Fancy Free Food!

Last fall, I participated in a couple of Hong Kong Cleanup events including beach and city cleanups where volunteers picked up and catalogued trash. One of my former colleagues now works at Ecovision Asia, which sponsors the cleanups, and he helped me to get involved.

Because of my volunteer efforts, I was also invited to the Cleanup's end-of-season wrap party where awards and prizes were given. Everyone could put a business card into the hat for various lucky draws at the end of the night, and the grand prize was a HK $1,000 gift certificate to Shore restaurant in Central.

Much to my surprise, I won the grand prize gift certificate, which was due to expire at the end of April. So, this past Sunday I finally used it, and David and I had an absolutely delicious dinner.

We each ordered our own main course, along with two sides and two glasses of white wine. My stuffed pork tenderloin was incredibly tender and very flavorful. The beet puree on the side was also delicious, though I am usually not fond of beets. And the mac and cheese was probably the best I've had in Hong Kong.

That brought our total to just over HK $900, so even though we were stuffed, we ordered one dessert to share in order to get our full money's worth. The pear crumble was warm and sweet, though slightly heavy on the ginger.

In the end, we just had to pay the service charge for our meal, or 10 percent of the total bill. So, for all that food at a nice restaurant, we paid $110 between us. Much better than the real price for sure!

Bacon-wrapped pork loin stuffed with figs and gorgonzola

Grilled asparagus and creamy macaroni & cheese

12-ounce ribeye steak

Warm pear and ginger crumble