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It was a wonderful evening and especial dinner experience which I enjoyed so much with the Farr HK Team together with Stephen Browett and his son Ben.
Wishing everyone a Happy Chinese New Year!! (2014 will be the Year of The Horse)
