Cameroon Coffee Cafe, New Flavors at Le Salon, Yao Ming Family Wine and the Michelin Mishap
Watch Out For…
Tucked away on the first floor of a small, old building in the trendy Star Street precinct, Amical (1/F, 1 Sun St., Wan Chai, 5489-5330) is a cute little café run by owner Charles Kwun. Charles called me up a couple weeks ago to enlighten me on Amical’s offerings, namely high-quality coffee beans from Cameroon that are sourced from a farm whose operations are also handled by Amical. The store is very hands-on with the whole farm-to-table process to ensure fair-trade practices, including fair wages to the farmers who produce the goods. In terms of flavor, Cameroon coffee beans are supposed to be full-bodied, sharp and acidic, but also earthy, chocolatey and berry-like at the same time. That’s a lot to pack into one little bean, but it does sound promising. Now I just gotta head down for a cup!
Porto Fino (28 Old Bailey St., Central, 2668-0430) is a new Mediterranean resto-slash-deli that sells Portuguese wines and Spanish olive oils as well as serving dishes such as king prawn paella, wild mushroom risotto and bacalhau. That’s about as much as I know for now.
After getting one pretty miserly sized (albeit tasty) taco for $40 from the Brickhouse pop-up at Clockenflap two weeks ago, I walked a couple stalls down and discovered another set-up by new shop-to-be Mr. Bing (G/F, 83 Wellington St., Central—opening on December 15) selling $30 Beijing-style streetside pancakes at triple the size. To be clear, $30 was the price on Saturday, and I heard that by Sunday the pancakes had gone up to $50 a piece—maybe the owners had dropped by the Brickhouse tent and realized they could get away with a ginormous price hike on their own products. Anyhow, these pancakes—and if you’ve ever had them in China, you’ll know—are like the Chinese version of the crepe, but stuffed with all sorts of awesome Chinesey things like eggs, veggies, crunchy chips, pickles and pork floss, then topped with a thick, hoisin-like sauce (different chefs use different variations). I’d argue that the jianbing is one of the most ingenious edible inventions in the world, since it combines almost every textural (crunchy, soft, crispy, meaty) and gustatory (sweet, savory, oftentimes spicy and tangy, too) element into one giant, steaming bundle of deliciousness. And now they’re available in Hong Kong, right on Wellington Street. How convenient is that?
Talk of the Town
When I heard that Le Salon (Shop 1304, 13/F, Hysan Place, 500 Hennessy Rd., Causeway Bay, 2115-3328) has come out with two new flavors of their impossibly delectable croissants, I immediately started daydreaming about my next trip to the croissanterie. Not that the original chocolate, caramel, tiramisu and chestnut flavors aren’t divine on their own, but now there’s also a mango ($23) and a white truffle ($38) version to drool over. Made respectively with Indian mangoes and Italian white truffles, they’re exotic, festive cousins of the originals that are available until the end of December.