BEYOND CENTRAL, NORTH OF POK FU LAM

One might want porkchop soup noodles, fried porky dumplings.
Perhaps even a side of red-cooked eggplant.
Breakfast of champions!

Especially with hot hot tea.

[Respectively: 豬扒麵 ('chyu paa min'), 生煎包 ('saang jin baau'), 紅燒茄子 ('hong-siu ke ji'). The tea, of course, is gong sik naai cha. But you knew that.]

Alas, one must be disappointed.


NORTH AND SOUTH, WHATEVER...

Perhaps the most telling customer comment is "食物普通service差", which means that the food is by no means stellar and the service is both haphazard and apathetic. One might expect more from a restaurant on Holland Street.  Holland Street, verdomme! As a Dutch speaker, I think it would be utterly lovely if indeed it were better.

I like cheap Shanghai eaties.

小籠包?

Mmm.


What's amazing is that there is (was) another place on Holland Street for such things: the "Shanghai good-good short-rib noodle" (上海好好排骨麵 'seung hoi hou hou pai gwat min'). Unfortunately, it's closed. Holland Street just isn't a winning location. And I cannot figure out why. Surely the locals haven't wigged on to the fact that people like me are notoriously cheap and bitchy?
And if they have, why on earth should that make a difference?
Most of us have better manners than mainlanders!
We speak the nicest language: Dutch.

[Nicer than Shanghainese in any case, except perhaps to a Shanghailander. Sure, horking up rough Germanic hairballs may sound nasty, but that hissy sodawater syphon speech from the Whangpoo fair turns the kidneys.]


Holland Street stretches from the Sai Waan Kai Fong Fuk Lei Wui to the Praya. Just one block. The bus stops there. That, in a nutshell, is the most exciting thing. There are NO windmills or tulips there. Apartment towers, twenty-plus floors of tight dwelling spaces, but still better than the old-fashioned lodgements in the decrepit seven or eight storey apartment buildings along Sands Street, where it crosses Belcher.
Worse buildings. Peeling paint. Rusty louvers.
Those typical semi-barred windows.
But such better food.


Remember that. Kennedy Town, Belcher Street.
A bit seedy, old, and falling apart.
It's a nice place.



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