Soul in a Bowl - Vietnamese Pho

Slow cooked chicken soup noodles with coriander seeds, clove, star anise, onions, lots of fish sauce and sprinkle the whole bowl with slices of raw onions, coriander, mint leaves, lime juice, chopped chilli and slivers of raw beef with a drizzle of sesame oil...what more could one ask for?

This national Vietnamese dish is a banging treat when done right, its deceptive simplicity brings out a complex burst of flavour. Pho is the ultimate comfort food - its hearty and warm but not at all boring with the in-depth flavour of the fish-sauce-infused broth and then lightened up by the sourness of lime juice and coriander and mint leaves, just when you think your palate has settled, the freshly chopped chilli kicks in!

I ♥ Pho.

'Yum Cha'

If you ask me a dining experience that represents Hong Kong the most, I would immediately drag you to a restaurant to 'Yum Cha' which literally means 'drink tea' in Cantonese. Apart from tea-drinking, Yum Cha also involves eating 'Dim Sum' and the timing ranges from 5am to about 5pm -basically any time before dinner. The concept of Dim Sum is fairly similar to the tapas culture in Spain, they mostly come as small plates or steamers of dinky food. People are supposed to take time to enjoy their Yum Sha session, because you are worth it.

The variety of dim sum ranges hugely, from steamed buns (sweet or savoury), shrimp dumpling, pork dumpling, 'phoenix talons' (chicken feet), duck egg and pork rice porridge... the list goes on and on. One of my favourites is lotus leaf rice, as the name suggests, it is basically glutinous rice wrapped in an earthy-scented lotus leaf with cooked meats inside. As the lotus leaf rice would be straight out of the steamer therefore sizzling hot, I would always burn my fingers opening the leaf for the 'treasure' - but of course it's worth the pain!

One Sunday morning I was lucky enough to be taken to a very special tea house in Hong Kong. Unlike the usual dining style where we order food from the menu, or the more traditional way of hollering across the room for the lady to give us a steamer of buns from her food trolley, it was all DIY. As soon as we arrived at the restaurant (when I say 'restaurant', this was merely a tea house) we had to fight over others to get our table, and once we got our table some of us had to sit down and mark our territory whilst the rest went to get our eating utensils and fill up the teapots with boiling water. As our 'soldiers' returned with steamers and plates of Dim Sum, we finally relaxed and enjoyed our meal.

Looking around the restaurant, there are a lot of families with children, there was a young couple sitting next to a lonely older man on plastic stools reading the newspaper. The owner of the tea house came out in an apron and joked with the new and regular customers. Some customers were throwing leftover food on the floor next to stray dogs who looked uninterested. One could feel the warm interaction among one another on this cold Sunday morning.

The food was good, the service was non-existent but the atmosphere was excellent.

(Service charge? What service charge?!)