Egg Cake or Eggette, Chinatown, London

Bet you didn't know that, huh?

All along, my friends and I have been calling this an Egg Cake, because the little ball-things look like small eggs. Then, I tried Googling it to find out what it's called, and whaddya know, it actually has a name!

From Wikipedia:

An eggette is a kind of spherical pancake or ball waffle popular in the Cantonese-speaking regions of China, including Hong Kong and Macau. The food item is also referred to as an egg puff, bubble waffle or by its Cantonese name, gai daan jai and is made from egg, sugar, flour, and light evaporated milk. They are best served hot, and often eaten plain. They can also be served with fruit and flavors such as strawberry, coconut or chocolate. They are sometimes referred to as "Hong Kong cakes" in Chinatowns across America, especially in New York.

Wowzers.

Anyhow, when the husband and I first moved to London from Manchester, we came by the Egg Cake Man in front of the Golden Gate Cake Shop in Chinatown. We bought one, enjoyed it very much, and then kinda never happened to find the Egg Cake Man again.



Then, sometime a few weeks ago, we happened to go by the more secluded bit of Chinatown by the NCP (kinda where Jen Cafe is), and you can imagine my excitement when I whiffed a whiff of the familiar pancake / waffle smell going by my nostrils.



This man was standing there, making Egg Cake for a small child who looked a little more excited than me.



He was really friendly, and for once, I wasn't yelled at while taking a photo, and neither did I have to use the 'divert and snap' method of taking photos for this blog. We started a conversation about where I'm from, and how his friend used to have kaya for brekkie, and so he started using them in the egg cakes too. Then, more and more customers started requesting for the kaya version and also asking him where he bought the kaya from.



I stood there watching him as he poured the egg mixture batter onto the lower part of the machine, and then with a swift turn of the handle, the other side of the machine was coated with the same batter that would have swirled around, creating a bubble cake.



I was wondering how he'd put the kaya into the eggy bubbles, and he himself must have pondered that quite a few times, because instead of somehow filling the space with kaya, he just slathered it on to the pancake when it was done.



See the kaya sitting lusciously on top? Mmmm it was good. Like, sweet and warm, yet slightly crunchy when first bitten into, and then soft and chewy. Oh yummy.

And, since people have been asking the guy where he gets his kaya from, I didn't wanna lose out, so I asked him it, and here is it.



This doesn't actually say where it is, but it's from one of the grocery shops on the same row as Four Seasons in Chinatown, on the main row, and it's something like New Loon Moon. The kaya itself is slightly too yellow compared to what I'm used to, but it tastes alright.

Bubbleology, 49 Rupert St, Soho, London, W1D 7PF

Website here.

"Bubble bubble, toil and trouble" is apparently an oft misquoted line from Macbeth (Shakespeare).

The correct line should be "Double double, toil and trouble" but oh well.



Anyhow, with bubbles come tea. With tea come bubbles. And with that, comes Bubbleology - the latest colourful addition to an already very colourful SoHo (from many points of view).



When it first opened, we peered in curiously, wondering what this scientific looking shop was about. The name should've given it away, but I guess with SoHo, it's always best to be sure. Having determined that it was indeed bubble tea, we decided to try it out the next time we were in between meals.



That next time turned out to be when the husband and I were strolling around town after having had Itsu for lunch, and were still waiting for dinner to come by (because that's what we spend Saturdays doing ... going from one meal to the other).

Having been here a few times now, I suggest the best time to go would be right when the shop opens, or just before it closes. Any other time, it's packed. Like, there are groups of trendy girls (mostly dressed in the latest Asian fashion, unlike myself - dressed in no fashion) queueing up outside the shop, each one busy with their smartphones, with cute stuff hanging off the phones, all waiting for bubble tea. If you don't believe me, check it out for yourself.



The shop itself is quite small. There seems to be a back area which is blocked off by a door saying something like 'No lab coat, no entry' but I managed to get a glimpse as to what goes on behind when someone walked through the door. Didn't look like much was going on back there; must be where they keep the bubbles all trained for the next cup.



As I am a Bubbleonnoisseur (as in I have had A LOT of bubble tea), it took all of 2 seconds to zone in on what I wanted to order. As opposed to the 5 minutes it took the people in front of me to establish what was what, what size was small, what was large, what a bubble is, what the difference between a milk and non-milk drink is, and what flavour they wanted.

Like seriously, let me order first.

"Regular passionfruit with bubbles, please". That came to £3.35 which is reasonable for London standards (other Chinatown places charge roughly the same for just the usual Assam flavour), but exorbitant if you compare it with other places around the world (£0.50 in Malaysia).



Anyhow, when in SoHo, you pay SoHo prices.



The other flavour we tried was the Ginger non-milk version - I kinda liked this one better as it wasn't as sweet, and it had a very subtle taste of ginger to it.



The other stuff you could do with your cuppa:

Add bubble / grass jelly / lemon jelly / popping bobba £0.50
Make it a large £0.50
Have a tea and Taiwanese toast combo - the set is around £5-ish and the fillings are Nutella, garlic butter (?), and also peanut butter and banana, if I'm not mistaken from what I saw on the countertop menu



Some (made up, I reckon) facts from the bubble tea cup. Don't take my word for it, though. It could be completely true, although I might trust Wikipedia a little more than I trust a Bubble Tea Cup.



I want this lab coat.

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!

Skewers in Chinatown and frozen yoghurt in Snog

I was wandering around Chinatown one lunchtime and noticed a few new shops around the place. Shops in Chinatown open and close like elevator doors almost every other day, and they all look suspiciously alike (something about cost cutting and using the same decor, maybe …) so it’s sometimes not the most obvious when a new shop has replaced the previous one.

When I walked by this one (which I shall call the Skewer Shop because I don’t know what it’s called and it has no sign outside the shop), I had to stop for a moment and look inside because before this, it was a shop selling really pretty crepes. Now, by the window, were lots and lots of skewers with meat, fishballs, squid, vegetables and that all waiting to be cooked.

A huge, bubbling pot of the hottest chilli oil soup thing you'll ever taste.

I saw someone being served, and the skewers were cooked in a big, boiling pot full of a fiery-looking red soup base. Quite a good idea, I thought, kinda like a mobile hot pot, Szechuan style.

This we had to try, so on Saturday, we went with empty tummies, and selected a few skewers – lamb, beef, squid, and fishball. After the skewers were cooked in the soup, some cumin salt and coriander were sprinkled on top of the skewers before we quickly went to find a place in which to eat the stuff (not much space for eating in the shop).

While it is a new concept in Chinatown (nothing like this around), and while I do like the concept of cooking skewers of little nibbles in a pot of soup (lok-lok, Malaysian style), I found the taste quite difficult to like. I’m not too keen on things which are too spicy, and when I say that, I usually mean the numbing spiciness found in Szechuan food.

The soup was also perhaps a little too salty, because after I’d eaten the squid (which tends to absorb more soup), my tongue felt really weird. Kinda like tingly because of the spice, and also almost like it wanted to be hydrated again, mainly due to the salt which just wouldn’t go away.

I’m sure lots of people will absolutely adore this place, especially if they’re fans of the spicy hotpot, but this wasn’t for me.

We then went to the Stanley Donwood art exhibition at The Outsiders in Soho, and while I didn’t think it’d take too long to get round, I didn’t reckon it’d take all of 2 minutes only either. We went into the shop which looked like one of those half-renovated shops, there were a few painting inside, and downstairs, a few more paintings and a little hole-in-the-wall with a movie showing on loop.

Snog, 9 Berwick Street, Soho, London W1F 0RG

Then, to fill the half hour we had between the art exhibition and our dinner at Asakusa (more on this later!), we decided to get some frozen yoghurt from Snog in Soho.

I really like this place – colourful lights, a great place to watch people go by in Soho, and plenty of lovely, non-fat yoghurt. What’s not to like? Oh, yes, the price. It’s a little pricey, about £4.95 for the ‘Classic’ (ie medium-sized) with 3 toppings.

Look at these lights.

Because there was a deal on the ‘Classic’, and because I always go for the deal (though only after careful calculation), we went for the spiced apple yoghurt base, with 3 toppings.

For the toppings, we had blueberries …

Chocolate brownie …

... and lovely, chewy, mochi.

Fun afternoon in town, with the excitement of Asakusa to come in the next post!

Jade Garden, 15 Wardour Street, London, W1D 6PH

Having been to eat around Chinatown many times before, we’d actually never noticed this unassuming little place just on Wardour Street. It could be the excitement that fills our minds when we get to Misato (just next door to Jade Garden), or the bright lights of the Japanese cake-and-all-things-cute-and-little shop also next door to this place.

When our friends C&J suggested we go to Jade Garden for dim sum, it was kinda like one of those ‘Oh where did this shop come from’ type thing when we got there.

So, Jade Garden is a small-ish (one shop) and quite cosy little restaurant, furnished in a way that makes diners (or just me) feel comfortable and not at all like we’re dining in the middle of Chinatown. Being a typical Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, they do have quite a few tables chucked into a small space, but at least they don’t make you share your table with randoms.

To place your order of dim sum, you’re given a form with numbers, kinda like what you’d find in other Chinese restaurants (or in an exam) and you tick the items that you want based on a colourful, picture-filled menu.

I’m not entirely sure what the prices are this time because our friends ordered for us (we were taking a while with the whole parking thing) so by the time we got there, the food was kinda settling down happily on the table, just like us. So, this is the Pei Tan Sau Yuk Chuk (Century Egg with lean meat rice porridge) which Jade Garden does well. The rice porridge is smooth and thick, silky and flavourful. The meat is tender, and the century egg (though not really attention-seeking) gives a nice, subtle flavour to the dish.

The Inside-Out Deep Fried Tofu Stuffed with Fish – my interpretation of the dish, as you can tell. I don’t know the Chinese name for it, and certainly don’t know the English version of it, so this’ll have to do. If the name is not self-explanatory enough, it is basically tofu puffs turned inside out, stuffed with fish paste (tender and chewy goodness mmm) and then deep-fried. It’s crunchy when you first bite into it, but then when you get to the fish, it becomes slightly softer and salty, goes really well with the sweet and sour chilli sauce.

King Prawn Cheong Fun – a must-try in every restaurant, kinda like one of those benchmark type things. The one here is pretty good, with fresh, juicy, crunchy prawns wrapped in delicate, silky, smooth sheets of rice-flour noodles. Could do with a little more sauce over the noodles because they got kinda dry sitting there waiting to be devoured, but that could also party be down to our neglecting it a little when it first got there. Lesson to self – do not neglect your food.

The Deep Fried Squid – which is fried to perfection here in a tasty batter, not too greasy. It could be improved with slightly thicker squid though, because when you deep fry something, the best bit is biting into the batter and then finding thick, chewy squid inside. It just doesn’t cut it when the squid is a thin, wry, little ring of could-be-more-chewiness.  

Crab meat parcel of something green (?) – clearly another well-thought-up made-up name by me. Loved the green skin (note – the green doesn’t actually taste of anything) but I really like chewy dim sum skins and this was particularly lovely. Fresh filling of crab and prawns added crunch and juice to the little parcels, fab.

Har gau (prawn dumplings) – another thing we order to see how the restaurant stacks up. It’s done well here. Firstly, the prawns are fresh, and fills the parcel perfectly. The skin is perfectly chewy, just thick enough, and shimmers with translucent glee just waiting for me to eat it. The first bite is chewy, and crunchy, and juicy, and so really good. The next few bites just get better.

Deep fried tofu sheets with fish mince paste – really, it tastes alot better than it sounds, partly because it’s a made up name by me, again. What it is is sheets of tofu (tofu exists in just so many forms …) wrapped around fish mince paste (chewy, fishy, tasty) and then deep fried. Dipped in what I guess is Lea & Perrins sauce, it’s a nice contrast of deep friedness and tangy, sour sauce.

Finally, to end the meal, something sweet. Hot Custard Bun – slightly different to the English version of custard, in that this is a little more buttery and eggy. When eaten hot (unlike what we did), the custard should be hot, gooey and creamy – so much so that you’d have to be careful while eating it as it’s similar to molten lava (OK fine, not similar, but a very small likeness).

Would I recommend this place? Yes, we’ve been there many times since, and while not the cheapest in Chinatown, or the biggest portion we’ve had, the quality is good and that more than makes up for the first two points.

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