Tate - rehung, A Wong - re-hungry

You know when you go on holiday to a foreign city and you do so much when you're there - visit galleries and architecturally significant Bauhaus buildings, track down random things you've read about online, make an effort to go and look at an abandoned train station? (Tel Aviv, I'm talking about you!  More on this in a subsequent post...)

And then you come back to your home city and watch a lot of iPlayer, go to your local drinking haunts and never make the most of where you actually live?

I've been making a bit more effort to do stuff in London this year - and when I can combine 'culture' with some awesome food in the environs, all the better.

There've been a lot of glowing reviews in the press about the Tate Britain rehang (hung vs. hanged btw - hanged is purely for murder by the neck - I never knew that.)  I went the other day - and while I can safely say that I know less than nothing about art (or rather I instantly forget any art fact as soon as I've read it) - the rehung main collection was brilliant (well, up until about the 1980s when I think it all goes to shit.)

There were so many paintings that struck me - but for the sake of brevity, check out my three faves:

I am SO putting those two ladies in my next book.

And this:

And this:

Still, there's only so much art a dilettante can take - and so the really good news is that less than 15 minutes walk from the gallery is A Wong, a Chinese restaurant that has been getting rave reviews.  It was so great I took my mum and dad back there the following week for lunch.

They do fantastic dim sum - only at lunch - and a regular menu at dinner.  Highlights of what we ate are as follows:

An epic prawn cracker, that didn't look like any other prawn cracker I've encountered in my many years of hanging out with prawn crackers:

A luscious, delicate, smokey sesame buttered chicken and cucumber salad:

An amazing hot, salty yet mild Yunnan style fried cheese served with Sichuan pepper salt:

(Does your heart sing when you see the phrase 'fried cheese?' Mine does, though perhaps it's the first signs of cardiovascular disease.)

A very sweet yet deeply savoury crisp-on-the-outside, fluffy on the inside barbeque pork bun:

Killer Scottish beef rump fried noodles:

Something I forget the name of, I was so transfixed by its prettiness:

And a magical melting pudding.  I was so high on food happiness that again I forget the exact description - I think it was tobacco smoked banana, nut crumble, chocolate, soy caramel sauce.  Either way - now you see it:

Still there, just about:

Now you don't:

A hot mess - a very very fine hot mess indeed.

The service was excellent too - and the prices were nowhere near as expensive as the food looks. A total find in the backwaters of Victoria - and the perfect reward following a self-improvement session at The Tate...

The book factory!

So excited! Last week I went with mum and dad to see my new book being printed up in Bungay in Norfolk.

I've been to a pudding factory (excellent, smells of vanilla) - but I've never been to a book factory before, and it was amazing! (doesn't smell of vanilla though.)  A lovely lady called Tanya showed us around and made us feel like we were as important as J K Rowling and E L James put together.  (Note to self: would I sell more books if I wrote under initials? Maybe the more initials the better - J K E L Newman? Must source more middle names immediately.)

It was all a bit of a blur as I was just so happy to be there. (My dad was not well for most of last year and so to be there with him and my mum felt extra-special.)  Things I remember as follows:

Piles of book covers to be wrapped round their contents:

Books are printed in sections a bit like lasagne.  (For my latest lasagne mishaps click here.)

Books are printed in pairs, one up one down, and then chopped in half:

The glue used to bind them looks like jewels, and cries out to be played with:

The process is huge and fast and brilliant, and seems to be run by a bunch of 6 foot hotties.  (Note 2 to self - bring wing women to printing of next book.)

Seeing a book you've written whizz down a production line suddenly makes it all feel very, very real, and you start panicking about not being Nabokov...

Oh well, too late for that now, though maybe I could make that one of my new middle names?  Stella Nabokov Rowling Jenny (I always liked the name Jenny) Newman.  S N R J Newman.  Hmm, looks like my fingers fell asleep on the typewriter.

Anyway, at the end of all those conveyor belts, out comes a book, or a few books.  Magic!

Afterwards we went for lunch in the terribly pretty medieval town of Lavenham,

where we ate at Marco Pierre White's The Angel. We had a Taste discount card which meant the food was half price - or in my family's case meant you order double the amount of food.  Prawn cocktail, lamb boulangere with triple cooked chips, creamed spinach, broccoli hollandaise, and finally a light-as-air-and-just-as-well chocolate and coffee mousse.  All super delicious, and I needed to build some muscle anyway for an epic book signing session today at Harper Collins!

That space between them is very me shaped...

Hong Kong Eat-a-thon

No amount of walking up and down Hong Kong's steep hills is going to wear off the calories from this lot...

This city knows how to eat.  I too know how to eat.  I just don't know how to stop...

Some of the hightlights of my 3 day trip, as follows:

Perfect prawn wantons in this soup at Mak Man Kee in Jordan, Kowloon (not to be confused with Mak An Kee noodle shop, though you might, mightn't you?)

Super light, delicate wanton wrapper, with a mega prawn lurking inside:

This man was a dynamo:

Then head out of the noodle shop and turn right, walk two shops down, and get involved in a whole world of awesome egg based treats here:

These were the best ever scrambled eggs - perfectly buttery and salty on pillowy toasted white bread -

Followed by a light bowl of very sugary eggy custard.  Eggs are protein you know.

Then hop back on the Star Ferry (bargain, around 20p) at 8pm, just in time to watch the light show on the water.

The next day we had lunch at The Chairman.  It'd had rave reviews - I'd say it was a good 7 out of 10.

The highlights were these delicious little prawn cakes

And this terrific wolfberry ice cream.

What is a wolfberry?  A goji, by another name.  Normally I find goji berries taste like shit, but not in the form of ice cream they don't.

Then drinks on the roof at Wooloomooloo in Wan Chai at dusk.

It's a great rooftop bar, not busy at all around 5pm, and the perfect place to get pissed while you watch the city's lights come on.

Then on to my favourite meal of the trip, at Yardbird.  Scrap that, my favourite meal of the year, hands down.

Pretty much every dish was phenomenal, but my top three were these great balls of corn:

Extraordinary Brussels sprouts with maple syrup, soy and garlic - would convert even the most hardcore anti-brassica into a believer.

These extraordinary cauliflower fritters:

Divine sticky, sweet, crunchy exterior with a perfect interior with a slight bite, but silky nonetheless, and with a subtle heat from kimchee, though with no overpowering kimchee flavour:

You know a restaurant is doing something right when they can transform sprouts, corn and cauliflower into the most exciting, memorable dishes you've eaten in forever.

Which is not to say that the meat dishes weren't all that.  They were.  All that and more.  Particularly the Scotch eggs with tonkatsu and kewpie mayo, which we ordered a portion of, had one bite, then ordered more of immediately:

Happy days.

And then terrific egg fried rice with deep fried chicken bits

Cute beer, how could you not love him?

Also less cute, more deadly sake

And then on to Feather Boa for very deadly dacquiris, with glasses covered in cocoa, which lull you into a false sense of security that you're actually drinking a dessert, not getting hammered.

Still hungry?  Didn't think so, but that's not going to stop me.

Famous for its beef noodle soup.  Ask for lean brisket or you'll get a bowl of fat, not that there's anything wrong with a bowl of fat if the mood is right.

And then on to the ridiculous Landmark mall, which is full of people who think £700+ is an acceptable price for a pair of shoes.

For a little pear and caramel cake at Robuchon's cake shop.  The only thing you'll find in this mall for less than a fiver - in fact the only thing you'll find here for less than about £20k.

And finally off to Chilli Fagara for bowls of beer.  Yes, bowls.  I'm drinking all my booze in bowls from now on:

And Szechuan prawns as big as your head:

You may think I ate everything in Hong Kong - it looks that way, doesn't it?  But I didn't get round to eating this:

The middle one.  Bacon creme anglaise.  Why is there not more bacon custard in my life?

Oh.  I did eat one more thing - popcorn.  I'm usually ambivalent, but seriously, this Chicago mix, courtesy of Garrett Popcorn in the IFC mall - half cheese flavour, half caramel crisp.

Who knew, I mean really?