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2015-07-01
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Fancying another veggie breakfast to start the holiday's explorations I wandered over to Wan Chai to find the Flying Pan. I was a little perplexed to see the 'Open 24 Hours' sign, what kind of purveyors of fried food need to remain open all day and all night? Well, upon entering it was easy to understand. The target market for the Flying Pan seems to be the beer-fugged and wine-diddled expats you can find crawling around Wan Chai in the wee hours. I felt out of place. On to the menu... Actually
Fancying another veggie breakfast to start the holiday's explorations I wandered over to Wan Chai to find the Flying Pan. I was a little perplexed to see the 'Open 24 Hours' sign, what kind of purveyors of fried food need to remain open all day and all night? Well, upon entering it was easy to understand. The target market for the Flying Pan seems to be the beer-fugged and wine-diddled expats you can find crawling around Wan Chai in the wee hours. I felt out of place.
On to the menu... Actually I found the breakfast ordering style to be really well done. Firstly you're presented with a choice of breakfast sets, then you are given a choice of egg styles (actually many choices, like six or seven I think), likewise bread, you can choose between white, brown, pancakes, bagels, croissants. Your next choice is which drink, you have a variety of fruit juices to choose from and your final choice is the additional portions allowed in your set.
I chose the veggie breakfast which came with mushrooms, spinach, avocado and artichoke hearts. For my eggs I selected scrambled, for toast I chose standard brown bread and for my two additional portions I included beans and potatoes.
From here on is where it all started to fall apart. The juice arrived first, it seemed like fresh orange juice and it tasted great but the portion clearly wasn't enough for a full breakfast. And then my food was served...presentation was pretty promising, they use over-large plates here which make the portions in the photos seem smaller than they are but actually the sizing is normal to large. I will go through the components:
🍴 The bread - a good portion, two slices cut into triangles and 'buttered'. However the toast was pre-toasted and left to stand so it was soggy and the 'butter' was tasteless.
🍴 The egg had clearly been sitting for a while too, the outside was a darker yellow colour and it had next to no taste.
🍴 The mushrooms, I'm not sure how these were cooked, in oil or water, it was hard to tell. They had a little flavour thanks to the onions that they were served with but the mushrooms themselves were pretty flavourless.
(Can you see a theme emerging?)
🍴 The artichoke heart and avocado...I know I don't like avocado so I can't rate that but the artichoke hearts were unpleasant, a weird flavour, but as I haven't had them often I can give the Flying Pan the benefit of the doubt on that one.
🍴 The wilted spinach was a bit depressing, it had clearly been wilting for a long time, it had a very slight spinach taste but certainly didn't seem fresh.
🍴 The potatoes...by this point I was starting to feel miserable, how can anyone go wrong with fried potatoes? The potatoes were almost ok but for two things, again, no flavour and the onions which were served with them (which were about the only flavourful part of the meal), tasted distinctly like they'd been cooked in meat fat.
🍴 The beans...it is almost impossible to screw up beans. The beans were ok (although again over-cooked), however adequate beans cannot compensate for a overall crap meal.
I wanted to give up eating as the experience was not enjoyable but the price meant that I had to at least try and get some sustenance out of it.
Actually I imagine that this place can cater just fine to the morning-after crowds but it will need to work harder to appease the fully sober. Before my life in HK I spent some time working in the kitchen of a large-capacity club/restaurant, we served buffet style Sunday roast dinners, cheap and cheerful. That is exactly the style of cooking to be found in the Flying Pan, large scale production with low quality ingredients, sadly the high price does not reflect the quality.
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