Good Eats - Hong Kong Edition - Awfully Chocolate (Ep. 1)

I'm currently staying in Hong Kong with one of my aunts volunteering at a research lab in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Maybe not as prestigious as the University of Hong Kong but it still has an amazing research faculty and I'm definitely honored to be able to participate in the lab that I am currently in. Of course it's been taking up a lot of my time and I've been studying for the MCAT - a test that you really have to do well in to get into medical school in the United States - but that hasn't stopped me from getting my yummy Asian food. Unfortunately, being a fatty in US has backfired on me as I'm currently trying to diet while living in one of the best food places in the world. Oh the delights I've missed out on... But still, I've been able to splurge every now and then so I wanted to share a bit of my food adventures, or good eats might I say (no copyright infringement on Alton Brown's original Good Eats show which BY THE WAY I LOVEE <3) with all of you.

So here's my first episode of Good Eats - Hong Kong edition. The first place I wanted to share is called Awfully Chocolate. You can click here to redirect to their website - after you read this post of course ;D. I visited the Awfully Chocolate store in Tsim Sha Tsui which is located in the K11 Shopping Plaza. You can find this shopping plaza about a minute walk away from the D1 exit of the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station, but really if you're not sure, just Google map it and you'll easily find your way.

Honestly I wasn't sure what to get at first and wasn't exactly planning on buying anything from the store (never really gravitate towards the all chocolate shops) but to be honest, the "Free Samples" sign totally drew me in LOL. I was able to try the Super Premium Dark Chocolate cake but well, you know me. I prefer the sweet unhealthy chocolates, not the at least somewhat healthy antioxidant rich dark chocolate ;P The lady who helped me out was super friendly and nice despite my gosh darn awful Cantonese and she helped me decide between the White Chocolate Creme Brulee Tart and the White Chocolate Butterscotch Block. I ended up choosing the latter one but I kind of wish I got the creme brulee just because I lovee creme brulee in general, but the White Chocolate Butterscotch Block was still quite delightfully yummy.

I love how you get this cute plastic spoon although it's a little awkward because the handle is so small but hey, I love little mini things~! Honestly I should have taken a picture before I took a bite but the delicious look and smell of the entire thing won me over and I "accidentally" took a huge scoop out of the cake before I got a decent shot of it haha. You can't blame me.. it looked and smelled soo good! The texture was definitely a bit of a shock to me at first. I thought the white part would be more of a standard vanilla cake or like a Japanese Swiss roll so spongey and fluffy. Instead, it's actually some sort of cream like texture but it's so light and still fluffy..just in a different way. The brown rolled part was more like the standard cake that I'm used to but super moist and then the inside and top brown coating is milk chocolate with butterscotch bits sprinkled throughout (probably my favorite part of the cake). The cake is definitely sweet so you'll need coffee or tea to go with it and I definitely couldn't finish the whole thing, but it's still something nice to try. I didn't realize they had ice cream until I went on their website later that night but from what the reviews say, it's pretty good so maybe I'll try it next time! (Though I'm not particularly a fan of all chocolate ice cream). If I were to go back, I'd definitely try the creme brulee but I would recommend this to anyone who wants to try something unique and new. I'd also see if you can get smaller than a 100g slice (mine was a little bit under) as it cost $40 HKD per 100g - not too bad since I expected everything at the shop to be crazily overpriced. I would suggest less than 50g if they let you buy that small of a slice and even then that's probably quite a lot in my opinion.

Anyways overall I thought the place was nice. Not a sweet shop you absolutely MUST try, but if you are looking for a cake for a celebration and you know that the people who will eat it like dark chocolate, I'd definitely go for their famous dark chocolate cakes (the one I got to sample). They have one filled with banana and another with Rum&Cherry or just a standard all dark chocolate for the less adventurous folks ;P I'll be posting up more Good Eats blog posts so subscribe or follow me if you want to be updated ^__^

Adventures in Seoul, Korea: Day 5

Day 5 out of 7~! As usual, we woke up a bit behind schedule and quickly ate breakfast in our room (oh the amazing things having a kitchen in your room can do.. warm eggs and toast mhm mhm~!) before we headed off to see the Guard Ceremony at Deoksugung Palace. The palace is located pretty close to the City Hall subway station and wasn't hard to find, so we arrived just on time to see the ceremony starting. It was actually quite cool to watch the guards standing on their horses or in line and it was a pretty elaborate process with a speaker explaining what was going on during each step (in both Korean, Chinese, and English!). After the ceremony, we took some pictures, got a waffle from a nearby shop that's supposed to be pretty popular, and headed into the palace. Admission was only 1000 won for adults and 500 won for children (ages 7 - 18)! I really enjoyed looking around at the palace and the architecture and we took a good amount of photos. There was even an app that my mom downloaded that you can listen to so as to have a self-guided tour - pretty nifty if I do say so myself.

This horse kept derping and moving around and the guy sitting on top of the horse was like super annoyed haha.

The yummy waffle we got from the nearby shop~! It was super tasty and I would definitely recommend you check it out if you stop by :)

City Hall~! Located right next to the Palace (well across the street but still really close). We didn't go look at it but I'm sure it's somewhat interesting haha.

After the palace tour, we moved on to Namdaemun Market! This market is known for it's more traditional items and wholesale products so we didn't buy too much but mostly just looked around. We did eat lunch in the market which was absolutely delicious, but that's about as much of the photos that I got. I think I was too distracted just enjoying myself to take photos :)

Ginseng chicken soup

Traditional Bimbambap

My favorite ... Seafood Pancake~! This was sooo yummy :)

After our lunch, we walked around a bit more before we went to go find "Sillo Fire Pot Sauna JimJilBang".. This is a Korean bathhouse or sauna, however you call it, and was something I had been looking forward to the whole trip. It was a bit hard to find and we did get lost, but thanks to the kind folks who knew a bit of English, we managed to find our way there. It's located behind a supermarket and up a hill and you should see the giant red sign saying "Fire Pot Sauna" from a good distance away. (Sorry I wish I could give better instructions but I don't remember exactly sigh -_-) The sauna was a great place to relax in the indoor hot spas and the "hot room" or "cold room" or "marble room".. there were just so many different things to try out! Okay, sorry if that makes no sense at all but basically the Sillo Fire Pot Sauna is a bath house with separate shower rooms for men and women where you can stay overnight (!!) if you want. There are also lots of different special rooms where you can take naps in that are supposed to be good for your health or skin (ie. a salt room that was literally filled with huge chunks of salt and you could rub yourself with it and it felt superr good :D). If you're interested, click here to get linked to their website. We spent the rest of our afternoon at the sauna, relaxing and resting our tired feet and bodies from all the walking we had been doing on the earlier days. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos because well you have to be completely unclothed and naked in the shower rooms and everywhere else I didn't want to carry my camera around so I had locked it up in a locker. However, I think their website has a ton of great photos and probably a much better description haha. You could even get your nails done or get  massage (kind of awkward since you're naked imo, but hey if you're cool with it then go for it!) but you had to pay extra for those things so we passed on it.

After our relaxing time at the sauna, it was basically night time so we headed off to Seoul Square to check out the famous giant LED screen building and eat dinner. Turns out the LED show really isn't that cool.. I'm not even sure what it was supposed to be since it jut showed faces of a bunch of random people.. (you'll see in the photo below) so we quickly got bored of it and went into the shopping mall. The mall is pretty nice, but more importantly, has an awesome food court haha! You order your food a registrar and then they give you a number and you pick up your food from a certain "booth" when your number shows up on the screen. I was really craving Kimbap so I ordered that and my sister ordered an omelet while my mom ordered another soup (didn't get a good picture of it though D: )

After dinner, we decided to get an early night's sleep and headed back to our hotel in Myeongdong. Day 5 was definitely one of our more relaxed and chill days, but I'm glad we did have a more calm day to rejuvenate our bodies for the last upcoming days of our trip! Sorry if this post wasn't as interesting as the others (I know I'm lacking in photos sigh), but hey, the spa took up a good chunk of time and was fun fun fun~! Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed and come back for Day 6~!