thursday 7/5/07 - the peninsula, the ferry, seafood!

I awoke early, and immediately went to the window. The day was a bit overcast but promised to come out clear, and the city in the daylight was even more impressive: waking up but still frenetic, still drawn clearly. It sort of made my head hurt. So I countered with my usual coping technique: going to breakfast. On the fabulous executive floor, a luxury breakfast was laid out in the lounge, complete with Asian, American, and British specialities in big shiny buffet pans.
I consider myself sort of butch about exotic food. In other words, if a food is weird, perverse, disgusting or just sorta icky to the Western palate, I will show how tough I am by eating it. I expressed this by making myself a big heapin’ bowl of fish congee, complete with red bean paste and onion. It was sort of like cod-flavored oatmeal.
I did pass on the English triffle, boiled beans, and lumpy chunks of fried read.. What the hell is wrong with the English? What the hell is triffle?
I then went to workout, which was one of the sweatier experiences of my short life. Humidity does horrible things to the sweat glands. There are Asian women in sheer bikinis hanging out at the pool even at this unholy hour. The air is stifling. I also find out from the newspaper that the composer of the Benny Hill theme is dead, which depresses me.
We decide to ride the Star Ferry across to Kowloon side and thus the Peninsula, one of the many pre-eminent sights of my mother’s youth. My mother is incensed that they moved the Star Ferry Building, however –“How could they?” she snarls as we wander past construction sealed off gate after gate.
But we finally find it. The creaky old boat lurches into view, and we trundle up the sliding platform to the top floor. “I never rode the bottom floor before in my life,” my mom explains. “My mother always did, though…to save money.” I can see my elegant, gracious, grandmother doing just that.
The ride over is quick and pleasant, although an English woman is calling in a piercing voice to her misbehaving son, James, who apparently will not sit still. I decide I hate small English children more then any kind of child in the world. A man sitting behind me is staring idly into space with his mouth open, a gaping hole. Great. I’m going to have nightmares.
After passing a Starbucks hocking Adzuki Bean lattes (no), we emerge into the shopping wonderland of Kowloon, dusky Prada models glaring at us from the side of every building. But we have a goal: the Peninsula, the swankiest hotel in Hong Kong since the British arrived, populated by the rich, the famous, and the merely aspirant. The view was shot by the new art museum and the seedy YMCA is across the street, but the Peninsula still maintains it’s super-luxe lobby and it’s fleet of shiny, shiny Rolls Royces.
We entered the soaring all white interior to have a drink and listen to mom reminesce in great detail. “That’s the store where Grandmother (my grandmother) bought all her clothes,” she notes, as we order 9 dollar passion fruit iced teas. The tea is tasty and served with orchid pedals, but it is freezing cold in this marble lined lobby and I am beginning to feel markedly queasy.
I go outside to take the air, but this is Hong Kong: that doesn’t help. I grow considerably more nauseous and watch the Rolls Royce’s pick up and dispense people in expensive too-heavy clothing. I want to find a restaurant here, I really do, but I think I might die.
So we ride the ferry back across the bay. I end up barfing picturesquely off the side of the Star Ferry, managing to hit the water instead of the floor. My mom will tease me about this until I die.
We return to the hotel, where I have a nap and recuperate and am ready for lunch. But my mother proceeds to get that go-away glint in her eye. She refuses obliquely to go out for lunch to Jimmy’s Kitchen, another haunt from her ex-pat days. Dad and I push it though, motivated by both hunger and curiosity, and she grumpily accedes, noting the pissed off looking storm clouds in the sky.
The rain starts coming down the moment we leave the cab (umbrella-less). It’s a tropical storm, and we’re drenched within a second, which is astonishing. And damp. And close.
But we run inside Jimmy’s Kitchen anyway, which is a moody clubby space down a flight of stairs, an absolute colonial relic. I can imagine stodgy old British men with beer guts making Important Decisions here, but right now it’s just populated with ladies who lunch, cleavage on full display. My mother is disappointed to find they no longer offer her beloved club sandwich, so she orders her other favorite, the Mulligatawny Soup. I go with the prawn curry, which is reputed to come with the full English curry fixings – tamarind, onion, chutnies, coconut, and other good stuff you don’t get in the states. My dad goes with classic veal stroganoff.
The food takes a long time to arrive and I feel sick again, but I manage to eat a little of the tasty and very English curry, fielding “I TOLD you so” glimpses from my mother. The dampness and the clubby feeling of the restaurant settle comfortably over me, and I zone out for the rest of the meal, and the taxi ride back to the Conrad.
Mom declines adamantly on dinner, so Dad and I make the trek out to the Victoria Seafood House alone. The restaurant is located on a high floor within a super-modern office building right on the water, its face flashing psychedelic colors for the Big Handover. The elevator whooshes us up and we are escorted to a table with a view in the small and very Chinese dining room, brightly lit and sparkling clean. We are not entirely sure what to order, but come to conclusions while nibbling on a snack of fried whitefish and peanuts: beansprouts fried with crab and dried fish, fried softshell crab with five spice sauce and salt, crispy skin pork, garlic broccoli, steamed whole garoupa.
The food arrives quickly and in courses. The bean sprouts are a curiously carb free variant on chow mein, but the crab is fresh and good, and we devour the small portion. The fried soft shell crab is magnificent: the batter is light and grease-free but still indulgent, the sauce smoky and delicious. We roll the pieces in the provided salt and enjoy the interplay of flavors. The pork is chilled but tasty, although I found it unnecessary considering the rest of the meal was from the sea (but my dad LIKES his pork.) The fish is perfect: cooked to tenderness, falling off the bone, sharp garlic and scallion flavors mixing carefully with the dense molasses of the soy.
Satiated, we walk outside the building and through the mall, all alone in the warren of passages that crisscross Hong Kong like pipes. The moon is up and my camera won’t take the night shots at all, but this city at night is magic anyway. A camera could not explain it all.