HONG KONG: LIN HEUNG TEA HOUSE

June 13, 2013 in summer, travel

an edible museum, a trip through time, hong kong's answer to katz's: lin heung is no place for the hungry timid. it's for the elbow-y, stomach-of-steel, or i-don't-speak-cantonese-but-my-dad-kind-of-speaks-mandarin types. sausage buns flavored with rosewater, malay cakes towered over tea... foreign things and more foreign things that, honest, i would have tried had i not been in my salad-craving phase.

a moon cake bakery at the front waves hello and goodbye and sells perfect little treats for your friends in minnesota. nice strangers at your table hopefully show you the ropes, otherwise there is always google to tell you that you do not wait for the food carts to come to you. you take your ticket, you conquer the crowd, and goddamnit you earn your pork buns.

-yeh!

HONG KONG: THOSE LAST FEW DAYS

June 07, 2013 in summer, travel

sitting in the middle of an orchestra playing rite of spring made me want, more than anything, sweet hip hop moves and flashy colorful sneakers. not that being a ballerina or an aziz-grade bass drum player wouldn't be the tightest, but the entire time up until my entrance in the danse sacrale, i was basically holding back my full being from dropping it like it's hot and doing the dougie. it was so insanely awesome! the energy from the brass was wild, aziz's massively loud bass drum notes were like the scariest cracks of badass thunder, and i decided that if ever my pops is dunzo with the orchestra thing, he could totally pioneer a night club solo bass clarinet career. he grooved, especially with mr. timpani. also, aziz and i had nailed some duo gong action.

i loved these performances so much. they were memorable, to say the least, and... where can i find a good hip hop teacher?

when we weren't grooving in odd meters, we continued to stuff ourselves with dim sum, right up until i just wanted a damn salad. i couldn't really find one. so i had a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, which kind of really hit the spot.

i also read a ton. we had the day off on saturday so we got going early to scope out a few markets and souvenirs, but by mid-day the heat and humidity were so outrageous that i retreated indoors and read all of the fault in our stars. it was delightful and the characters were so likable. i would definitely recommend it.

more on some crazy hong kong restaurants soon!

-yeh!

HONG KONG: SKYLINE AND SESAME CAKE

May 30, 2013 in summer, travel

this morning it's about bright eyes and almost forgetting to shower and realizing that tomorrow is my last full day here. sad pandas. i'm also wondering who in the crew is going to break first: we've had about negative vegetables this entire week, infinity buns, and it's only going to get worse/better at lunch time when we go to tim ho wan for sugar-coated pork buns. i die.

last night we went to shanghai min for shengjian bao, which are essentially a hybrid of a steamed pork bun, a potsticker, and a soup dumpling.

a pan-fried soup-filled bun.

what the f? who gets stoned and thinks of these things?

anyways, my almost forgotten shower has set me back a few minutes so i need to run to rehearsal. i'm allowing a few extra minutes though to stop at starbucks and sample their tasties that appear to be totally unique to the starbucks here.

-yeh!

HONG KONG: INSTAGRAMS

May 29, 2013 in summer, adventures, travel

since my pops arrived, my dumpling intake has pretty much tripled and it's only going uphill in a downhill/loosen-the-belt way. we take hours to indulge in the wild hotel breakfast that has stations for like every breakfast food imaginable (and non-imaginable), including breakfast noodles and breakfast blue cheese and breakfast bao... and our favorite, breakfast 粽子.

last night we had a molecularly gastronomized xiao long bao. (don't even. i'll discuss later.)

yesterday we had our first rehearsal with the phil and it went well. it was fun to play with my dad and aziz! aziz has surrounded himself with like a thousand bass drums and if i didn't know him i'd be scared.

after rehearsal i dragged those two to the street with all of the kitchen supplies stores and it was the most jaw-droppingly amazing out-of-body cake mold experience. hey molly, did you buy any cool things in hong kong? 7,000 beautiful cupcake cups for the price of about two normal vending machine trips.

other enjoyable moments from these past few days: running into some friends from juilliard who were stopping over en route to bali, eating the most fabulous black sesame ice cream with the hugest black sesame seeds and not giving a damn about them getting stuck in my teeth, meeting a giant inflatable duck, and finding soup dumplings at the 7-11.

ok, i am off to play more gong!

-yeh!