incessant rambling

what's the common thing between hoteliers from crimson by way of santa mesa manila, an ozamis native of hilton, the artistic vibes of hinigaran negros occidental from radisson blue, a manileno writer from peopleasia and an imported iloilo native doing hr services and training for the bpo industry have in common? an orgy of delicious food parading in front of us in Tsim Sha Tsui. And I don't mean the road in kowloon, hoooong kong, somewhere nearer in Ayala Terraces is the cebu franchise of the same restaurant that has taken the next level in dimsum buffet. imagine an assorted of dimsum and dumplings set on a conveyor belt that goes round and round. take a deep breath until you feel light in the head after an overdose of vetsin and feast your eyes on this set... tofu stuffed with meat, fried and steamed. the steaming process softens the fried tofu. tasty with a black bean sauce that gives it that salty ooomph! beef balls, nope, this is not soup no. 5 made into du...

if i were to translate xia long bao into a facebook status it would probably be, "Sinfully Delicious and COMPLICATED". i don't know about you but my soup usually gets served in a ceramic bowl, in some cases served in a coffee cup, or the uniquely presented french onion soup in a bread bowl. the bread bowl is complicated enough, but have you heard of soup served inside a steamed chinese bun (baozi)? the general pinoy idea of chinese bun is either the savory stuffed sio pao or the plain cua pao used to make patatim sandwiches or to wipe off the last bit of sauce left on your plate. generally, steamed chinese buns use fully raised flour resulting in a fluffy white texture. on the other hand, partially raised flour results in a wrapper that is smooth, tender and a bit translucent when steamed. the ingredients are simple enough, all purpose flour, cold and hot water then a lot of muscle to knead the dough. to filipinize the concept of xia long bao, think of thick, tas...

blame it on ann. she recommended that i go to tsim sha tsui for dinner and when she said dimsum buffet, i had visions of a million and one dimsum parading before me. which is actually a pretty good description of how the restaurant set their buffet... people sat around a u shaped dining table that had a conveyor belt running right in the middle carrying all sorts of dimsum. at the other end, the conveyor goes into the kitchen where you can see bustling people replacing the empty dishes that come back from the horde. warning, this can cause serious heart burn.