I felt I needed to catch up with The Great One, as a lot has happened since Mikacina was last in town. A scheduling conflict prevented me from joining her at dinner last night, so we agreed to meet up for lunch today at a place neither of us had been to before. Fat J Char Siu (發達叉燒) had opened with great fanfare and has become immensely popular. The owners have built quite a reputation with Flower Drum (鋒膳) - especially when it comes to charsiu (叉燒) - so it made sense to open up an outlet focusing on Cantonese barbecued meats (燒味).
As it happened E was also here for lunch, and decided to order up a storm for the two of us. I guess we'd be taking a good amount of this home with us!
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Our daily soup (例湯) was ching bo leung (清補涼) with lean pork. ![]()
Honey glazed char siu, regular (蜜汁叉燒例排) - we got ourselves a "regular portion" of the "standard"char siu. This had nice charring and also a good amount of marbling, leading to a wonderful bouncy texture.
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Pork belly char siu (五花腩叉燒) - OF COURSE we had to have the pork belly!
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I really, really, really love fatty pork, and this was very tasty.
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Maotai soy sauce chicken, half (茅台醬油雞半隻) - chicken isn't usual one of my priorities when I'm at places like this, but we needed to try this because the soy sauce marinade included Maotai (茅台). The smell was pretty nice, and I was surprised I didn't mind it at all... given my usual aversion to Maotai.
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Lower part roast goose (下庄明爐燒鵝) - yes, the skin was paper-thin and crispy. Not too much fat between the skin and the meat, but just enough to make it interesting and tasty.
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Lard rice (豬油撈飯) - OF COURSE The Great One wanted the rice with lard... and took care to mix it up well. We ended up ordering a second bowl...
This was sooooo much food! I would have liked to have eaten more, but I had another stop in mind... another place that neither The Great One nor I had visited before. So we packed up the leftovers and decided to walk off a few calories...
I had originally wanted to hit Tozzo to buy a few of their maritozzo to take to a friend's home a few days ago. Unfortunately they are closed on Mondays, so I had to another an alternate solution. Since I'm out and about today anyway, and The Great One promised to buy me some gelato... here we go!
Fabio Bardi is doing collaborations on special flavors for the next few months, and for April the partner is Fontaine Cheng from Tatler. There's a special flavor for both gelato and maritozzo. Part of the proceeds would be donated to a charity chosen by the partner.
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Genmai and soy sauce caramel gelato - well... we were here for gelato, so I ordered the special flavor of the month. Soy sauce-flavored gelato is not new, as Messina Gelato has previously launched a soy sauce caramel version with Lee Kum Kee (李錦記), and I've tried the version from Da Dino Gelati and Yuet Wo (悅和醬園). This one tasted fine, with that extra savory layer on top of the expected sweetness. But there was also toasty genmai (玄米) dimension, which is something I like a lot. Very happy.
Somehow Fabio found out we were in the house and came over to greet us. As we went to settle the bill, he very generously gave us two maritozzi to take home. As I was much, much too stuffed, I figured I'd have this for dessert after dinner.
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Kaya and coconut maritozzo - I'd never had a maritozzo before so this was my first experience. I don't usually eat stuff with this much whipped cream, so I was glad that there's also some kaya here, along with some white chocolate sprinkled with desiccated coconut. The size looks really daunting, and it was kinda filling, even if there seemed to be a lot of air here. Pretty tasty, but as a guy who "has some bread with my kaya", I never think there's enough kaya.
