Sunday, April 17, 2011
This little piggy...
...clearly didn't stay at home! :9
Rainy sunday evening when we couldn't get a table anywhere in Elements without waiting so S suggested a bit of suckling pig so I gave our favourite piggy hangout a ring and yes, they had a table so into a cab we piled in and along the way, Y (who just arrived two weeks ago) and H (his friend who arrived yesterday) exclaimed: "Woah, is this the HIGHWAY? Where are we going??" Bless. 15 minutes and $50 later we arrived at our destination. Y and H had a quick glance in at the pigs being roasted before we went up. Hadn't been there for a few months and for the first time ever the place had a few tables empty! Eeps. Couldn't help but think to myself, hope the food is still good!
So sat down, and ordered the usual - half a suckling pig, the house special fried rice （城寨风味炒饭）, claypot kale （啫啫芥兰煲）, xo sauce black pork and asparagus（XO酱黑猪肉炒露笋）, "big spender" tofu (阔佬豆腐）(coincidentally randomly started talking about the big spender kidnapper cheung tze-keung... only realised now!) and spicy sauce clams （豉汁炒蚬）and crossed my fingers, hoping for the best. Oh and two nice big bottles of tsing tao which came with the usual blue and white bowls for drinking.
Thankfully the place didn't let me down. Clams came first and were fresh though I would have liked them slightly spicier (I'm a true chilli-loving Singaporean after all). Next up was the black pork and asparagus - pork was tender and I love XO sauce though asparagus might be even better if it was younger... (hmmm....) And then everything else pretty much came at the same time. The fried rice, which was essentially seafood fried rice with a topping of flying fish roe was probably the least impressive - but still not bad. And with the "big spender" tofu - silky tofu with a sauce of scallops and mushrooms - it was just the thing I needed to fill me up on a rainy day. As usual I enjoyed the claypot kale with shrimp sauce - lots of places do it, but the one here is great, not too salty and the flavours really do get into the kale...
And of course, the star dish, the suckling pig was oh so crispy... yummmmmmm... though I can see how the head might be a little disturbing - my brain just shuts out bad thoughts of stuff like that though. But hey, if you can deal with a fish head, you can deal with a roast pig head.
The 3 boys seemed happy enough... though their only question was how they were going to come back again without me and order without any Chinese... the place didn't seem to have an English name! Though now that I look on openrice - it's called "Wall City Flavour" think that's a literal translation - there wasn't actually an English name at the restaurant... hahaha...
Anyway, the place was still a crowd pleaser... never mind that it is in the middle of nowhere for most people who live on HK island (it's near the old Kai Tak Airport, for those of you young uns who still remember it). It is admittedly a little bit of a trek (everything is relative and the main thing here is the lack of a MTR station) but I still think it's great once in a while - especially if you come here after an afternoon in Prince Edward at the flower market/bird market, cos then it's only a 5-10 min cab ride away. So looks like the emptiness was probably really just cos of the rain..Definitely coming back again...
Food, beer and service around HK$700 for four. Visa/Mastercard accepted. Reservations recommended.
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城寨风味 "Wall City Flavour"
九龙城南角道
6-6A Nam Kok Road 6-6A, Kowloon City
T +852 2718 0801
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How to get there:
There's a whole host of options with the mini-buses but I'm hopeless, my usual route is to get the train to Prince Edward and then get a cab outside Mongkok Police Station - think it's about HK$25 away then. Or I try and convince a friend who drives (and has GPS if they don't know Kowloon well) to come :) Valet parking is available...
Aside: the whole area is fantastic - there's a great beef place and also a load of Thai restaurants... will have to write about that next time...
¶ 8:02 AM
