CJWDT: Hong kong'13

9/16/13-9/25/13: Hong kong, China

It has been more than 1.5 years.....  back to one of my favorite cities in the world, Hong Kong!!   I stayed 9 days in Hong kong and it was NOT enough to complete my munch itinerary, the real foodie city!  During my stay, I went to see my co-workers, chef Jared Bassoff from Bistro du vent and also chef Jeremy Biasiol from Alain ducasse at essex house.  I was so glad to see them.  Both chef invited me to dinner at the restaurant where they work, Ronin & Mirror restaurants.  Both dinner were terrific, some picture from the dinner are below.






Before I got into Hong kong, I sent out more than 10 resumes to the restaurants listed below.  And.....  no one have position openings and open for stage!  Shanghai and Hong kong....  what's wrong in China!?? / a bitter smile  But my friend chef Jared, who is actually running Ronin, help me out setting up stage.  I staged at Yardbird & Ronin restaurants one day each.  

When I used to work in Amber, I went to Yardbird time to time.  There was the dish called KFC(Korean Fried Cauliflower), it was my favorite and one of the best cauliflower dish I ever had!!! It is fried crispy cauliflower glazed in yummy Korean sauce.  Just by naming sense, crispiness and straight forward simplicity...  I just love the dish and counted as one of best bite in Hong kong!!  If you go to HK, you better munch it!!!!

Anyway... Yardbird is the restaurant focusing mainly on Yakitori, grilled chicken skewer and I could say this was first time I staged at the restaurant focusing on Yakitori.  I had one purpose to stage, it was learning chicken butchering.  It's not same, but I put the link of what was like I learned at Yardbird.  I was seriously amazed by my Sensei(more like Ninja....) at Yardbird....  accurate, precise and fast... fast.... FAST!!!!  He can murder 3 birds while I do one!!  It may be 'just butchering chicken, BUT it's long way to be rock star, movie star and chicken master...... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fpKgXqhvtQ

Ronin restaurant is opened just this year by chef Matt Abergel of Yardbird.  The cuisine is refined Japanese bistro 'Izakaya' focusing more on seafood.  I have learned several new techniques during my stage.  Japanese cuisine does have lots of cool techniques, so cool!!  Name a few, one is fried fish scale(the picture below).  I have seen many restaurant crispy scale fish like Robuchon, Guy Savoy, Amber..., but it was first time I saw scale 'flake'.  I heard chef Matt learn from Masa(NY).  It requires Japanese scaling technique by Yanagi-ba which is really hard, but the technique is awesome.  And I learned how they make home-made Shiso vinegar(the picture below showing pickled bright purple lotus roots).  The technique is simple yet, rock solid.  I can't wait to experiment this technique with mango, jalapeno, beet... all different kind of flavors!!  
 


Here I'd like to say thank you again to chef Matt Abergel, chef Jared & rest of big Yardbird/Ronin families! We'll meet again one day, rock on!!

Hong kong retaurants:
http://www.theprincipal.com.hk/