Beer and Bespoke

Nov. 17-18

We went to Sam’s first thing on Saturday for Joanna’s final try-on. It’s a two-piece black suit with a button-up jacket sporting a Mandarin collar.

When you go to Sam’s the first thing they do is offer you a bottle of water. If they think you’re serious, they offer you a beer. And it isn’t just any kind of beer. 

That’s how I wound up with a can of an American style pale ale while I looked through books of swatches. 

I focused on the summer jacket first. I couldn’t find the pale ecru of unbleached silk, and wound up getting a lightweight wool. 

Then I found a low-contrast black and gray herringbone for a four-pocket vest.

It seems the beer is brewed with a special formula to reduce sales resistance. A tall, scrawny guy with three rhinestone earrings and a short pony tail stepped up and said he’d give me a special price on a second jacket.

OK. How much? He quoted in U.S. dollars. He was offering me a bespoke jacket at a price lower than something off the rack at Macy’s.

So now I had two jackets and a vest in the works. I was to come back Monday afternoon for the first fitting.

Sam’s is in an old mall called the Burlington Arcade near Granville Road, a block down from Kimberley Road. 

So we strolled up to Relax for a While to grab a quick lunch.

I was out of cash and asked the manager if the store took credit cards. No such luck, but there was an ATM a few doors up the street. 

By the way, if I bring a beer back with me is it all right to drink it here? Sure.

Most of the tailors in this neighborhood seem to be Indian or Pakistani. So if you wear a jacket, every few steps along the sidewalk, a man with a South Asian accent tries to hand you his business card and tell you he can make an exact duplicate of what you have on.

This time, the guy ambushed me halfway between the restaurant and the bank.

He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I told him, I’m all shopped out. I just bought two jackets and a vest. 

Where did you buy them? Sam’s.

He’s good, but expensive. I can give you the same quality for half the price. 

I give the guy this much credit: He didn’t try to follow me into the bank.

But he was there when I came out.

Here’s my shop. Come in and let me show you.

I don’t know why, but the guy didn’t piss me off. Most times I don’t like to have to say no twice. After all, his persistence was hilarious.

I got rid of him, though, when I ducked into one of the 25 or 30 7-Elevens on the block for a pint of Boddington’s Pub Ale to go with lunch.

We took Joanna’s suit back to the hotel and stayed in for a rest.

It was after dark when we left to go bar-hopping.

We stopped for dinner first at Kai Kee for preserved vegetable with pork belly and some greens on the side. 

Then we moved along the street to Zhang Men bar. Zhang Men is a brewery based in Taiwan. It has several bars there and a few in Hong Kong. 

Joanna told me that it is one of the first companies from Taiwan to open in an area under Red Chinese control.

It was refreshing to drink half pints of a series of craft brews. They weren’t the best craft brews I’ve had. Those are all in the States, but these were good. The line-up covered most of the bases—a Belgian blond, a few IPAs, including one called NEIPA that had zero bitterness units.

I asked the bartender about that, and he said, no, it wasn’t sweet. So I tried it.

The flavor was dry enough. It was in fact one of the better brews in the bunch.

Sunday we did equal time for Catholicism.

The Rosary Church, the closest of the Roman Catholic brand, is on Chatham Road, about three blocks from the hotel. We made it to the 12:30 service, which is in English.

As we stood outside waiting for the previous service to let out, I looked at the view and saw a very distinctive building that I thought was miles away.

We had passed it on the bus ride the other day to the Walled City Park. I wasn’t able to get a shot of it at the time. It looks like a huge dehumidifier.

I know bus rides, because of the constant stop and go, usually seem longer than they are, but it was still surprising to see how close it was.

The service was fun, and the music far better than they serve at St. Andrew’s.

I often go to Catholic services in New Jersey with Joanna. The order of service is close enough to the Episcopal that I still mix up some of the responses. 

The Nicene Creed is even tougher. The Catholics use the term “consubstantial” to affirm the nature of the Father and the Son. I always get lost there because I know it as “of one being.”

The hit of the service was the closing hymn, “Shalom,” which was in familiar Hebrew, “Shalom aleichem,” sung to a bouncy melody.

We figured that we had acquired enough good karma to deserve a sinful breakfast. So we went to the coffee shop across the street for chestnut croissant and chestnut cake. 

Chatham Road was new to us so we took a walk. 

We ducked into a short side street full of bars. The one on the corner was called Hair of the Dog II. It was about two in the afternoon and the place was still closed. Not much hangover help in these parts.

A few blocks away we found Hair of the Dog III. I don’t know where senior is.

We made our way through the waterfront complex to the Star Ferry terminal.

Kowloon is so full of attractions for us that, after almost two weeks, this was the first time we went to the Hong Kong Island side of Victoria Harbor.

It used to be an entertaining trip of almost half an hour. Now it’s more utilitarian, maybe five minutes.

The ferry lands you in a neighborhood of impassable roads. You need to use crossovers, passing through building lobbies and over bridges to get to Lockhart Road. That’s Suzy Wong territory.

William Holden’s hotel is still here. We saw it on our last trip four years ago. It has been rebuilt, so it is big and shiny, but all the charm is gone.

It was after 4, and the working girls were starting to take up their stations.

The church service let out around 1:30. By this time we had been walking the best part of three hours in rising heat and needed rest and refreshment. 

We avoided the loud bars on Lockhart Road, where there was only standing room, and went to a quiet one called Wan Chai Stadium. According to the sign, it’s “a sports bar with taste.”

We sat in a booth in the air conditioning.

They had Boddington’s and Stella on tap, so I had a half pint of each one. Neither is strong, but both are good. 

Stella Artois is one of few lagers I enjoy, probably because it has many of the characteristics, including the slight banana flavor, of a Belgian ale.

Our feet didn’t feel like walking several blocks to the ferry terminal, so we took the Metro back. Not as scenic, but much cooler.

We returned to Tai Woo on Hillwood Road for dinner. 

Joanna was eager to order the pigeon. So was I because I had never eaten it knowingly. I have eaten General Tso’s Chicken that came in very small bits. 

I once read in the New York Times about people harvesting pigeons in city parks. So I’m not sure.

Anyhow, this one came head and all. It was very savory and highly salted. Perfect with a glass of Tsingtao.

We followed that with a plate of whelk and choi sum. The snail was a tad rubbery and surprisingly short on flavor. The vegetables were very good, though. 

Then we had a dish of stir-fried beef and a little more choi sum served chow mein, that is, with pan-fried noodles. They brought a small dish of sweet vinegar that, when applied sparingly, added a tang to the beef.

I love the flavor of the crisp fried noodles as they absorb a sauce. The texture, though, is unbeatable. As the sauce sinks in, some of the noodles become soft and others still have a crunch. 

An interesting feature of Tai Woo is the fish tanks. They are open to the street. Various types of shrimp, fish, and things I don’t recognize are sitting in tanks with aerated water. 

We sat at a table near the door in the first floor dining room. Every few minutes somebody came in carrying a plastic bag holding a fish or a lobster (or maybe a jumbo prawn).

A man sits outside keeping watch over them, maybe like a shepherd in a field by night. He does get to go home. At closing time, the security gate comes down to keep poachers out.

So keep watch over your swimming stock, guys, and everybody stay well.

Harry

Chopsticks and the Long View

November 14-16

I did some writing on Wednesday morning, so we didn’t get out till one or two in the afternoon.

We went back to the Golden Palace, the dim sum restaurant on the 26th floor of the iSquare building, for lunch. 

When Joanna spoke to the manager, he recognized us. I don’t know if we looked particularly disreputable or if he wanted to do us a favor. He led us to a table in a corner by the picture windows overlooking Victoria Harbor. 

From the 26th floor, that’s quite a view. It was a bit hazy, but it still gave me the picture of the day. 

We split an order of crispy pork and a bowl of sauteed vegetables, mostly different types of mushrooms.

The crispy pork portion looked much bigger in the photo on the menu than it did in real life on the table. It’s made of pork belly and consists of alternating layers of meat and fat. The meat and the middle layer of fat are very tender. The top layer of fat is browned and crisp, like a cracker.

This was the best crispy pork I have eaten outside of Thailand.

The mushroom dish was savory and plentiful. 

We strolled in the area and then hid out at the hotel for a rest.

We left shortly after dark for one of the attractions I had been looking forward to seeing—the Cantonese opera singers at the Temple Street night market.

They weren’t there. Instead we saw a couple accompanied by an electric keyboard singing Asian pop. No thanks.

Joanna, remembering our great experience with the opera cafe in Singapore, wanted to try one of several karaoke bars along that part of Temple Street, to see if any of them had opera.

No such luck. We opened a door to a wall of overloud bad music and a worse amateur performer.

There’s no way I was going in there.

Lunch at the Golden Palace was starting to wear off, so we took a route back home that went through Hillwood Road, the bar street behind the hotel.

That brought us to a series of fortunate events. 

We decided to try Tai Woo, which claimed it has stars from Michelin. The staff is very bright and cheerful. It was a slow hour, between rushes.

Waiters and waitresses would stop and chat with us.

We had two common dishes that were uncommonly good—chicken with cashew nuts and choi sum.

Dessert options were red bean soup and another dessert soup made with pumpkin. We took the second one because it was unfamiliar to both of us. It wasn’t too sweet, and it was interesting. The color was terrific.

Not only was the food good, but one of the waitresses at Tai Woo gave us a lucky lead.

Joanna asked about the opera singers at Temple Street. They don’t perform there any more, the waitress said.

When she learned that we were interested in Cantonese opera, she led Joanna outside to a poster on the wall advertising opera performances on the first weekend in December.

She wrote the contact information on a slip of paper and gave it to Joanna.

We later stopped for beer at the Flame Bar next to the hotel entrance, but didn’t stay long. Everyone seemed to be smoking something—cigarettes or vapes, that is—and the atmosphere was getting close.

Thursday afternoon we dropped off our laundry at a wash-and-fold service down a curious alley from the hotel. 

Then we made our way to Relax for a While on Kimberley Road. We tried something new, billed as minced pork and squid. It came as a meat patty on top of a pile of rice.

It was all right, but we probably won’t do that one again.

Joanna wanted to pick up some underwear and a variety of shirts so we wound up at Mira Place, an urban mall like so many in this neighborhood. This one has a large Uni-Qlo store, a Japanese chain that has become one of our go-to places for stuff like that.

We brought the purchases back to the hotel, where I did some research.

I found that we didn’t have to buy opera tickets online. I could buy them from a real person at a store less than a kilometer away.

Then there was the pasta craving to be dealt with.

We both live in New Jersey, Joanna most of her life, me all my life. So we know the world offers a variety of wonderful noodle dishes. 

New Jersey is an unofficial province of Italy, and if you live there long enough, you know pasta and you need it as a regular part of your diet.

When you get a pasta jones, pad Thai, won ton, chow mein won’t serve as stand-ins. Pasta done right is in a class by itself.

And the “done right” is the tricky part. With few exceptions, I don’t trust pizza or pasta if it isn’t made somewhere between Philadelphia and Brooklyn, or in Italy itself.

Google gave me a lot of help. Turns out this end of Kowloon has dozens of Italian restaurants. Reviews for some of the closest to our hotel were generally mixed.

All except for one place, called Carpaccio. Opinions ranged from good to rave. A bit pricy but they have Italian wine.

It’s on the third floor of the iSquare building, about 20 stories below the Golden Palace.

We bought our opera tickets at a Tom Lee music store in a cul-de-sac called Cameron Lane. We’ll see “Happy Marriage Achieved” on Sunday December 2, when we are back from Taipei.

Then we crossed Nathan Road to the iSquare.

We found Carpaccio and in checking the menu made a stunning discovery: the carbonara was made with guanciale (not bacon, not pancetta, not ham) and egg (no cream added). Besides the spaghetti, the only other things added were pecorino and black pepper.

That alone qualified Carpaccio as worth a try.

We reserved a table for 6:30 and went for a walk. We stopped in a Pandora shop to look for a charm to add to Joanna’s bracelet. 

We expected the white flower on the red field, the motif of Hong Kong’s flag, to be perfect for a charm. Apparently Pandora doesn’t agree. 

Not only no flag, there were no charms at all representing Hong Kong. There was a Mickey Mouse charm, which had a connection of the Disney theme park on Lantau Island. The best of the lot was one of those fanciful Chinese animals that look like a cross between a lion and a pug.

Joanna passed.

This was rush hour. The streets were amazingly crowded, like those in New York, and the lights a bit brighter. Nathan Road and the side streets all light up like Times Square every night.

Whole walls of buildings tall enough to challenge Superman are used for light shows—some with advertising and others just for fun.

Visual bombardment while you pick your way through a mob can build an appetite.

It was time for dinner.

Joanna had a tasty Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. I ordered a Chianti Rochetto. That may be a nickname. When I saw the bottle later, the name on the label was Ridolfi.

The Rochetto wasn’t as sharp as most Chiantis are, and it had a fruit flavor that I couldn’t name at first, but still seemed somehow familiar.  A second sip jogged my memory. It was the flavor of dried fig. Very interesting.

We shared an appetizer, melanzane Parmagiana. But this wasn’t American style eggplant Parm. It was baked, with a bit of cheese and tomato, but not covered in sauce and mozz.

It was delicious. I could have eaten it as an entree.

We both opted for the carbonara. It was like being back in Rome. 

I haven’t found it made this way anywhere else. I had a variant using tuna instead of guanciale in Calabria. I’ve tried to make carbonara in Joanna’s kitchen.

Both of those options turned out all right, but were nowhere near as good as the real thing made by professionals.

Carpaccio’s carbonara was definitely made by professionals.

Friday was the second fitting for Joanna’s suit. We strolled down Nathan Road to Sam’s and waited for the suit to come out.

The tailor suggested taking in the waist by half an inch. Joanna picked buttons for the jacket.

I want a tan jacket to replace my current one, which is on borrowed time. I’ll wear that to Sam’s tomorrow, when we go to pick up Joanna’s finished suit, so they can get an idea of what I’m looking for. 

On the way back toward the hotel, we stopped for lunch at a small shop on Austin Avenue for a light lunch. The menu listed only soup. 

Joanna wanted something different and asked the lady about it. She said no, that was all they served, and suggested another shop at the end of a narrow alley nearby.

We shared a plate of Singapore mai fun without curry and a dish of gai lan (Chinese broccoli). The only beer was Blue Girl so I settled for that. 

They didn’t warn me that it would come in a 640 ml bottle. It isn’t my favorite beer, but none of it went to waste. 

It was a day for alleys. The easiest way to pick up the laundry was to take the long cut through the hotel lobby. It was around the bend to the front of the Best Western, up the elevator to the second floor, and then out the back.

The alley starts with some stairs and then comes to an apparent dead end. 

But no, you’re supposed to go through the courtyard of the oyster and wine restaurant into another short alley.

That also dead ends, so you have to walk through the car park for (I think) the Bauhinia Hotel.

Then you step out to Observatory Court by the Yat Fu Dry Cleaning Company.

Shortly after six, and Jonathon met us at the hotel to take us back to the New Territories for another dinner. This time Ying, one of our hosts from the last time in the New Territories, would be joined by her mother, who is a little over 90.

The mother lives in the building that houses the restaurant, and everyone on the staff seems to know her. Jonathon told me later that the lady comes down to the restaurant at six every morning for breakfast.

Many of the same people joined us and we had a set meal with a variety of dishes—abalone on wilted lettuce, lobster on a bed of noodles, snails on a green vegetable, roast goose, suckling pig (more crispy pork), a whole steamed fish. 

The food was so damned good that even the Carlsberg beer that came with it tasted delicious.

The metro line out there is the same one that runs under Nathan Road. It’s a ride of eight or nine stops back to Jordan Road station, which puts us a block away from Austin Road. 

It was the end of another happy day in Asia.

Here’s hoping everybody stays happy, wherever they are.

Harry

Where’s Waldo Now?

Nov. 11-13

We found Waldo, as everybody often does, in an unexpected place, this time on the sideline of the route for the 65th Macau Grand Prix.

More on that later.

We made it to the 11:30 service at St.Andrew’s on Sunday morning. It’s on Nathan Road, not far down the hill from Austin Road.

It wasn’t quite what I expected. The church describes itself as an evangelical Anglican church.

The English-language service was in the parish auditorium. The actual church up the hill was holding a Chinese service at the same time.

The hymns consisted of that “God-you’re-so-awesome” pop music that you hear on the radio. Ouch.

The sermon was very Protestant. It was the focus of the service, and long. 

The priest preached on the text from Ecclesiastes about vanities, but from a newer translation that called everything “meaningless.”

According to the preacher at St. Andrew’s, the message is discouraging.  

I remembered reading the same passage when I was in my early teens: “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

Hell, I thought, how liberating. You’re allowed to fuck up now and then because nothing matters all that much.

The service ended with an abbreviated Eucharist, which was characterized in Low-Church terms as “The Lord’s Supper.” That much was comfortingly familiar.

We had some dim sum at a restaurant called Relax a While, or something like that, on Kimberley Road. One of the dishes we had was a barbecued pork called char shu, generally not one of my favorites.

But this one was probably the tastiest I have ever tried.

We crossed Nathan Road to climb the stairs into Kowloon Park. The steps are lined with figures that look like characters from a LEGO video game. 

I’m not sure what they are, although each seems to have a name. None was familiar to me.

It’s the same part of the park that has the avenue of comic book heroes. They are mostly superheroes, and are all from Hong Kong pop culture. 

One that I remembered from last time is Lo Fu Ji, the wise old man. He has a new statue that shows him pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

We heard drums and came around a corner to see a group of women in a coordinated dance. A man had a bass drum and each dancer carried a small drum and two sticks.

They struck the drumheads, stepped, and turned. At times they kept the rhythm with the sticks alone clicking them together. 

We walked in the park for a while, even sat to watch a kung fu ceremony. But that got old quick because most of the time participants were milling about waiting to get organized perhaps. One routine involving fans, though, was almost Kurosawa-like. 

We went back to the hotel for a nap, maybe around three or so. 

That’s when things got really weird.

When I woke up, I assumed it was the next morning. It felt like next morning.

Nothing so convenient, however. It was about 11:30 Sunday night.

So what could we do? We went to a bar.

The second-floor button on the hotel elevator stops the car at a street that has little except bars. We went to the first one the Flame Bar, for a while. 

Joanna had a Campari and soda while I took a couple of lagers. We asked the bartender if he was closing soon. He said the bar is open till five.

We didn’t plan to stay that long and so walked around to Kimberley Road for a late supper. It was about two in the morning. Yeung Kee and Kai Kee were open. I don’t think they close at all. 

So we stopped at Kai Kee for a snack. We tried egg with bitter melon. I’ve had it before, in New York, at a Szechuan restaurant. This version was Cantonese, and so without chiles. Even so, it was pretty good.

We wound up getting back to sleep around four and slept till nine.

Joanna phoned her friend Mei to tell her we were in town and would like to get together with her and her husband, Ron. They called back 20 minutes later and told us to meet them at the Golden Palace restaurant.

In that short time, they had even gotten in touch with a couple of other friends who would join us. 

The Golden Palace is on the 26th floor of a building near the foot of Nathan Road. It is surrounded by picture windows overlooking Victoria Harbor.

We enjoyed an array of dim sum specialties, tripe, buns with Chinese sausage, boneless pigs’ feet, pork dumplings, shrimp dumplings, Singapore mai fun, and a few others besides.

Ron wanted to show us the new bridge to Macau, so we boarded a bus on Nathan Road that took us to the airport on Lantau Island, which is the Hong Kong end of the bridge. 

We were in Macau less than an hour later. The last time Joanna and I made this trip, it was on a hydrofoil.

The ride from Hong Kong starts with a length of the bridge and then dives into a tunnel about 6 kilometers long. Then it emerges onto more bridge in the middle of the Pearl river estuary out of sight of land.

The first land you see later is in Red China. Shortly before it reaches Macau, the bridge has an exit to Zhuhai, on the Mainland.

At the bus terminal, we took a local bus, which brought us to the older of the two Wynn casinos in Macau. The route followed some of the course for the Macau Grand Prix, which is coming up this weekend.

Temporary guard rails have been set up along the road to keep racecars from wiping out large swaths of bystanders.

On the way to the Wynn, we passed the Waldo Casino. We did “Where’s Joanna?” a couple of days ago, and now we found Waldo.

We took the shuttle from the older Wynn casino to the newer one, the Wynn Palace. 

Talk about over the top. The decor included a sculpture of a huge mirrored stiletto shoe with a dragon head, all surrounded by fresh-cut flowers.

Then there was the lighted windmill in red and gold.

We rode on the cablecar that goes over the fountain with the light show. Overhead wheels take the cars around large golden dragons.

The car swings out as it goes around. (I could have lived without that.)

Dinner in Macau was a sort of dim sum, too, but this one was Portuguese: curried potatoes, oxtail, pan-fried sardines, baby beef ribs. 

I had a Bavarian Pilsner with it. The German beers are much lighter than I like and I prefer ale to lager of any kind. But the purity law keeps them several steps above most of the world’s commercial lagers.

We got back to the hotel around 11 and slept till nine.

We went out to pick up breakfast. Along with yogurt and fruit, Joanna had a bo lo baau, a large sweet roll that resembles a small pineapple. I had bo lo yao, the same kind of bun with a slap of butter (the “yao”) stuck inside.

That was going to hold us for a while.

We took off around 1 to go to another of my favorite places in Kowloon, the Walled City Park. We took the No. 26 bus north on Nathan Road.

The bus makes a right a few blocks up and then goes into territory I haven’t explored on my own. You take it to the stop for the Regal Oriental Hotel, which was the hotel for the old airport, which has been replaced by the one on Lantau.

You take one of the side streets, any of which come to Carpenter Road, where the Walled City used to be.

The Walled City was originally a military garrison not far from a waterfront that has since disappeared. Its wall was torn down by the Japanese during the 1930s and the stones were used to expand the old airport. 

We entered the park through the South Gate. I don’t know if it is something that the Japanese left standing or if it is a replacement.

A dense city grew on the site and it seems that no government, Chinese, Hong Kong, or British, exerted authority there. 

Unregulated businesses thrived in the little city and made products from clothes to noodles. There was a street with about a hundred unlicensed dental clinics. Much of the heroin for the region was made there.

In the mid-20th century the Walled City was a haven for refugees from the Reds.

Efforts to control the place met resistance. The Brits tried to close it in the 1950s and rioters in Canton, across the border, burned down the British embassy.

Buildings were enlarged. Some rose to 60 stories. All this without benefit of building codes or inspectors. 

There was little running water. Children used the rooftops as a playground during the day. Junkies used the same roofs as shooting galleries at night.

The slum was demolished in the 1990s, when the park was created in its place. The only original building left standing is the original commandery, which later served as an almshouse for the aged. 

The building now houses a museum and the park offices. There are short films recreating vignettes of life in the Walled City.

It’s a strange feeling to walk through the gorgeous plantings and landscaping and at that same time think about the desperate lives lived here not long ago.

People flocked here in hope of a better life. Many eventually found it. Many did not.

One of my favorite parts of the park is bronze model showing the whole place, the buildings shouldering each other over narrow streets, hole in the middle where the one-story almshouse still stands. 

A mural on a nearby wall is a cross-section of the model. It shows a moment of simultaneous activities in the city—mah jong games, tai chi drills, brothels, restaurants, doctors’ offices, even a small boy peeing over the edge of the roof. 

We met Uncle Man by a garden devoted to the Chinese zodiac. Uncle Man, a volunteer docent, explained the symbolism represented there. 

The rat is the king, who always faces south. the other animals—well, most of them, anyway—face north, in the direction of the king’s face. The rooster, though, has to face east to crow the people awake when the sun rises.

When he learned where we came from, he drew out a bamboo flute and played a couple of American tunes, “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and one of my favorites, “You Are My Sunshine.”

I’ve loved that song ever since Kate was an infant. She napped at times at her grandmother’s house. A mobile above the crib played that tune.

We went back to that bar street by the hotel for steak. It was a bit tough, but tasty enough. The only red wine available was called Campero, a Cabernet Sauvignon from the Central Valley of Chile.

It didn’t have that overpowering odd flavor that I associate cabernet. It was much milder, with only a small bite. I liked it well enough, and Joanna did too.

That’s it for now.

Wynn, lose, or draw, my friends, be well above all.

Harry