ASIANish

Last night Eleanor and I decide to explore the city a little. What better way to enjoy the city than partake in the Happy Hour scene. Now, normally if you're from out of town, you'd go to Lan Kwai Fong (蘭桂坊), but since we wanted to explore the area we live in, we ventured out to East Tsim Sha Tsui. Although we weren't going to HH in the tourist spots, we had high expectations, reminiscing about the Happy Hours we enjoyed in the US: good atmosphere, decently priced libations, and most importantly, good cheap food. Not to mention, most of the magazines we saw advertised Happy Hour from 5:30 PM - 9:00 PM ... awesome!

First Stop: Tequila Jack's

Strangely enough we ended up going to a mexican joint for our first stop. Actually, most of the Happy Hour places in Hong Kong are catered to "foreigners" or expats. We only really knew of this place because we saw an ad in the weekly magazine: "Taco Tuesdays! HK $29 import beers and $9.99 tacos". Eleanor and I are both suckers for good cheap tacos ... especially the ones back home in Pasadena from the Taco Truck.

The Drinks

Of course we started with a drink ... heck, it's Happy Hour. At first I was excited, because I thought they had Negra Modelo. But I was mistaken, so I had the look alike Bohemia beer. El got the standard lime margarita on the rocks. Her drink was very much on the weak side, and tasted, more like, just margarita mix over ice. But for $29 ($3.75 USD) we weren't complaining, considering LKF (蘭桂坊) bar charge closer to HK $65 ($8 USD) regularly.

The Food

When we got to Tequila Jacks, we were hoping there were other food items on the Happy Hour menu, as we're accustom to in the States. Alas, it was just imported Mexican cerveza and beef tacos, HK $9.99 ($1.25 USD). The menu had items like quesadillas (HK $89.99 = $11.50 USD), chicken tacos ($12.75 USD), and burritos ($13.00 USD), but we wanted to see how the tacos were first.

As we sat down, we noticed there weren't too many patrons there. It could have been a slow night, or simply too early. But there were a few bars we passed that had Happy Hour that were a lot more rowdy than Tequila Jacks. Anyhow, the service was good. We were served chips and salsa. The chips were freshly deep fried and you could taste the oil, and the salsa... well it was good, but it was such a small portion, it felt like they were rationing it.

When the tacos came, they looked a bit unusual. Although they were way bigger than the $1 tacos from the taco truck, these were pinned together at the top with a toothpick. The taco had a flour tortilla, shredded lettuce, mild salsa, and some ground beef ... but it just wasn't right. El and I both agreed, it sort of tasted like a beef taco you get at the cafeteria in Elementary school. Needless to say, we held off on ordering from the rest of the menu, and saved our stomachs for the next stop.

Second Stop: M1 Bar

Since we weren't quite satisfied, we wandered looking for more HH spots ... especially ones that had food deals. Surprisingly, most the places we went to only had specials on spirits and not food. Although they all advertised HH from 5:30 PM - 9:00 PM and some till 1:00 AM; none of them had any food. Eventually we found our way to M1 Bar. The HH food menu was pretty extensive, ranging from Chinese and Thai food to Indian as well.

The decor inside was nice, but it was SUPER dark. There were a lot more people here compared to Tequila Jacks, and many of them were playing the Chinese dice drinking game. There were also a lot more people smoking, but was bad as some places in Vegas.

I ended up ordering a Guinness which was only HK $25 ($3.18 USD). Eleanor was just there for the food. We ordered 3 dishes and since they were promoting their Thai food, that's what we mostly ordered: Pad Thai, Chicken Satay, and Curry Fish Balls (a standard Hong Kong snack). All 3 dishes came out really good, and the portions were good too. Each dish was roughly HK $28 ($3.56 USD). All in all, very satisfying.

After Happy Hour Dessert

After M1, we walked around town a bit more to burn off the calories we had just consumed. We ended up around the steps at Knutsford Terrace. Although we were full, we checked out the restaurants on this little side alley. Basically, it's filled with all type of restaurants: spanish, japanese, italian, cuban, chinese, thai, korean, etc. All of it is owned an operated by the King Parrot group. A few of the places looked promising, so I'm sure we'll be back to try it one of these days.

On the way back to the shuttle, we stopped by a little stand for some dessert. A traditional sweet snack are egg waffles, aka "guy dah-n ja-I". There are a bunch of these stands, but apparently this guy is pretty famous for his version. I busted out my Flip camcorder, courtesy of Google, to video tape the guy. He actually stepped back during the video, because he though I wanted to take a picture of his stand without him ... or maybe he didn't want to be caught on video serving food and taking money with the same hand. Either way, I got what I wanted ... a video for my blog, and some damn TASTY "guy dah-n ja-I"!!!