Thursday, June 30, 2011

Buddha Jumps Over The Wall

An interesting name, isn’t it? It is a Chinese soup, a famous Cantonese cuisine. Unlike the western nutrition standard, Chinese believe that soups cooked under small fire for long hours are the best for our bodies. So my brother bought this for our birthday dinner.In fact, my two brothers and I were all born in the 4th week of June. Therefore we usually have joint birthday dinner. This year, it was my brother’s treat. The restaurant had a very special dinner trio - lobster with noodle, steam fish and one whole deep fried chicken - Only HK$318 ($298 on weekdays). We were all happy to enjoy our favourite foods at a good price. The lobster balls were really al dente. My brother ordered the Buddha soup which was very delicious. A very important Cantonese culinary culture is not only to drink the soup, but eat the ingredients as well. As we believe those are the essences of nutrition.
The soup had many ingredients and had an original meaning of fortune, longevity and wealth. People usually serve this for their important guests. Since it is so delicious, it tastes good and smells so great that the Buddha next door would want to jump over the wall and join the dinner. Hence the name.

Of course there are classes in almost anything in life. If you buy a car, there are Rolls Royce, Mercedes and Toyoto. Likewise, when you order the Buddha soup, the money you pay will determine the ingredients in it, or vice versa. The one we had cost HK$188. I believe it is a Toyoto. I didn’t find expensive items such as abalone, shark fin or scallops. Instead, I found sea cucumber, fish maw, ham, pork tendon, mushroom, chicken feet, chicken thigh and pork. Some recipes suggest adding wine, but I didn’t realize it. Even so, we are all happy with the very yummy and delicious Buddha soup. Unfortunately there wasn’t a Buddha eating next door, or we may witnessed “Buddha Jumps Over The Wall”!


One Whole Deep Fried Chicken - very crispy. We all love it!

Lobster with Noodle and Truffle Sauce - The Lobster Balls are really al dente! Yummy yummy!


Restaurant: Cuisine Royale
Address: 7/F Hopewell Centre, 183 Queen’s Road East, Wanchai, Hong Kong
Telephone: 852 2804 1300


Hong Kong Food Blog - Buddha Jumps Over The Wall

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Anna,

I enjoy your comments on the wonderful local cantonse cuisine in HongKong very much. I was living and working in HongKong and am missing the food quite a lot as it is difficult to get real authentic cantonese food in Germany.

Kind regards,
Alex

Anonymous said...

Hi Anna,
I didn't know where to drop this, so I'm just going to leave this here.

Back in September, I had this massive craving for Cantonese food while I was at school (without my parents' cooking). I googled around and came to your site. Then I read about IF. I've never made an effort to lose weight, but I decided to give IF a try. I did it for about three months, then Christmas break came around. After that, I reduced my fasts and eventually stopped because juggling my semester schedule and IF was too much for me. However, I just wanted to thank you so so so much, with every ounce of sincerity that I have. When I stopped IF, I started eating healthier (and I'm not just saying "eating healthier," I really mean it. Lifestyle changing healthy eating, not just dieting "healthy eating", if that makes sense). I don't think I could ever ever have done this if I hadn't stumbled on your blog. IF taught me how to look at food differently every single day. It taught me about hunger and bored eating. It taught me so much, in only three months that I did it seriously. I'm down 30 lbs now. I lost 10 pounds on IF, then the other 20 lbs by eating responsibly. This is a leap for me because I had never lost more than 5 lbs at a time in my life. I have a long way to go, but for a girl who has never really put an effort into weight loss until I saw your blog, I really just wanted to thank you. I wanted to write to you for a while, but I didn't know how to thank you, and I really still don't. Thank you so much!

Also, I just came back from Hong Kong and the food was delicious! :D

Anna said...

Hi, my dear young lady,
Thank you very much for the kind words. In deed yours is one of the most encouraging comments I receive ever since I blog about IF and food. I hope you don't mind me copy and paste this same comment to my IF blog at http://go-fasting.blogspot.com. And if possible, feel me to email me. Would love to know your name as well.

Anna