Connie's Private Kitchen: Worth the Wait
EC is a serious foodie. He knows all the nooks and crannies in Hong Kong where good food can be found. He found a great laksa place while wandering Tin Hau the other day. So leave it to him to manage to get a table at Connie's (6/F, 186 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai. T: +852 60548244). I first heard about Connie's a couple years ago from DH, must have been a couple years ago. He told me it was great food, but also told me it would be difficult to book with only one table of 12 per night. So I never bothered to try. So when EC invited me to dinner at Connie's, I jumped at the chance. He had actually booked for last night's Thanksgiving dinner there a year ago! But Connie says it doesn't take a year's wait. She decided not to let people book so far in advance. So currently, she is only taking reservations for the first few months of 2007.
Having dinner at Connie's is like having dinner at a friend's simple home in Wan Chai. The apartment is small. The round table, which seats 12 comfortably, took up the whole living area. One of the walls was covered with framed photographs of Connie and her guests. There was no shortage of celebrities, socialities or political figures. She loves recounting stories of some of her high-profile guests. Like how bodyguards had to stand outside in the un air-conditioned hallway, how paparazzi were hiding out in the stairwell, etc. But the real highlight of the evening was the food. All the dishes were great. The most memorable were: mushroom (bak ling gu) with shrimp served up in a garlic and roe (crab and shrimp) sauce; rice (she uses japanese rice to imitate sticky rice) with all sorts of tasty ingredients (chinese sausages, dried shrimp, dried scallop, etc.) wrapped in turnip cake; an amazing soup made from 3 chickens, 15 pork marrows (we all wondered how she can manage to secure all those marrows!), lots of ginger and papaya and hairy crab cooked in it for a short while. She also served up 5 apetizers. My favourite of those was the fried pork chop, which was amazingly tender (she doesn't use corn starch. Instead, she soaks the meat overnight with the skin of papaya, which acts as a tenderizer). Apparently, one young client requested her pork chops for a birthday party, so the mother had to order 50 pieces! The dessert was also perfect -- pieces of pomelo or strawberry with floss of coconut candy (she bought the machine from Taiwan; it's a bit like a cotton candy machine) and a mint leaf; very refreshing after the big meal!
Connie loves talking about her food, how she came up with the dishes, how she shops for the ingredients and prepares them. She'll tell you everything. After the dinner, she passed out her cards with the date written on the back. It's so guests can remember which date they came. When they re-book, Connie can then make sure not to repeat any previously tasted dishes. Her dishes are really quite distinctive and refreshingly different from anything you could find in a proper restaurant. That's because a restaurant that caters to more than 1 table a night, can't really afford to serve up the labour and ingredient-intensive dishes that she does. And Connie is adamant about not expanding beyond the size of her current space (which at its maximum can host 20 guests, but she does so reluctantly), because of her concern for the quality of what she can serve.
Connie is a self-taught chef. When we asked her what she used to do, she replied, "I'm just a regular housewife". She didn't like any of the food she ate in restaurants -- too much MSG and other artificial preservatives, unsanitary cooking environments, uninspiring dishes that were all too common. So about four years ago, she decided to start her own private kitchen and people have been begging for more of her food ever since.
I have friends who think that I don't like Chinese food, to which I can now respond, "but I like Connie's!"
Connie's -- 6/F, 186 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai. T: +852 60548244
Having dinner at Connie's is like having dinner at a friend's simple home in Wan Chai. The apartment is small. The round table, which seats 12 comfortably, took up the whole living area. One of the walls was covered with framed photographs of Connie and her guests. There was no shortage of celebrities, socialities or political figures. She loves recounting stories of some of her high-profile guests. Like how bodyguards had to stand outside in the un air-conditioned hallway, how paparazzi were hiding out in the stairwell, etc. But the real highlight of the evening was the food. All the dishes were great. The most memorable were: mushroom (bak ling gu) with shrimp served up in a garlic and roe (crab and shrimp) sauce; rice (she uses japanese rice to imitate sticky rice) with all sorts of tasty ingredients (chinese sausages, dried shrimp, dried scallop, etc.) wrapped in turnip cake; an amazing soup made from 3 chickens, 15 pork marrows (we all wondered how she can manage to secure all those marrows!), lots of ginger and papaya and hairy crab cooked in it for a short while. She also served up 5 apetizers. My favourite of those was the fried pork chop, which was amazingly tender (she doesn't use corn starch. Instead, she soaks the meat overnight with the skin of papaya, which acts as a tenderizer). Apparently, one young client requested her pork chops for a birthday party, so the mother had to order 50 pieces! The dessert was also perfect -- pieces of pomelo or strawberry with floss of coconut candy (she bought the machine from Taiwan; it's a bit like a cotton candy machine) and a mint leaf; very refreshing after the big meal!
Connie loves talking about her food, how she came up with the dishes, how she shops for the ingredients and prepares them. She'll tell you everything. After the dinner, she passed out her cards with the date written on the back. It's so guests can remember which date they came. When they re-book, Connie can then make sure not to repeat any previously tasted dishes. Her dishes are really quite distinctive and refreshingly different from anything you could find in a proper restaurant. That's because a restaurant that caters to more than 1 table a night, can't really afford to serve up the labour and ingredient-intensive dishes that she does. And Connie is adamant about not expanding beyond the size of her current space (which at its maximum can host 20 guests, but she does so reluctantly), because of her concern for the quality of what she can serve.
Connie is a self-taught chef. When we asked her what she used to do, she replied, "I'm just a regular housewife". She didn't like any of the food she ate in restaurants -- too much MSG and other artificial preservatives, unsanitary cooking environments, uninspiring dishes that were all too common. So about four years ago, she decided to start her own private kitchen and people have been begging for more of her food ever since.
I have friends who think that I don't like Chinese food, to which I can now respond, "but I like Connie's!"
Connie's -- 6/F, 186 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai. T: +852 60548244
Labels: Hongkong, restaurants
posted by 10000miles at 14:52
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