Pici Pasta Bar Lai Chi Kok (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★★☆

Life without our helper officially starts tonight and we are holding our breathes for the next three weeks. Can we handle all the cooking and house chores? 

But we decided to put all those worries behind and focus on the present first. To celebrate our first night without our beloved helper, we were going to have pasta at our neighborhood pasta bar, PICI which has become our venue for birthday celebration these days. At least for mine.

Caesar salad – A healthy start to the meal with some lettuce, parmesan chips and croutons.

Beef tongue – A new dish on the menu obviously (since I've never seen it before) and it was a pretty good one. The pesto sauce and pearl onions did well to add flavors to the beef tongue without overshadowing its natural flavors.

Pappardelle Beef Cheek – The homemade pappardelle was again very nicely done, meshing well with the flavorful beef cheek ragout.



Tagliolini Truffle – The tagliolini was really eggy again but the sprinkle of summer truffles could be a bit more generous. Not bad although the pasta could have been less cooked for a slightly harder bite.

Fettuccine Smoked Salmon – The sauce with smoked salmon came with some extra kick and for that reason alone, had all three of us fighting for this pasta dish till the very end. Everyone wanted to spicy things up tonight. 

Panna cotta – PICI always have some of the best panna cotta in town and it was perfectly complemented by a layer of raspberry coulis on top. 

We survived the first night OK! But there will be plenty more to come. Two more weeks before we go on our own vacation too. Can't wait.

Food Rating: 6.4/10
Price: $$$
Address: Shop G03, G/F, D2 Place TWO, 15 Cheung Shun Street, Lai Chi Kok, Hong Kong
Closest Metro Station: Lai Chi Kok
Tel: +852 2557-7227
Website: www.pici.hk

Opening Hours: 12:00pm - 3:00pm, 5:00pm - 10:00pm daily

Say Hey Bakery 四喜麵包西餅 (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★☆☆

It's been a while since Jelloman and I were able to go out on a movie date without little nugget tagging along. But this morning, we had the perfect opportunity to finally do so with little one attending his class. 

After the movie in Cheung Sha Wan, Jelloman went to Say Hey Bakery (四喜麵包西餅), just across the street from the cinema for some breakfast treat. Yeah it was still early after enjoying the movie.



Say Hey Bakery is a small local bakery shop with a modern twist. You won't notice it when you look at the decor here. This is very much in the mold of Door Door Bakery in Mei Foo.

Some came with Japanese or French influence.

Of course, we had to bring this pineapple bun with butter (菠蘿油) home.

Sadly, this paled in comparison with our local boh loh yau cuz the crust just wasn't crunchy enough.

We also got ourselves some handmade cookies. The butter cookies (left) was pretty decent.

I had high hopes for the roasted Oolong tea cookies (炭焙烏龍曲奇)(right) but I thought the tea flavor was way over the top. The Tieguanyin walnut cookies (鐵觀音合桃) was probably the only one that was worth an encore.

Food Rating: 4.5/10

Price: $$$

Address: Shop B6-8, G/F, Por Mee Factory Building, 500 Castle Peak Road, Cheung Sha Wan, Hong Kong

Closest Metro Station: Cheung Sha Wan

-Tel: +852 3957-0883

Website: www.sayheybakery.com.hk

Opening Hours: 6:30am - 7:00pm daily (Mon - Sat)

Beans Metroplaza (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★☆☆

Finally, I got back to the swing of things after our short trip to Fukuoka. It was time to meet up with friends and colleagues again and my first gathering was lunch with Mr. G.



I tried visiting Beans at Metroplaza a couple of times without success when they first opened a few months ago. This time around, we were able to get in with a 10-minute waiting time. Not bad on a Thursday afternoon.

Matcha latte to start things off the right way.

Spaghetti tossed in salted egg yolk sauce has always been a safe bet for me at Beans Cafe. It was a little heavy but without a big breakfast this morning, it was perfect.

Food Rating: 5/10

Price: $$$

Address: Shop 135, 1/F, Metroplaza, 223 Hing Fong Road, Kwai Fong, NT, Hong Kong

Closest Metro Station: Kwai Fong

Tel: +852 2777-7006

Opening Hours: 8:00am - 10:00pm daily