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2007-01-29
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Having traveled for over an hour on the MTR, West Rail and the Light Rail, I finally reached this small and old restaurant situated at the busiest street in Yuen Long, that you would easily miss. Greeting me were loads of different kinds of lively snakes, squeezed inside some transparent containers. Hopefully, the “security level”was high there.Being there for the second time, I went into the “secret VIP room”directly, where was the only place in the restaurant that could accommodate our eleve
Being there for the second time, I went into the “secret VIP room”directly, where was the only place in the restaurant that could accommodate our eleven adventurous gourmets. The menu of the night had been taken care by the snake master there, with snakes, snakes, followed by snakes. A very uniformed style of dishes.
Before we formally started, we shared a bottle of Hungarian Riseling, recommended to me by the cellar owner as a good match for snakes. Then, the first course came. As a usual order, it was a big pot of snake soup …No, I thought “broth with a load of big chunks of snake meat”described it better. I felt that “power”of “eating wild”and immediately found the heat circulating inside my body after the first bowl. I only had one bowl, as I found the “dosage”was just right for me. Other gentlemen just kept filling up their bowls, as they had heard about other “special”advantage they could get from the snakes …
The second course was stir-fried snake skin with Chinese celery leaves. The snake skin was chewy and got a “special”aroma, which was very unique and made you sure that was the skin from snakes but not from other species.
I guessed the chef didn’t want to waste the rest of the celery from the second dish. This could explain why we had the stir-fried snake meat with celery as our third course. The snake meat was rich in both favour and texture. If you want me to pick a kind of meat to describe the favour of the snakes, I would say, crocodiles. Still doesn’t help? Sorry, I just can’t think of anything else. You better try the crocodiles and you will know.
The forth course was my favorite, deep fried snakes with salt and pepper. A dish which was tailor-made for wine lovers liked myself. Then, we had some “real”soup this time, soup with snake, tortoise, lizard (something looked alike, as I was not an expert in reptiles) and a whole chicken. I could see all of them clearly in soup and was quite sure the chef made the soup with the “real stuff”.
The last three dishes were more conventional. They were steamed wild chicken from the NT (I liked this one, very tender, with rich chicken favour, unlike those frozen ones), boiled choi sum from the NT (this one was not that impressive, the choi sum was not “young”enough) and steamed sticky rice with Chinese sausage and waxed meat (I didn’t like that one, as I preferred stir-fired sticky rice).
Here came to the end? No way. The meal was finalized with a bottle of home made snake wine. One of the gourmets raised a question on the alcohol level of that bottle of misty and yellowish snake wine. Come on, did you think the wine maker (i.e. the snake master) would bother to take it to the lab to evaluate its alcohol level? And you know, there is no “quality control”and every bottle is made with different kinds of snakes. And please, don’t ask me about the “vintage”. I wonder if they have a system in trailing the dates of bottling.
I felt so hot after the snake feast. Thank snakes! .
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