Monday, May 7, 2012

Chelsea Market Baskets owner, David Porat, has a regular monthly column in the WestView News, a paper that serves as “the voice of the West Village.” Usually written about restaurants in the West Village, but this month, documents travel in Hong Kong and China for two of the largest gift and basket trade shows in the world, where dining out was a little different, but, as always, very entertaining and very tasty.

Sitting here, in a modern hotel on the other side of the world, twelve hours time difference, day is night and night day – yet the world is growing smaller and maybe better? I have just finished six days in Hong Kong and Guangzhou; I have been here many times before and dinners are some of the more exciting things that I do while I am here. The business of developing products and reviewing with vendors is also fun and challenging, with a bit of never knowing what you will find and how things will end up, but that is for another story and time. The food finds are immediate and most exciting in the present. Having friends who do similar things, both for business and pleasure, I relied on my London friend Paul to advise me on where to go now in Hong Kong. Last night and the night before, I ate on the island side at two maybe more current places.

The first night we explored a residential area not far from Central that is now being developed with trendy food and has been written about; it is called Tai Hang. It is not unlike a part of the Village with a multitude of ethnicities represented in the establishments. It was filled with younger people; in fact I took a friend who lives in Hong Kong there and he was surprised at how all these new places sprung up. There was a good bit of French, including a restaurant with a great selection of cheeses on display, many that you could not easily find in New York. We choose a restaurant called Daruma Ramen House, a new place that takes ramen noodles to an art. The restaurant is very small and inexpensive, about $10 or 77 HK$ for a very satisfying bowl of a rich and spicy broth that includes pork, noodles, fish row, a semi hardboiled egg, and nori seaweed. The service is curt, the style is modern and this could be New York or Hong Kong. What I am reminded of here is how Ramen is happening in New York with some of the disciples of David Chang at Momofuko basically doing the same thing in New York.

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