Lighting Up Chinatown with Delicious Grub

Delicious curry fish balls and XO siu mai

Today Light Up Chinatown kicked off, just as the epic rainstorm finally ended and the skies turned blue. The Chinatown event is an annual weekend initiative to get people to come visit the neighbourhood, eat some food, patronise some shops and maybe even bump into some friends.

Visitors can get a "passport" and visit specific shops to get a stamp. Get eight stamps, two in each of the four zones made them eligible to put their name into a lucky draw to win prizes like a Lululemon gift card, an Arc'teryx hoodie, and the grand prize of two tickets to see John Legend in concert.

The weather cleared up for Light Up Chinatown

I arrived shortly after the opening ceremonies began, but instead of listening to the speeches, I focused on the food offerings. Along Columbia Street were several stalls and I tried a few of them.

First off was Mama in the Kitchen with chef William Lew, who presented four dishes, and I tried three of them.

The typhoon shelter calamari was a great idea, the calamari tender and a slight crunch to it, and not too spicy. The portion is good to share -- too much for one person. The same could be said of the salted egg yolk pork belly in terms of portion, and while the pork belly was slightly caramelised, the salted egg yolk flavour wasn't pronounced, which was a pity. 

A signature dish for Mama in the Kitchen is the curry fish balls, and this was a portion that can be eaten by one person, with two pieces of siu mai topped with a small shrimp and dressed with XO sauce. It's a good combination of street food with spice.

Typhoon shelter calamari

Torafuku is celebrating its 10th anniversary and made its debut at Light Up Chinatown with its beef rendang taco. It looks like a simple dish, but the beef has been braised for a long time and infused with curry flavour that is then wrapped in a soft tortilla. It's relatively easy to eat, though the oil drips out...

Also supported Holy Duck Chili Oil that collaborated with Ember HK BBQ with a cart noodle concept. Customers can choose one, two or three toppings out of a total of six, and the kind of noodles -- Japanese instant noodles, spaghetti or vermicelli.

I chose peanut satay pork and honey char siu with Japanese instant noodles. After about five minutes my name was called out and it was a decent portion. The char siu was in chunks instead of slices which would have been better in terms of eating it with a plastic fork, while there wasn't much taste of the peanut satay pork. There were quite a lot of noodles that soaked up the sauces though.

By this point I was almost full and was curious about the ice creams by Hype Chocolate. I tried the White Rabbit milk chocolate ice cream and it was creamy and easy to eat with chunks of chocolate on top. However the white rabbit flavour was completely lost in the chocolate ice cream. Perhaps vanilla ice cream would have worked better? 

White Rabbit milk chocolate ice cream

It was good to bump into a few acquaintances and catch up briefly with them, while supporting the event.