xi yan and club qing both are famous "private" restaurants in hk (restaurants which are situated in commercial or household buildings) xi yan is the creator of private restaurants in hk offering original fushion set dinners, cosy atmosphere and main chef serving its own customers. As xi yan got more popular, they started to sell their book at the restaurant and bookstores giving away secret menus and which club qing had exactly followed. Altho club qing is a follower i still loved their dishes very much! each and every one had their own special flavour followed by matching teas... Only thing i had to complain is the price! 400 per person excluding drinks! somehow we ended up paying 700 each (miscalculation, see above blog)
Private restauarnts which are recommended by me:
1) Xi Yan - not so original dishes cos they never changed their menu but xi yan is the reason why all restaurants started to have cold tofu and "yeung chi gum lo" but I must admit theirs is the best
2) Club Qing (above pics)- very similar (almost exact) style to Xi yan but different menu, altho I dont like the idea that they copied but I do applaud for creating their own unique dishes. The chef is actually an IT guy!
3) Gung Guan - Shanghainese fushion, Shanghai cuisine is my fav... has diff menu for diff seasons!! I went twice, once in winter and once in summer:
Winter specialty was "dong bor meat" the skin of the meat is not a fatty piece of skin that melts into oil, its actually got elastic feeling!! Another fav was big gate crab with stir fried rice cakes, their sauce for that was heavenly. Summer special was their big prawns in salty egg sauce on sticky rice. However the queue to book the place just makes you give up and must have at least 8 ppl per booking (quite annoying)
The owner is the waiter and is the chef (who is western raised shanghainese guy, my family tested his shanghainese and it was good)... there is a secret to how he manages to do this ALL at once but its quite a long story... please tell me if you want to hear... i dont want to bore people with this long lonnnnnnnnnng blog
To be honest I have to say that Im very pessimistic about private restaurants, normally they are so overrated and very expensive. My rule of thumb is only go to ones that are recommended by friends!
ok i guess everyone knows how much i love food by now!
ko.
6 comments:
it the 3rd one in your list,Gung Guan, the one we tried once together for our birthday?! I remember it was very nice. althou we only had 6 ppl, we still managed to 'clear the table' which was for 8. haha..
Dear Ko,
I am AC and I am a co-owner of Club Qing. Thank you very much for loving Club Qing and recommending to your friends, your photos are great! $700/head is a bit off to me. My guess is you (or your friends) actually ordered the $550 menu or had ordered some aged pu-er tea. If neither are the case, please let me know more details and I will check for you. If we had a wrong calculations, we will promptly refund the difference. My sincere apologies.
hi ac, I am dova and me and ko write the blog together. I will be hk soon, so I will definitely come to your restaurant, since the food look so lovely and the owner is lovely!
AC, thanks for leaving this message. sorry it was my mistake but I am really happy that you made such a kind offer to us! By the way, how did you find our blog?
Dova will come to HK really soon and I will definately brign her to your place!!
yc !! u finally left a comment !!! yeah yeah gung guan is the one we went to... but i have no pics so cant write abt it... but i so remember how we managed to clear the table with 6 of us hahaha dova hasnt been so i reckon we can go again when shes back!
Hi, a friend of mine forwarded your blog link to me, I don't know how she find your blog though. Dova, we look forward to serving you.
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