Hong Kong Street Family Restaurant

This is a much belated post. The April 2010 Makansutra dinner took place at Hong Kong Street Family Restaurant (Novena Garden branch). It was a 10-course dinner, full of merriment as usual, enhanced by bottles of wine along with friendships, new and old.

First up was Hae Cho. Deep-fried crispy prawn rolls - what's not to like? The dinners, much like wedding dinners, tend to start a bit late, so our table of hungry people polished this off in no time.



2) Sharks fin with Crab Meat: generous ingredients but also thick, goopy and starchy.



3) Steamed Red Snapper HK Style: fresh and sweet, but too bad a little oversteamed so the texture was a bit dry.



4) Thai Style Cream Sauce Prawns: this turned out to be pretty good, with the bits of kaffir lime leaves adding some aromatic kick.



5) Steamed Chicken with Ham sauce: alas, this was supposed to be boneless slices of chicken sandwiching the ham, but i guess with such a large crowd, they merely chopped the chicken up and spread the ham on top.



6) Home made Tofu: This tasted more like seafood/fishcake, but not in a bad way. Crunchy on the outside, softly moist on the inside.



Gratuitous shot of beauties at our table posing for Ivan. Wonderful people.



7) Braised Pig Trotters with Sea Cucumber: one of the items on the menu that drew me here. While not the best I've had, this was still pretty decent. I took 2-3 helpings.



8) Sauteed Bailing Mushroom with Shanghai Baby Cabbage: Loved the mushrooms but steered clear of the "baby cabbage" - nai bai is too much like xiao bai chye which I am not fond of.



9) Steamed Lotus Leaf Rice: ohhh this simple-looking dish was so savoury and delicious, I packed the remnants home. Good use of dried shrimp, dried mushrooms and whatever makes it umami. Probably my favourite item here.



10) Longan with Fruit Jelly: I love jelly but this one was strangely coloured and flavoured. I am not sure what fruit it tried to be. But icy longans are always refreshing.



Everyone was quite well-fed. While it was not the most spectacular dinner we've had, it was good hearty fare. TheHungryCow brought some interesting people too. An infectiously chirpy girl from near-work, an Indonesian scientist trying to learn Mandarin, and her husband, a neurologist/neuroscientist who spends weekends teaching math to kids with Down Syndrome. Hehe, I also spend weekends and weekdays teaching math and ABCs to a kid with Down Syndrome, just not as selflessly. Anyway, you never know who you'll meet at these dinners. That's part of the fun.


HONG KONG STREET FAMILY RESTAURANT
273 Thomson Road
#01-01 Novena Garden
Singapore 307644
Tel: +65 6252-3132
Open daily 11.30am – 2.45pm, 5.30pm – 11pm

Other branch:
20 Eastwood Road #01-03 Eastwood Centre
Tel: +65 6245-3881