Hong Kong

In the morning, we went to go check out the flower and bird markets. Near there, we grabbed some breakfast at a street-side bakery.

The goods.

Egg tart. You can see that this is not browned like the Portuguese version.

Some other buns... don't remember what kind. Breakfast was complemented with soy milk.

Durians!

Another snack break. Mango dumpling (mochi), aloe jelly with honeydew for Gabe (left) and aloe jelly with watermelon for Sue (right).

We found another market, which, despite being called a "Street Market" on their sign, was actually indoors. I liked the simple pictogram-based directory.

Fish. Sea cucumbers in the foreground.

Tub of eels.

More fish.

Butchers. The floor in this section was pretty slippery as the tiles were coated with a thin layer of animal fat.

Fresh chickens.

Various meatballs for your soup's delight.

Yet another HK snack: bird's nest (imitation of course, real bird's nest is horribly expensive) with mango and coconut ice creams. We also had mango pudding with mango, and sweet chrysanthemum tea, but no pictures of that for some reason.

Would you believe it? More HK snacks! red bean and sago (left) and dessert tofu (do\ fu~ hua) with mung bean. This was actually a pre-dinner dessert. We went to a really good sushi restaurant for dinner (which meant it was really popular, and therefore really crowded... we waited about 45 minutes and we got there at 5:30pm! hence the dessert to kill time while we waited for them to call our number).

Squid nigiri (left), scallop nigiri (right).

Tempura shrimp roll.

Roasted salmon nigiri.

Yellowtail nigiri (I think).

The craziest unagi nigiri I've ever seen! It's basically an entire unagi (eel), and the funny thing is that despite the size, they still have a chunk of sushi rice in the middle that's sized as it you were going to stick a normal portion of fish on top of it. Silly! (but darned tasty.)

Yellowtail gunkan-zushi ("battleship" sushi).

Assorted hand rolls. Clockwise from the left: soft-shell crab, uni (sea urchin roe), yellowtail, toro (fatty tuna).

Jumbo scallop nigiri.

"Roasted fish dorsal" nigiri. Not sure what species this is. Very tender.

Assorted nigiri. Left to right: amaebi (sweet/raw shrimp), saba (mackerel), japanese flounder, jack mackerel and salty saury (the last two might be backwards... I don't remember anymore).

And then for "dessert", authentic HK-style rice porridge (congee). The one of the left is "fisherman's congee" (assorted seafoods) and the one on the right is pork meat with preserved eggs (so-called "thousand year old eggs"). Uncle Paul explained that true, authentic HK-style congee is cooked for a *very* long time so that the rice breaks down a lot, and the congee really soaks up the flavors. It was quite tasty.