Cafe De Hong Kong, 47 Charing Cross Road London WC2H 0AN (directly across from Leicester Square Station)

No pics of the restaurant, I’m afraid, because I was too busy figuring out what to order, and forgot that I needed the pics for the blog.

Also, I’ve not been blogging for a while because the only place we ate at in the last week or so was Asakusa. Again! Seems we kinda like it, and we actually tried something new from there, so I might blog about that soon.

Anyway, today, JC and myself decided to have a girly day – something we’d not done before. Not in London anyway. The fiance is away on his stag do so after I’d done all the ironing / laundry / vacuuming / cooking / anything else I could find to do, I went into town and met up with JC at Selfridges.

Blink Bar, to be precise. Because we needed to trim those brows!

For £17, the very friendly ladies threaded those stray hairs from the brow, and despite the slightly disturbing ripping sound of brows coming off brow, it was quite an enjoyable (and slightly therapeutic) experience which I’d highly recommend to those of you with brows requiring trimming.

Flushed from the excitement of having brows to be proud of, we headed off to the Foodhall and bought hundreds and hundres of grams of Jelly Bellies, and Pick’n’Mix chocolate. Then, with the aim of eating as much as possible within the few hours we were there, we headed off to Chinatown for some nosh. What nosh though, was the question? As we usually depended on the guys to finish almost all the food we ordered, it was strange trying to figure out how much the 2 of us could actually consume. Having done some thorough analysis, it was determined that we’d be quite rubbish at eating lots, and so, we decided to have little of little, and where better to have it than at Cafe de Hong Kong – HK-style street food to be nibbled between us.

And because I only remembered that I had to blog about something when the food arrived, I don’t have any pics of the place, the menu, etc. Anyhow, this is the fishball and turnip in curry, which was about £5. The curry sauce, while being slightly watery, was nice and had a good amount of spice to it.

The turnip was basically boiled mooli, and there’s not much I can say about mooli that hasn’t been said before. The fishballs kinda tasted like the frozen ones I buy (to be eaten with instant noodles), meaning, they were slightly hard when I bit into them without much chewiness usually associated with fishballs.

Like I’m such an expert on fishballs.

We also shared the grilled chicken with black pepper sauce, and potatoes and vegetables on the side (£8). Much better than what we expected from this restaurant. To be honest, I kinda thought it was gonna be some reheated style chicken, but when it came, the juicy, tender piece of chicken accompanied by the flavoursome sauce, served all smartly on the plate, left me very impressed.

The potatoes too, were done very well. I can’t say for sure if it’s prepared fresh by the restaurant, or if it’s cooked from frozen, because again, I wasn’t expecting a Chinese cafe to be coming out with such tasty roasted potatoes, but hey, it just goes to show that I’m either easily impressed, or easily fooled.

This is one of my non-Chinese orders, which I hardly get to eat when dining out with other friends because no one else likes it, but JC does so I took the opportunity to get my fingers on these sesame prawn toasts (£3).

I must admit, I wasn’t expecting anything as good as this. I thought that the waiter would bring round a plate of pitiful looking flat toast which had been deep fried, and I would have been satisfied with that, but when the waiter put this impressive looking plate on the table, I was almost gobsmacked for a second. Almost.

Not only was each piece generously filled with chewy fish paste (maybe prawn?), the sesame covering was even, and crispy. It didn’t taste too greasy to me, and I enjoyed each mouthful of the toast dipped in the curry sauce from the first dish.

Fried chicken wings (£4) to share, another dish which was perfect for the girly chats and people-watching. The chicken wings were big ones (they seem to be getting smaller and smaller at some restaurants these days), and deep fried with a blend of spices – didn’t feel too greasy, and I enjoyed the crispy skin with juicy meat beneath.

All in all, I had an immensely fun day with JC. Who knew eyebrow threading could be so much fun!