Japanese Food

As you probably know already, Japanese food is one of my favorites. I think when it comes to food my Cantonese, Thai, Japanese and Italian are probably my best languages, in that order. I'm OK with ordering things in English but the descriptions in English usually leave something to be desired, and a description in another language to me will often make more sense.

In Hong Kong there's a lot of different cuisines but I'd like to say that Japanese cuisine is one of the best done. It helps that I live right next to a Japanese department store, they have a lot of direct imports from Japan, in terms of both food and man power, although lately I think there are less and less Japanese in Hong Kong. I think Chinese chefs grasp the concept of Japanese food pretty well, I think that it helps that Chinese food is not too different.

Among my favorites is of course tonkatsu, or pork cutlet. It can often be done wrong with the meet too thin and the breading over-powering the flavor of the pork. On Sunday for dinner my dad and I went to the restaurant next to the ice skating rink where I think we had our last meal together before you left back to Cali (we had soft shell crab wrapped in rice paper for appetizer and I think you had rice with seafood for your main course). Last time I went I remember seeing a kid order the tonkatsu so I decided to try it out. Tonkatsu with egg, curry or tonkatsu sauce (a thick brown sauce) are my favorite combinations. The egg you see below was just right, soft but not too yolky. A good contrast to the crispness of the pork. The pork was done right too, with big thick piece of pork used. This prevent the pork from being too dry as the thickness retains the moisture. I'm not sure exactly what the red sauce was but I think it was a sweet tomato based sauce that matches with the tonkatsu. The rice was OK but it had some really hard egg white in it. All in all one of the best tonkatsu I've had in Hong Kong.

In our food court, as with most places in Hong Kong, there is a lot of turnover so when the 'steamboat' (i.e. hotpot) shop wasn't doing so well it was closed down and replaced by an udon shop. The place claims to be part of a chain from Japan. They freshly make and cut the udon for you to see (no pics of that, maybe next time). The udon there is nice and chewy. I can't taste the difference much but it is nice to know that the udon is being made fresh. I like udon, it's simple and tasty. Can't go wrong with tempura and udon. Udon is also pretty good with hot pot. It makes sense since the water is hot enough to cook the udon fast.

I don't often eat at fancy places in Hong Kong, especially with my dad, but I'll definitely need to show you the 海南鸡饭 and perhaps some 四川 specialities that they serve at my school.