Syut 談風：vs：再說 January 2016 Menu

A wonderful little place hidden in Ngau Tau Kok's industrial area. It's within 10 minutes walk from my office and we've been to this place so many times, it's not even funny. Whenever we have visitors from our other offices, we bring them here. Birthdays or special occasions, this place would always be one of the choices. Other than my colleagues and I, this place is mostly full of young, good looking and super chic people. Opppps. Sorry, colleagues.

We love the decor of the place, the open kitchen, and some of the chefs have long hair, man bun, and/or facial hair. I am very very partial to those things. Ahem.

OK, moving on to the food... they change the menu every month. It is best to visit this place at the beginning of the month, as at the end of the month they are often out of some ingredients from their monthly menu.

We've tried these from their January specials.

One of us is vegetarian, and we're happy that they always have at least one vegetarian option. This is the rocket pesto pasta. It comes with 64 degree egg (my colleague doesn't eat egg, so we requested without), shimeji mushrooms, and roasted onion. The flavors are a tad too subtle for my colleague, but after a dash of Tabasco and a few sprinkles of grated Parmesan, it's all good.




One of us picked the stout pasta from the January specials - it comes with pumpkin sauce, roast onion, and check out that strings of cheese...


We also tried the chicken - with lemongrass coconut cream, lime gel and black garlic puree. The lime gel is the highlight that brightens up the dish, and of course... them crispy paper-thin fried chicken skin!


DAT PLATE! Syut plates things so beautifully, it's crazy! This is the sauteed squid - with sea urchin white wine sauce, ink gnocchi and daikon slices. Very delicate flavors (a tad too delicate) with interesting combination of different textures. It looked and sounded much better than it tastes, unfortunately.


My favorite from this month's menu, the mackerel - with black olive polenta cake, chorizo, basil oil, green olive and dried tomatoes. Bold and bright flavors. The polenta cakes are crispy outside and piping hot inside, the chorizo slices are so crispy, the fish perfectly cooked, and the tomatoes brought everything together. Absolutely delicious and so beautiful to look at. I licked my plate clean.


The pine tree ice cream dessert is so good! Served with homemade dried fruits toast and peanut butter jelly. Those green strands are all edible. Very refreshing!


The chocolate financiers with bergamot sorbet, chocolate jelly, chocolate "chips" and popping candy. That's no financier, it's more like a (very good) molten chocolate cake, with more chocolate served in different textures and balanced out with very tangy bergamot sorbet. We really really likey!

Price: about HKD150 per person.
Lunch sets include bread, coffee or tea, or 50% special drinks (their mixed berries soda or mint ginger soda are very nice).

SYUT  談風：vs：再說 
Shop No.B, 10/F, Gee Luen Factory Building
316-318 Kwun Tong Road, Ngau Tau Kok.
Ngau Tau Kok MTR Exit B6
Kowloon, Hong Kong
Tel: 2415 4999

For their updated menu, check Syut's Facebook Page.

Sunday Spanish Brunch at Alibi, Cordis Hong Kong

Thank you for having our little family over for brunch, Alibi! We had a great time, which you can see from OB's chocolate smeared face.

It's a semi buffet brunch. The buffet serves a great variety of food. We like!

First, charcuterie and cheese.


Ahem, carbs.... which I can eat on weekends. Thank God.


Of course, OB had to do the lightsaber pose with the bread stick...

He enjoyed the charcuterie very much.

We had lotss of oysters.


So many things to choose from, we almost did not have space to try everything.




Seafood paella.


Cheesy toastie sandwiches. Yum!


Slow roasted suckling pig.


Crab claw!


And my favorite, crispy Spanish anchovies!


You can choose to have free flow make-your-own sangria and fruit punch.


Or choose to have free flow champagne.

Perrier-Jouet Grand Brut. I am not really a champagne person, but I do enjoy a bit from time to time ;)

We had a sweet OB & papa moment.

Cheers!

Nom nom nom.


OB munching on crispy anchovies.

We ordered 2 main courses. Grilled USDA rib eye served with salsa verde.

Nicely cooked, we like!

And roasted French spring chicken served with polenta fries (love!), broccolini, port and pepper jus.


After that. Cheesy time!


And then the sweets.


Dulce de leche cheesecake.


Crema Catalana.


Apple Frangipane tart.


And of course, churros!


And this was bound to happen.

Who wants chocolate hugs and kisses from OB? Hehehe

The brunch is available every Sunday from 11:30 am - 2:30 pm.
Prices:

-        $358 per adult with free-flowing sangria and fruit punch

-        $238 per child with free flowing fruit punch

-         Free-flowing Perrier-Jouët Champagne for an extra $200.

Plus 10% service charge.

Alibi

5/F Cordis Hong Kong at Langham Place.

555 Shanghai Street, Mong Kok.

(Mongkok MTR exit C)

旺角上海街555號香港康得思酒店5樓

For booking:

Tel: +852 3552 3028

Email: cdhkg.restaurants@cordishotels.com

Website.

SC's Birthday Brunch at Cafe Gray Deluxe, Upper House, Hong Kong

SC's birthday is normally our annual chance to seriously splurge on a meal and have a date night minus OB.

However, this year is a game changer. I asked SC if he wanted to bring OB and he said yes, he'd love to bring our naughty little monster. He felt that OB's so ready for fine dining.

He's of course - so wrong.

OB is not the type of boy who could sit still and eat course after course of meal (not sure if such a 4 year old exists?), he'd try to stand on the chair and drop utensils on the floor.. argghhh.
To him, meals are boring unless it comes with a toy, or is made of chocolate, or is fries with ketchup.
Luckily, our appetizer did come with some sort of "fries" and OB asked for a couple of servings of ketchup. Soon, he started to enjoy himself and we could all relax a bit and celebrate SC's birthday.

This was the bread.

Crunchy exterior, chewy interior. Tasty dipping. Love.

Wait.
Almost forgot to mention one very important thing.
This place has an AMAZING VIEW of Hong Kong, and we're happy to have been seated by the window.


Ok, back to food.
Beef tartare.



So yummy!

Came with extra potato gaufrettes. Life savior. This kept OB busy.


OB kept asking for more ketchup.


SC had the barramundi as his main. Absolutely delicious. I love how it has enough acidity in it.


I chose the duck "shepherd's pie"

I love the flavors, tasty savoury with lots of acidity, but the texture is a bit like creamy porridge.
We had this with the remaining of potato gaufrettes from the beef tartare and ordered extra bread (low-carb diet FAIL) for some crunch.

Cafe Gray Deluxe has a kids' menu for Sunday brunch, which is awesome.
It doesn't make any sense to order a full adult meal for OB, and to have him eat our food... we wouldn't have enough.
Oh, I so love child friendly places.
They also have high chairs, kids utensils, color pencils if needed.
And there were other noisy kids too (so I don't feel that I'm the only one with a naughty kid teehee!)

We wanted to choose burger and fries for OB, but these days he wants to make his own choices and he asked for pasta instead, so we ordered the linguini.
The linguini arrived rather late, almost after SC and I finished our mains (which we did within 5 minutes after serving). Our servers were very apologetic and they waived this dish from our bill. We appreciate the nice gesture.

Perfectly cooked pasta, tasty tomato sauce. We were worried about how it doesn't have any meat it in and OB may not like it, but we were wrong. The sauce's very flavourful with enough kick of acidity.

Did OB approve?

Yes, he likey!

Drinks.
I ordered espresso martini, but requested them to replace vodka with something else as I am allergic.

Yummy laaaaa. Cheers.

Birthday boy had this redhead... carrot juice X ginger ale.

I don't like the floating carrot bits in this... and I am not a big fan of carrots, so it's all SC's.

Desserts!
OB yelled "chocolate, chocolate, CHOCOLATE!" when we were choosing (I don't know this boy, really... whose naughty kid is that?)
So we had chocolate.
OB is not the boss of me, I wanted chocolate too #denial.

Grand marnier chocolate mousse.
Nicee.


Chocolate & key lime tart for the birthday boy.
The key lime tart was ace!

We were stuffed at that point, so we had our chocolates packed in a box to go.

Happy birthday again to SC!


Will we go back to Cafe Gray Deluxe?
Yes, definitely.

Should I mention again that the view is amazing?
Yes.
I hope to visit again in the evening.


How much?
About HK$366 per person for this meal.
(OB's linguini was waived tho)

Cafe Gray Deluxe
Level 49, the Upper House
Pacific Place, 88 Queensway
Hong Kong
(Admiralty MTR)

Tel: +85239681106
Email: info@cafegrayhk.com
(Yay! Email booking - I hate making phone calls)

Website:
http://www.cafegrayhk.com/