Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Hong Kong barbecue: The Good One, Albany Hwy, East Victoria Park

Why is it that so many Chinese restaurants pick a highly ubiquitous name, which inevitably includes "Gold", "Palace", "Lucky" or "Dragon"?  Fortunately, I have yet to find one called Lucky Dragon Golden Palace.

Every once in a while, you come across one where the owners obviously have a sense of humour.  There's one in Mandurah whose name, loosely translated, means "fat bastard".

Today's restaurant, however, falls into the 3rd category - a purely descriptive name.  The Good One?  Actually, it is quite an apt name.  My mate Norman, who has been around the traps for many moons, reckons that this is one of the best HK BBQ places in Perth.  It's a family-owned restaurant run by a Perth couple who have run these types of restaurants since the 80's (it's a good thing they didn't recognise Norm, who was chased by a cleaver-wielding chef when he tried to evict them from their Northbridge premises a while back).

Like any self-respective HK BBQ establishment, it has various roasted bits of meat hanging in the window, focusing only on the key essentials - 2 kinds of pork, chicken and duck.  And the decor certainly isn't fancy.  But it is cheap.  And good!

The Good One is found on Albany Highway in East Victoria Park, across the road from the Park Centre Shopping Centre, in between Sussex Street and Mint Street.

22 September 2010

I pop in for lunch and the place is busy, with only 3 empty tables - lucky for me.  There's a broad spectrum of people dining at the place.  Mostly office workers, but with a healthy sprinkling of international students as well.  A necessary majority of Asian people to reaffirm the ethnic endorsement of the food quality, although there's also a large table of Americans, most of whom appear to be speaking with a strong Southern drawl.

I order a 2 meat and rice combo (at $9.50, it's great value).  I get the siew yoke (roast pork - did I mention it's my favourite?) and roast duck.  The owner-chef standing at the front in front of his gigantic round chopping block wields his seriously business-like meat cleaver with practised ease, hammering away at pieces of meat and then scooping them up with said implement and depositing them neatly on the plate of rice and a few blanched Chinese greens.

The duck is nice and succellent.  It's got a tasty ducky flavour, but not so gamey as to challenge the palate.  The siew yoke - well, what can I say?  Candy for meat lovers!

My only complaint is the insufficient amount of duck stock in the rice - it's been sparingly drizzled on, but my view is that more - much more - is needed.  Looking on the bright side, I was given a saucer of chilli oil without needing to ask for one - spicy and delicious!


18 September 2010

Ordered half a kilo of char siew (barbecued pork sliced thinly - it's got the distinctive red colour on the edges due to the special basting sauce) and siew yoke (roast pork, chopped up into cross-sections).  All this for $15.

The roast pork is my favourite - delightful morsels of pork belly with a rainbow spectrum of flavours and textures offered up by each piece.  Starting with an eminently crunchy layer of crispy skin, then followed by a layer of fat, soft white meat, more fat, more white meat, then a much firmer final layer of grey meat.

Ahhh ... it's hard to do a bad siew yoke, but the acid test is the crispiness of the skin.

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