Nails on Nails: The Signs of Freedom

As many of you know, I recently was in Hong Kong for bout 2.5 months doing research in a lab as well as visiting my relatives and of course, seeing the sights of the country. I also got to spend time with a lot of my aunt's friends, one who was quite skilled in the art of doing nails ;D So we got together and today, I wanted to share one of the designs she created on me. We chose to use the combination of a pink and nude beige nail polish (from the brand 3CE which is a popular Korean high-ish end brand - I'm planning on doing a review of their nail polish as I picked up a good amount of them!). I've listed pictures of them both down below for your reference if you want to pick them up (the numbers/names are #BE02 and #PK08) ^__^

Anyways all of the birds are hand drawn and I love how the white birds contrast the beige background and the extra bling at the bottom of my nails also added the glamor of the nails. Please excuse my terribly dry cuticles in the photo, we had just removed a previous set of gel nails so my nails needed some TLC. What do you feel about this design? I hope it gives you some inspiration if you were looking for some sort of bird or feather designed nail art. Let me know if you have any other designs you want me to recreate and I might do a tutorial on it! Till next time xx.

Good Eats - Hong Kong Edition - Holly Brown Cafe and Gelato (Ep. 5)

Being an ice-cream addict, it's no surprise that one of the places I had to visit was Holly Brown. There are many locations in Hong Kong including, but not limited to, Tsim Sha Tsui, Central, Tuen Mun, Tsuen Wan, and many other places so if you're looking for one, trust me, it won't be too hard to find!

Address: G/F, 22 Stanley Street, Central
中環士丹利街22號地下
Website: http://www.hollybrowncoffee.com/en/

 

 

 

 

A friend of mine initially told me about Holly Brown saying that their ice cream was quite good and when I looked up reviews on OpenRice (the Asian version of Yelp), many American reviewers compared it to the American Coldstones. I absolutely love Coldstones' ice cream creations especially Founder's Favorite which is a mix of vanilla ice cream with brownies and nuts and other additions that makes a wonderful mouthful explosion. Tempted, I had high hopes for Holly Brown as I entered the shop (which happened to be one of their [many] locations in Central). Not all Holly Brown shops include a cafe, some only have an ice cream/gelato stand, but the one I went to had both the cafe and the ice cream bar so when I first walked in, I was greeted to both. The atmosphere and decor of the shop is quite nice with lots of comfortable sofas and chairs and tables (sort of like a Starbucks) and at least my experience with the servers was a pleasant one (I can't say for all locations of course). The cafe offers a pretty wide selection of breakfast, brunch, and lunch foods such as sandwiches, salads, pasta, coffees, honey toast, and waffles, but of course I only went there for the ice cream ;D

Being my typical indecisive self, I took about 10 minutes just staring at the ice cream menu trying to decide what to get but I finally settled with Eenie Meenie (and yes they have another creation titled Minie Mo and yes I did play that game in my head to decide between the two). I decided to get Eenie Meenie as its description said that it would include brownie bits and it seemed most similar to the Founder's Favorite that I usually get at Coldstones and I wanted to have some sort of comparison starting line. I do agree that Holly Brown is quite like Coldstones in the way they make ice cream mixtures/creations and they do it on the spot, out in the open, so you can watch them mix up your order, but the presentation was definitely not on par with Coldstones'. I mean, just look at my pictures and you can see.. it doesn't exactly look appetizing does it? Of course, maybe it was just my creation that is the uglier looking one because I've seen photos online on OpenRice and other people who ordered other creations - well theirs looks much nicer with decorations placed nicely on top. Nevertheless, despite the slightly disappointing first impression, my gelato tasted quite delicious and yummy. It's quite a hearty portion, and even though I shouldn't have, I finished the entire thing and the waffle. One complaint I have though is that all the creations come with the waffle and you can't just get your ice cream in a cone for a lower price which was a little bothersome because their gelato creations are not cheap! The creation I got cost $56 HKD if I remember correctly which is about $7 USD! (And I thought Coldstones' was expensive at about $5 for a similar sized cup!). However, gelato/ice cream in Hong Kong is actually quite expensive so I suppose the price was "normal" as buying a tub of Dryer's ice cream in Hong Kong is like $50 for a tub that is about 1/3 the size of a normal Dreyer's bucket here in America (and we wonder why America is the fattest country in the world).

All in all, I would recommend Holly Brown's gelato for all my ice cream lovers out there. Yes the price is a little high, but the taste is definitely there and next time I go back, I'm planning on trying another creation or a honey toast or waffle with ice cream on the side ^__^; If you're looking for a place for a client meeting or somewhere to study or just some place to get out of the Hong Kong heat, stop by Holly Brown because hey, it's a nice change up from your usual Starbucks or Pacific Coffee and probably less crowded (unless you come in around lunch time). The wide selection of gelato and normal savory foods makes Holly Brown a perfect cafe for everyone.

Good Eats - Hong Kong Edition - One Dim Sum (Ep. 4)

Address: Shop 1 & 2, G/F, 15 Playing Field Road, Kenwood Mansion, Prince Edward

On this lovely day, I will be taking a break from my sweetie Good Eats posts and sharing with you my experience eating at One Dim Sum, a Michelin Guide Recommended dimsum restaurant located in Prince Edwards (also known as Tai Zi in Cantonese). It is only about a 5 minute walk from one of the Prince Edward MTR subway station exits (I forget which one ;P) and you can easily spot it by the long line of people waiting in front of it. Nicely enough, they have stools outside for waiting customers to sit on (uncommon for most Hong Kong restaurants!) and Fa Yuen Street is also located closely by so you can walk over there (about a 5-10 minute walk) and shop around while you wait for a seat. My cousin and I arrived around 3 PM on a Saturday afternoon expecting not much of a wait seeing as dimsum is most popular from 11 AM to 1 PM, but when we arrived at One Dim Sum, we were surprised to see quite a bit of people waiting in front of the shop. We were given a number and told that the wait would be about half an hour so we decided to walk over to Fa Yuen Street to do some shopping and returned a little less than half an hour later and were given a seat about 10 minutes after returning.

Obviously we were pretty hungry as we hadn't eaten since breakfast (aka 8 in the morning!) so we decided to order 6 dishes (yes my cousin and I can EAT!). As a standard, we ordered siu mai, baked (not steamed as there is a difference!) barbeque pork buns, ha gao (although I've seen online people spell it har gao), deep fried tofu skin (also known as fu pei), cow intestines (not sure if that's the exact right English translation and I know it sounds a bit gross but trust me, IT'S DELICIOUS!), and turnip cakes (pronounced lo bah gou in Cantonese).

Siu Mai - basically shrimp dumplings with orange fish eggs on top and covered in a yellow rice sort of wrap

Baked Barbeque Pork Buns - this type of pork is known as cha-siu (or char siu) which is sweet and super yummy!

My attempt to beautifully rip the bun in half to show you the inside which obviously didn't turn out so well but hey at least you can see the delicious yummy inside! As you can see, the top is shiny which, I'm not sure what they do, but it makes the bun super sticky so be careful if you want to use your hands to eat these little suckers!

Ha Gau (or Har Gau) - another shrimp dish which is literally just a steamed shrimp inside a glutinous rice wrap but is SO freaking yummy.

Fried Tofu Skin with vegetables inside

Cow Intestine - I absolutely love this dish and always love to get it when I go eat dimsum so don't be afraid to order it!

Turnip Cake - another one of my favorites. The turnips are mashed into a fine paste and then mixed with some tiny dried shrimp and some other goodies and then pan fried to create a firm somewhat crispy on the outside but soft on the inside cake.

One thing I love about soley dimsum restaurants are their incredibly fast service. We received our first plate (or well wooden dimsum container.. not sure what they're called really) steaming hot in about 5 minutes after we had ordered and all our other dishes came in about 15 minutes so we were soon overwhelmed with our six dishes crowding up the tiny 4 seater table we were sharing with another couple (yes most small food shops will shove multiple parties into large tables in order to get you in and out as fast as possible). The food was definitely fresh and straight out of the kitchen and I thought all the dishes were delicious except... (try and guess? ;D) the fried tofu skin. Honestly I'm not sure why we ordered it since I've never gotten it at any other dim sum restaurant but my cousin suggested it so we decided to just go for it. I like tofu skin when it's normally cooked (usually steamed or in a soup) but the whole fried thing.. not really my thing. All the other dishes were definitely good, but I'm not exactly sure why One Dim Sum is Michelin recommended as the dishes I tried seemed to be at the same level as any other dimsum restaurant I've been to in Hong Kong. But then again, my grandma and relatives usually take me out to dimsum so I'm assuming they know the better places in the area so I've never had to try a particularly mediocre dimsum restaurant ;P Nevertheless, I think One Dim Sum is a good dimsum shop for tourists as it has an English menu and I think lots of tourists do stop by it because when I went, there were quite a lot of foreigners (myself included really). The shop has a wide selection of traditional dim sum items for you to try and the food is definitely fresh and tasty and best of all, it's cheap! My cousin and I split the bill and if I recall correctly, it was only around 100 HKD in total (maybe give or take a few but IT WAS LIKE CHEAP!). The service and waiters are also quite nice which is a plus for a Hong Kong restaurant as most places have pretty meh service because waiters want to just get you out of the shop quickly and are more about efficiency than politeness really. So yes another successful shop knocked off my list of food places to try ^__^ Leave a comment if you've been to One Dim Sum or any other dim sum places you thought were better and would recommend me to try out ~! xoxo.