SANYA: Hainan Attack at China Harvest

Yea Yea.. I know, it couldn't have been the best English name they came up with, but China Harvest it is. To introduce Sanya, it is known as a tropical destination for lovers, golfers and those in Asia that need a cheap getaway.  It's located at the Southernmost part of China, providing ample fresh seafood to the city daily.  This restaurant however, was a change from the days of seafood we had previously. Located in the Hilton Hotel, China Harvest being their only Chinese restaurant, serving an abundance of 8 different Chinese cuisines, namely Shandong, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Canton, Hunan, Fujian and Anhui.  This restaurant was recommended by 3 friends when they were told I was going to Sanya, so I saved this for my last day there.

As we entered the restaurant, we had to pass through a little courtyard and a fountain with a big water buffalo statue. The area was a nice little addition to the restaurant, a transition from a 5 star hotel ambiance to an entirely different setting.  The setting was modern yet very traditional at the same time, with a bamboo garden in the middle of the restaurant surrounded by glass, square chandeliers hang from the ceilings covered with sheer rose gold cloth and blood red drapings hemming the whole restaurant. The table settings were exquisitely set up with gold and red with a cute pot of dried red peppers as the centre piece.

To cover their variety of different Chinese cuisines, we apt for dim sum, a main dish and fried rice; for two, that's already quite a feast for lunch!

We ordered two dim sum, one is the barbeque bun and the other is a fried dumpling with veggies and pork. They were both made very well, especially the fried dumpling. The crispyness broke off as you chewed it, not leaving any space for it to be soggy, and the filling was flavourful, veggies were still crunchy. But other than that, it was JUST dim sum, didn't exactly tickle my fancy.

For the main, we ordered Wenchang chicken, which is authentic Hainan cuisine. (By the way, did you know Hainan chicken rice originated from Thailand, and using "Hainan" was just the name?) Wenchang chicken is the authentic Hainan chicken and it's nothing like the Thai kind, with the green onion sauce.

Anyways. the Wenchang chicken is the breed of chicken, it's quite fleshy(chubby chickie) and considerably smaller, fed with coconut and peanut bran, giving the chicken quite a nice fragrance and more plump but not too greasy.

Our Wenchang Chicken was boiled and served with Ginger sauce and cold. I don't know whether it was just made really well or the chicken was just really tasty. The white meat was juicy but not greasy, delicious! I was a little worried that I hyped up the restaurant a little too much, but I wasn't disappointed!

Now the next one I must say is "ZE BEST"! It was fried rice covered with a thick sauce. I am having troubles deciding on how/where to start. The sauce had pork pieces, Gailan vegetables, Chinese mushrooms and shrimp. The shrimp was fresh (Seafood city), and the veggies gave it the right amount of texture to the soupy rice.  I am starting to drool, just thinking about it.

China Harvest, 1/Fl, Hilton Sanya Resort & Spa, Yalong Bay, Sanya

Opened 11:30-10pm daily
Average cost for lunch: RMB$100-$150/person

KOBE: Revisiting my long time lover: Kannonya

As the title attest, Kannonya is my long time lover in Kobe, Japan. It's simply my favorite place for cheesecakes. I wrote about this last year but this time going to Japan, I found Kannonya a new fan.  The last time I was here has been quite a while ago, thus I got a little lost. :p

 

After 40 minutes of searching, we finally arrived. I paid more attention to the ambiance, the setting and basically the whole experience this time while I was there. After 3 days of non-stop shopping, I just wanted to relax in this small cafe. We were seated right by the window. Playing light tunes, the colour and lighting provided just what I needed in a midday break from the hustling Sannomiya city.

Instead of ordering a few different desserts like the previous times I was here, I announced that I was getting my OWN cheesecake. Hehe.. "selfish" I was called. Little did the name-caller know, when he finally takes a bite out of his cake, he too, would want his own.  So about halfway through my cake, savouring every single bite with closed eyes and a dreamy smile, our name-caller devoured every single crumb, TA-DA... now he knows why I wanted my own cake! There I was, still chewing each bite with extreme pleasure. Who says chocolate was the only way to bliss? So is this, and this gets me there even quicker!

I just absolutely HAD to brag about my moments at Kannonya.. and how I miss that single hour I was there. Ahhh... bliss is a wonderful thing.

The comment I received from my partner: "The walk was SO WORTH IT!"

Kannonya 兵庫県神戸市中央区東川崎町6-1 Phone: 078-360-1537

http://www.kannonya.co.jp/menu/menu.htm

HONG KONG: High Tea at Mandarin Oriental Clipper Lounge

After a long weekend of eating, eating and more eating.. how I can't NOT share?

Now we went to this restaurant quite some while ago, but the comments still linger quite clearly in my head.
For one of our friends birthday, we decided to take her to Mandarin Oriental for their afternoon tea.  We chose Mandarin Oriental because it's somewhere we all haven't been for High tea and that it's a 5-star hotel, renowned as one of the best in Hong Kong, we couldn't go wrong with that! So we arrived at Clipper Lounge precisely at 3:15 as we purposely skipped lunch for this. Instead of the Chocolate tea buffet, we decided that we'd be more elegant and have the food served to us thus we ordered a tea set for 2 to share amongst the three of us. 

Our server was friendly, exactly what you would expect from a 5-star hotel restaurant. Our tea and orange juice were served promptly. After a while, our tea set was served with raisin and plain scones. It looked pretty amazing with three-layers of cakes and pastries. How can any girl not go wide-eyed looking at that? The first layer was colorful, with orange, peach, yellow and green of sandwiches; the second layer was what appeared to be pies, tarts, mainly savoury snacks and the bottom layer were cakes! (Yum!)

We dove right into the first layer, each taking up one of the many colorful pieces; I started with the green (cucumber) one... i spat it out in a second. Who wraps sponge cake with cucumbers, and I thought they were sandwiches!? "Spat" and "spat", I heard and looked up. My fellow friends both spat out theirs as well. And with the same reaction: "Who wraps SALMON/PARMA HAM around sponge cake?" Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Clipper Lounge has succeeded in being innovative: wrapping salmon, Parma ham, cucumber and scrambled egg around creamy sponge cake. It was just a natural reaction to spit it out. We left the other ones untouched.

We washed our palettes with scones and strawberry jam. I must say that, the scones were excellent. It was fluffy, frothy almost, it pretty much dissolved the moment I started chewing. The jam was amazing, it must have been homemade. It was sweet but not artificially, the rose petal jam prominently fresh. I am not a big fan of butter cream, but according to last bit of butter cream left by the time we were done, I'd say it must have been pretty good.

Already disappointed with the tea set, we had to give it another try, thus we moved on to the second layer. This layer consists of pies and tarts. It was considerably better than the first layer but we were all still not impressed with the quality of the food. There was a prawn tart, whereby it was the best thing in the tea set so far. The prawn was fresh and the spices were just right; pastry was acceptable, although a bit soggy.

Eventually after laughing, chatting and catching up, we decided to move on to the bottom layer: desserts! The Blueberry Cheesecake was quite creamy but nothing really that special, the blueberries were quite sweet but not over powering. The granola/carrot cake did not look enticing at all, thus we all decided to skip that one. The chocolate cake, in my opinion is the best. I guess you can't really go wrong with chocolate though, especially when they are doing a chocolate tea buffet. The chocolate ganache was not too sweet, made with the right amount of alcohol, enough to get a hint of the flavour, the chocolate was extremely silky with a dallop of cream on top.

I probably wouldn't recommend this tea set, however the scones and chocolate cake are worth a try.

Clipper Lounge Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 1/Fl, 5 Connaught Road, Central. 2825 4007

Open Daily 3-6pm for Afternoon Tea