Rather than walk 10 min in the sweltering heat, we opted to take the hotel’s free shuttle bus to a stop near Royal Palace for lunch.
Bad Choice!
Traffic in Hong Kong can be really dense! The crawling traffic made our bus wheels progress at a pace slower than walking!
We finally arrived at the Royal Palace Restaurant, 2 minutes late!
Waving arms caught our attention. We hurried over to meet Kris and her fiancé Philipp!
This is the first time I’m meeting this couple. We would be spending almost every day in HK with them, so I thought a little background on who they are would be helpful.
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Kris is a friend that The Mann met while on a trip to HK in his student days. She is football crazy!! Her bedroom is plastered with memorabilia and photos of football teams or lucky shots she'd clinched with famous footballers! As a gift, we'd brought two FC Fortuna Düsseldorf team scarves and a keychain.
She is engaged to Philipp (a German dude obsessed in football — there’s a reason for their strong bond, eh?), and they are in the process of visa applications that inter-national couples must go through before being able to move to Germany, get married, and start a new life there. =)
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So, what did we eat for our first meal in Hong Kong?
Dim sum!
Dim sum is a style of dining originating from Hong Kong. Small portions of steamed, braised or fried items are served to the centre of the table, and everyone digs in with their chopsticks.
Kris had already placed an order. After brief introductions and some catchup, the first dishes started to arrive!
Steamed custard buns (Liu Sha Bao). This was unfortunately without salted egg yolk. Those with molten salted egg yolk are my favourite!
Steamed BBQ Pork Bun (Char Siew Pau).
Steamed Rice Rolls (Chee Cheong Fun). This one was stuffed with a barbecue pork filling. And drizzled with a sweetened soy sauce. I felt that the rice roll was not chewy and soft enough. It could also have used a little more of the sauce.
Steamed Glutinous Rice wrapped in Lotus Leaf (Lo Mai Gai). This is The Mann’s favourite dish. During steaming, the lotus leaf imparts its fragrance into the sticky rice. As you dig into the rice, you discover little hidden gems of meat, mushroom, and dried scallops. Royal Palace did a relatively decent Lo Mai Gai. The Mann was content! =D
Deep-Fried Yam Puff (Taro Dumpling). A savoury mixture of mushrooms, shrimp, and pork is encased in mashed yam and then deep-fried.
Pan-fried White Radish Cake (Luo Bo Gao). This was intensely flavourful and simply delightful! However, Kris spotted an insect that had somehow gotten into the frying pan and lay in crisp form. Upon pointing the critter out to the waitress, we received a fresh plateful! =)
Steamed Minced Pork and Shrimp Dumplings (Siew Mai). This is one of the kings of dim sum. Look at them — generously studded with bright orange cod roe! Now, that’s some attractive-looking Siew Mai!
I bit into one. It was juicy and had a fair helping of prawns inside. No disappointment here, but no Wow factor as well, because it’s not the best I’ve had.
Roast Pork Belly. While this is not a dim sum item, it is a Cantonese specialty. The skin was crisp and lovely. I felt that the pork tasted a little too porky. Not for The Mann. He happily polished off the last piece. =)
I don’t know the name of this final dish. It’s basically fish maw (dried swim bladders of a fish), ham, mushroom, and chicken blanketed in beancurd skin and steamed. I found the taste to be a little better than how it looks. Can’t say I would order this one again! =P
The total bill came up to HKD 290 (€32). Split in half, each couple paid HKD 145 (€16). That’s pretty decent, for a restaurant named ‘Royal Palace’. =D
The elevator that we took to leave the restaurant had a mirror-finish all around! We used it to try to make a reflected group photo.
Disappointed with how the previous photo attempt turned out, we took a second groupie in the lobby using Kris’s fisheye camera attachment.
What do you think we did after lunch?
Find out in the Part 4.
Thanks for reading my post. If you liked what you read, there's more! Click on the pictures below to see my previous posts in the Hong Kong series: :)
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