Does anyone remember the Taco Bell commercials talking about the fourth meal? We did one better. While I was searching for places to eat in Hong Kong, I wanted to eat at a few places off the beaten path. These places could be anything, snacks, light meals, odd things. I consulted www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants and found a place called Ichiran. After a little research, I found Forbes dubbed Ichiran one of the world’s best ramen. That’s some high praise there. Lucky for us, there was an Ichiran nearby our hotel. I woke us up early to shake off the jet lag and ventured over to Ichiran for breakfast. There are two things that I absolutely love eating for breakfast, one is pizza and the other is ramen.
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Here is my review of Ichiran. Finding the restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui isn’t easy, it’s located in a basement off a side road. Google maps is absolutely the worst. When we got in the vicinity of Ichiran, the map would disconnect and stop working. After wandering a bit since we were close, I spotted a dead end street and the restaurant. Normally a restaurant in basement located in a dead end street would set off the “Are you kidding me alarms?” But two sources can’t be wrong could it? We were the first patrons in and already I had the sense of dread. I had expected a line. The host told us to sit anywhere and handed us sheets of paper. I looked at the walls and there were Japanese written items with prices. Service wasn’t one of the strong points, but I was expecting it to be. We flagged down our waiter and he happily told us how things worked. You customize your flavors, you could choose broth flavor, garlic level, spicy level, ramen texture, and add ons. We ordered our meal and he pointed to some water faucets and said water is there. Wow, service is really different in Hong Kong. Another thing that I already knew is that you need to bring your own tissues for a number of reasons, one being you needed it for meals. Our food arrived fast and I quickly inspected it. It looked fine, decent portions, broth was a little cloudy like how it is supposed to be, and it had a nice garlicky smell. I chose the add on, which they provided on the side and carefully tossed it in. First bite, heaven. The broth was spot on, noodles had the right chewiness, pork was from a belly cut, and the soft boiled egg was perfect, half runny. I also ordered a matcha beer, which can be seen in the picture above. It went well with the meal, but I would recommend passing on it. Beer and green tea just isn’t my thing.

After breakfast we decided to do a little shopping. It was still a little early before the retail stores opened, so we went to the grocery store to pick up some snacks. Oh my! This was going to be a problem. When we stopped in 7-11 the night before, I saw some different flavored snacks but it was contained to a small section of the aisle. This place had aisles upon aisles of choices. There was a section with regular Hong Kong snacks, a section with Japanese, a section with Korean, a British section. It was too bad we couldn’t sample things, otherwise we would have bought more than we did. I’ll do a separate review of the snacks. We walked around the mall and stumbled upon a food court. There was a stall that did desserts. I purposely did not try and fill up at Ichiran because I wanted to snack. I ordered the tried and true black sesame paste soup with sweet tofu, Peggy ordered mango sago, and Kaela had watermelon juice. I found a neighboring stall with Takoyaki (aka octopus balls). Everything was good, I found the Takoyaki different than the ons I had in the US. The Takoyaki was more melt in your mouth than the chewy version. With bellies full, arms weighed down with shopping bags, and feeling jet lagged we decided to drop everything off at the hotel and relax a bit.

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Big mistake, once we got back to the hotel, none of us wanted to go out for lunch. We were tired and had a huge bounty of snacks to munch on. Good thing I had another trip advisor find in mind. Cheung Hing Kee Shanghai, is known for their Shanghai buns. You may have heard of or had Shanghai dumplings before, but these are the cousin. The inside ingredients are the same, but instead of a dumpling wrapper, Shanghai buns are stuffed in dough and have the pan fried bottom that you see on potstickers. Cheung Hing Kee Shanghai is Michelin rated.
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So much for having our first meal right after we land. The flight was delayed 30 mins and we were delayed in the air waiting to land. I made dinner reservations for 9:30 pm, which was accounting for landing a bit early and quickly clearing customs. I had my first scare of the trip before we boarded when the airline attendant asked me if I had a visa to travel to Hong Kong. Hong Kong has special traveling allowance from the US, which only requires a passport. I explained that to the attendant and they had to ask another person to confirm my facts.

We arrived at our hotel close to 11 pm and decided to not not bother looking for a place to eat that late. Instead there was a nearby 7-11 and we were just going to eat some snacks and call it a night. Interestingly, the 7-11 in Hong Kong do offer some light meal choices. You can get ramen, sandwiches, and other quick items. I thought about grabbing a beer, but when I touched the can it was warm. I settled on some chili crab chips, after passing on roasted chicken pringles, and a small isle of packaged pastries. Meh. The chili crab chips were nothing special and now I am up at 3 am local time writing this and feeling the hunger pangs.

You have to love the English language and the alternate definitions of words.  I'm not using the word reservations  with the definition of doubt.  I'm talking about making dinner reservations.  I'm so used to the domestic way of making reservations.  Jump on something like Open Table, put in your date, time, how many in your party, hit send and viola, you have a dinner reservation.  I thought making dinner plans for eating in HK would be just as simple.  

​Of course, it's not.  After doing a bit of research of which restaurants I wanted to eat at, I proceeded to try and make reservations.  Hmmm...this restaurant doesn't only accepts reservations through the phone.  Factor in time zone, the possibility that broken English may hinder the process, calling from a US phone number.  Okay, next restaurant, this restaurant accepts reservations via internet, great.  So why are they asking me to pay up front to hold the reservation?  It's a Michelin Star restaurant and they want payment in full.  Uh, let's cancel that one.  Next one, no reservations available online, call the restaurant.  Really?  After more researching and narrowing things down further, I was finally able to book some reservations.    Now I am having some reservations about those reservations...

​What I discovered is the HK version of Open Table.  It's something called Chope.  

I was able to make some reservations through Chope, but none of the Michelin Star ones.  I also found an entirely different website called https://www.feedmeguru.com/ that is running a Crabalicious special during the month of November.  The feedmeguru thing is similar to Dine about Town.  A number of restaurants offer a special set menu at a discounted price.  Crab, Michelin star restaurant, reservation without having to pay up front.  Shang Palace here we come!  

​After more planning, research, messaging, emailing, I was able to fill out a pretty full schedule of restaurants.  I chose one that asked if we wanted to dine on the roast duck.  If so, I had to order it in advance since it was a 24 hour process to make and they typically sell out.  Yes, please "reserve" me one of those. 

I automatically gravitate towards TST when traveling to Hong Kong.  TST is located in the south of the Kowloon Peninsula and is across the sea from Hong Kong island.  TST is central to most places in Hong Kong and it's really easy to hop on the MTR (subway) to where you want to go .  Shopping and dining is plentiful in TST and there is great day time and night time activity.  Admittedly, it's a bit touristy.  There are approximately 80 Michelin Star restaurants in HK and Macau and HK has one of the cheapest Michelin Star restaurants in the world.  Our goal will be to eat at many of the Michelin Star restaurants and other highly recommended eateries during our visit.  

​One of my pet peeves is how widely different reviews of restaurants can be.  One reviewer may give the place a one star rating and complain that the service was terrible and the food sucked, while a different reviewer may say it's the best thing they ever ate and they were treated like royalty.  I've always been aware that people have different tastes and expectations and sometimes those standards can be inconsistent.  Take the Michelin Star restaurant for example, I'm automatically going to be biased before I walk into the restaurant.  It's got a Michelin Star, so I'm already assuming the following: it's going to be a bit pricey, the food is going to be of a high quality and standard, and the service better be good.  If I go to a four star yelp rated restaurant, should I have the same assumptions?  What I'm trying to say is it's entirely subjective.  Could you have a good meal in HK without eating at a Michelin Star restaurant?  You sure can!  I've been to HK many times previously and have never eaten at a Michelin Star restaurant in HK once.  

​Another goal on this trip is to find strange flavors of snacks.  Can anyone tell me what flavor this is???