太愛我的鄰居們了。
從太平山街往下走，經過摩羅上街的古玩店，順勢沿著東街往下走，右邊出現一個個綠色的排檔，再經過左邊的百年香料店，最下面那個排檔是做鐵器的。樹幹一般的大「菜板 」用來切割鐵片，還有古老的燒焊器; 有充滿香港味道的郵筒，鐵箱，還有茶罐；身後掛著－拍照每張＄200 的招牌，只怕慕名來拜訪老伯的遊客已經不少。老伯大約已70多歲，身體還是好得很，嘰哩咕嚕地跟我討論他做得茶葉罐手工如何如何地好。
我和老伯訂了四個大鐵罐放在店裡裝茶葉。希望上環永遠不要變，可愛的排檔古老的街頭技藝永遠不要消失。
想要見識見識老伯手藝的，下次來teakha 找我吧。
明記不鏽鋼工程在香港上環東街17號（對面排檔）
tel: 2543 5560 / 9438 9214
I love Beijing in the winter...
I have been dreaming about Ippodo teas since I left Kyoto earlier this year. I was hence super excited to hear about their first teashop opening in Tokyo from my friend Alisa, and hurried to visit first thing.
Ippodo is a teahouse more than three centuries old. However, its first tearoom outside of Kyoto, the Kaboku Tearoom in the Marunouchi district in Tokyo, aims to bring a young edge to this old traditional tea brand with cute, almost whimsical packaging and clean, sleek lines in the form of dark, solid wood. Guests choose from a small selection of three different categories of teas, matcha, gyokuro (the finest and most expensive form of Japanese tea), sencha and bancha (often referred to as common tea), all of which contains three more kinds of teas within each plus a matching dessert for guests to choose from.
We ordered the o-buku-cha (literally, great happiness tea), a specialty tea drunk around New Year’s time, paired with a lovely, soft and fluffy dorayaki. The waitress patiently explained how to brew our tea and left us to play with the tea amongst ourselves. Ah… such fragrant tea!
I know not many of you would agree, but this was already worth my flight to Tokyo.
Ippodo Tokyo is at Kokusai Bldg. 1F 3-1-1 Marunouchi Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo 100-0005
Tel: +81-3-6212-0202
Hours:
Store: 10:00 am to 7:00 pm
Kaboku Tearoom: 10:30 am to 6:30 pm ('last call' 6:00 pm)
On a quiet side street branching out from busy Omotesando lies an old Japanese style house with a peculiar brass cube structure standing in its main room. At first sight you might be tempted to think of it as a contemporary exhibition of some sort, but on closer inspection you will soon be greeted by sweet whiffs of coffee aroma and sounds of happy chatter between owner barista Eiichi Kunitomo working on his La Cimbali machine and his loyal customers, many neighbours living in the area.
Mr. Kunitomo came to Tokyo a few years ago to open Bread and Espresso, having started his career as a barista in Osaka. He has since then moved on to become a coffee consultant, counting Tyler Brule as one of his biggest fans and now supplying Tokyo’s Monocle Café with his coffees. Omotesando Koffee was his pet project to test out new innovative ways of serving coffee. Mr. Kunitomo came across the owner of this 60 year-old house and persuaded him to let him use it as a mobile coffee kiosk.
“A kiosk is the perfect form. Not only is the space cost-effective so that I can focus my efforts on the quality of the coffee, it also allows for intimate, personalized attention to our customers. I can also easily move this kiosk to a new location from time to time,” says Mr. Kunitomo. However, this space has since proved so popular with locals and expats alike that Mr. Kunitomo has persuaded the house owner to let him stay and allow the rest of the house to be used as a museum exhibiting rare books.
Come quickly, before the Monocle fans overrun it.
OMOTESANDO KOFFEE
Address: 4-15-3 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Opening Hours: 10:00-19:00
Tel: 03-5413-9422
If I were to own a shop, it would probably look like Mirth. Rustic whimsical chic - that's how I would describe its look. Think whitewashed walls interspersed by a single panel of bright green or blue, ceiling fans, tables made of unfinished wood, turquoise coloured walls, antique cabinets, children’s clothing, MT masking tape, the oh so French Bensimon tennis shoes, and splashes of bright, jeweled colours. The only adjustment I would make is probably to move it from Aberdeen to somewhere a tad more convenient.
我要開店的話，它大概會長得跟香港仔的 Mirth 差不多。我會稱呼它的那種 fu為 modern vintage + whimsical chic，裡頭有白色的牆、中間夾著一面是彩綠色的，吊扇，古董櫃，童裝， MT masking tape， 充滿法國風情的 Bensimon 網球鞋；整間店都洋溢著寶石般的亮麗色彩。我唯一會做的小改動就是把它從那個鳥不生蛋的工廠區搬到一處稍微方便一點的地方吧。
Mirth is at MEZZANINE FLOOR, 23 YIP KAN ST, WONG CHUK HANG, HONG KONG
Mirth 在 香港黃竹坑業勤街23號
tel: +852 25539811
Opening hours: 10am to 6pm daily
Long long time ago, there lived a vain Emperor who was excessively fond of new clothes. One day two imposter weavers came to him and promised the Emperor a new suit of clothes that were invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. They pretended to work at their empty looms day and night, all the while pocketing the finest silks and most delicate silk threads. When the day finally came for the to Emperor to parade before his subjects in his new clothes, everyone pretended to gasp in admiration until a child on the streets cried out, "Look! The king is not wearing anything at all!"
Thus was the feeling I got when I finished my meals at Tapas 24, Etxebarri and Mugartiz in Spain. I know I am writing this risking my reputation in the foodie world. However, I can no longer ignore the big white elephant in the room. I’ll just have to say it: Look! Doesn’t this just suck?
OK. Let’s start with Tapas 24. What was Carles Abellan thinking? How did he end up with food that tasted like something my newly employed domestic helper just made reading from some random Spanish cookbook? Everything about this restaurant was off. The décor, the staff, and the food. In a spartan, fluorescent-lighted room that suggests the dissection of frogs rather than the fragrant frying of squid, busy waiters flow with stern, sad faces and air as stiff as a board. There was no Spanish or Catalan to be heard anywhere in the room. 80% of the guests were American, and our waiter looked at us with the words “I hate my job and I hate these stupid tourists” written across his forehead. He was impatient, dismissive, and very simply rude. At the end of our unsatisfactory meal, we decided to give Tapas 24 one last chance and asked for the dessert menu. Our waiter, knowing we do not speak a word of Spanish, threw down the menu, pointed at the words “Postre”, and walked off.
Etxebarri. As some of you may know, San Sebastian is a small city in the northern edge of Spain roughly the size of Hong Kong Island with a 10th of its population. Etxebarri was never given a star by Michelin, yet critics rave about this highly personalised cuisine - chef Victor Arguinzoniz, part chef and part blacksmith, grills every single one of his dishes. He even makes his own charcoal, and invented his own oven and grilling contraptions to take it to a whole other level – and the restaurant has been ranked top 50 in the world for a good many years. Some foodies claim it to be "impossible perfection".
Etxebarri was our first gourmet meal upon arrival in San Sebastian and naturally, expectations were high. This name Etxebarri, which simply means ‘new house’ in Basque, was the very definition of the phrase ‘middle of nowhere’. When a thirty-minute drive as indicated on Google Map and GPS turns out to be an hour and counting and you find yourself stuck in an unpaved road the width of your car, you know that you are literally “in the middle of nowhere”. This path took us past rugged mountain terrain so majestic yet so close I felt like I could brush the rocks off its undulating slopes with my fingers (and the pictures don’t do much justice here). And when we finally arrived in the little village of Axpe, where Etxebarri was, I thought that was surely the most beautiful place I had ever seen. With a handful of beautifully constructed stone houses dotted randomly against a dramatic mountain backdrop, skies so clear I thought I might blow away the clouds in a single puff, and everything else a lush, vivid green, the village seem to have walked out of the Sound of Music, and even prettier (because I have been to Salzburg and wasn’t too impressed).
TBC....
If you must, Tapas 24 is at 269 C/ Diputació, Barcelona, Spain
tel: 934 88 09 77
In the modern English speaking metropolises, about 80% of the population would know how to hold a chopstick, every other baby born is of mixed heritage (usually involving an Asian wife and Caucasian husband, but there are other mixes too), and one in every five person speaks a language that involves the words “qi”, “zen”, “kimchi” and “green tea”. More and more people encounter difficulty explaining where they come from and often end up with a longwinded answer that spans several different continents. The world as we know it is getting smaller.
The interesting thing is, while Eurasian babies might be seen as “exotic” in the past, they are now being treated as just any other ordinary person around us. Chinese food is no longer relegated to the culinary realm of cheap takeouts, but something that can be an integral part of people’s lives.
There is no better place to experience this phenomenon than at Benu. Ex-chef de cuisine at French Laundry and James Beard Award winner Corey Lee opened Benu last year in SOMA San Francisco as a place to showcase “what he likes to cook”. Corey prefers not to label it any specific kind of cuisine. There are no boundaries, and hence imagination runs wild. He named it “Benu” after the Egyptian mythical bird that is the correspondence to the phoenix, a bird born out of fire, as a symbol of rebirth for his team into a new and unchartered territory. The name also bears little reference for most to any specific culture, which is what Corey is trying to achieve here – a cuisine that bears no reference to any - a oneness that is at once all encompassing yet dependant on none.
The food we had here at Benu showcased exactly that. Abalone and sea cucumber appear alongside foie gras steamed in sake, while wood ear mushrooms and black beans add an edge to your usual pork ribs and duck confit. There's even oysters wrapped in a kimchi infused jelly skin that reminded me very much of a grown up version of Fruit Rollups.
At a mere 28, Corey Lee is damn impressive.
If food were all that mattered, this would have been my favourite restaurant in the world. Unfortunately I’m also the person whose taste buds are closely associated with other forms of sensory receptors, so mood, temperature, visual and audio accompaniments all add on to or subtract from my experience. Benu misses that perfect ranking due to the stiffness of its setting, adopted through what was perhaps a failed attempt at a minimalist design. Hits from the 70s blasting through the speaker heralded an effort to liven things up, yet only called attention to the otherwise hushed, worshipful air of the place. However, to be honest, this only caused my heart to dip a little when I first stepped in. Impeccable service coupled with my first two amuse bouches and I was already walking on clouds.
So, please ignore what I just said. Benu is worth shutting those alternative receptors off, if just for one day.
BENU is at 22 Hawthorne Street San Francisco CA 94105. For reservations call +1 415. 685-4860
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