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Wahhh.. so soooo goood....

We set out one evening in search of this mouth-watering idea. Claypot rice is not a new concept to us as it is served in numerous places in KL, and they do it quite well too - two shops, one in Damansara Jaya and the other in PJ Old Town, come to mind, alas names are forgotten but if you live in PJ you probably do know them too. We've passed some coffeeshops here in North Point where you can see cooks tending to rows and rows of claypots with their contents at a rolling boil or smoking sizzle, but the sight didn't cause any rumbles of longing in our tummies.

So with the firmly-entrenched idea that KL claypot chicken rice is hard to beat, we were quite keen to try out a shop (Sun Tsui Wah, Tang Lung St, Causeway Bay) we'd read about in the local HK magazine, which is famous for the above dish. I can't quite remember what the name of the dish is, but it looks like it's the signature dish going by the numerous framed newspaper and magazine cut-outs hanging on the walls of the restaurant.

We ordered that signature dish and a yue heung ke ji po (claypot aubergine with salted fish) and while we waited in anticipation, we noticed a Caucasian man all by himself in this typical HK-hole-in-the-wall eatery, digging ferociously into his claypot rice with one hand while balancing Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay with the other (the reason I remember the title so well is because I have that same book but have yet to read a single page of it despite having owned it for 6 years :p). Departing momentarily from the present review, we mentally acknowledged the chap for his bravery, as you hardly see non-Asians in such eateries! Plus he looked like he was really enjoying himself. None of the waiters spoke English but amazingly enough they had an English menu, and the intrepid, perspiring foodie ordered a further serving of claypot rice (not sure if he was perspiring from the heat of the claypot or the fact that the waiters kept speaking to him in Cantonese).

The signature dish finally arrived, the waiter plonked it on our table, lifted the clay lid whereupon a billow of steam enveloped our faces. After pouring in a special sort of soya sauce concoction, he replaced the lid. We waited for a while (how long?) and then helped ourselves when we could wait no longer. As you can see from the picture, the rice was cooked with mushrooms, chinese sausages, broccoli and tender, succulent pieces of chicken. I know that something in that picture looks like a chicken head, but it's only a trick of the lens, really, there was no chicken head in there. I also enjoyed chewing on the crunchy bits which we scraped from the sides of the claypot! Our verdict was a huge thumbs-up. It's different from the KL versions, but this is HK-style mah. Very good!

The yue heung ke ji po was not too bad either, but it was sort of wasted on us because we enjoyed the flavours of the claypot rice so much that it got kinda neglected.

Since it was a hot day and the food was also very hot, we ordered some dong leng cha... the metal canisters in which they were served reminded me of milkshakes at Ed's Diner! hehe.