Wedding Shopping in Hong Kong and a Side Trip to Macau

Spent part of November and December 2012 in Hong Kong doing a lot of wedding shopping.  I managed to get a Chinese dress in Shenzhen and an evening gown in Prince Edward.  I also got my wedding invitations printed and bought a whole bunch of little things needed for the wedding.  Of course, I always save time for good food and also took a side trip to Macau.  Speaking of weddings, look at this teddy bear themed wedding that I ran into at the Intercontinental Hotel during my trip.

Here are some highlights of the food I had in Hong Kong.


Passion by Gerard Dubois is a very nice cafe that serves up some awesome French pastries.  It's also very busy and hard to find a seat, so it's better to find a seat before placing your order.

There was a 20% off promotion at the Agnes B Cafe La Loggia through the use of the Bank of East Asia credit card, so my parents and I went to try it out at IFC.   The experience was kind of odd because we were served a first course of some moules et frites which we did not order!  I remember the server recommending it to us but honestly, I don't remember ordering it at all.  We decided to eat it anyway.  We told our server when we paid the bill and they gave us a free piece of cake from their pastry shop.  My mom didn't enjoy her fish dish very much.  My dad's lamb was just average and I think I had the best dish - a flaming lobster dish with risotto.  The risotto was a bit over cooked though. Overall, I don't think I would recommend this restaurant to anyone...

There's a new mall which opened up recently in Hong Kong called Hysan Place.  The cakes at Smile were really attractive, so we stopped by for some afternoon tea.  We had the classic crunchy and chestnut chiffon cakes.  The chiffon cake was so fluffy and light.

One of the dim sum places that I enjoyed on this trip was Ah Yat Harbour View restaurant on top of iSquare.  They have one well-deserved Michelin star.  Their dim sum is very tasty and the prices are very reasonable.  The restaurant also has a great view which is a plus.

Another place with great desserts is Petite Amanda inside the IFC.  This patisserie is owned by the model Amanda S.  They serve all their food and drinks with Le Creuset dishes.

My friend took me to a cool sushi restaurant called Monster Sushi.  It was supposedly owned by Daniel Wu but I don't think he has a share in the business anymore.  They have some interesting sushi creations and for the price you are paying, the quality of the sushi is not bad even for my standards.

Last noteworthy mention for this Hong Kong trip is TWG Tea Company in the IFC.  This is a Singaporean owned tea shop serving hundreds of different teas from all over the world.  The most expensive kinds are the white teas.  We had a pricey but yummy afternoon tea that day.

Now, onto the Macau part.  We spent one night at Hotel Okura inside the Galaxy Casino in Cotai City. The hotel and casino were very nice.  They have shuttle buses that take you pretty much anywhere of interest that you would want to go in Macau, so it was very convenient for tourists to get around.

We went for a stroll at Rua Do Cunha which is a touristy area.  We were really hungry so we thought we would try some of Macau's famous foods such as the Portuguese tart and the pork chop bun, but the bakery we went to called San Hou Lei was very mediocre even though it is supposed to be famous for these snacks.

We walked around the area and tried the wood chip pudding.  It was again disappointing.  It wasn't very tasty and didn't really taste like anything...

We then went to watch The House of Dancing Water, the one and only show in Macau, at the City of Dreams casino.  It was the typical Vegas / Cirque du Soleil type of show.  Here's what the stage looked like.

We had Portuguese cuisine for dinner that night.  Restaurante ESCADA is located on Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, tucked away up this little stairway.  The food was pretty good, but the portion of suckling pig was pretty small and the curry crab was kind of expensive.

We wanted to get some Chinese desserts which was supposed to be famous in Macau too, so we went next door to the Yee Shun Milk Company to have double skin milk.  There were four of us and we wanted to order two desserts to share, but the server said that we have to order at least three because we have four people.  The service was extremely rude!  But the milk desserts were pretty good.  I wouldn't come back to this place though because of the rude service.  There's no reason to be angry at your customers!

The next day we walked around Macau some more and went to see St. Dominic's Church in the Senado Square and the Ruins of St. Paul's.

Celebrity siting: we saw Linda Chung filming a show near the Ruins of St. Paul's.  There were so many people crowding around to watch!

Finally, we ended our trip with a fantastic dim sum lunch at the two Michelin starred Wing Lei inside the Wynn Hotel.  I think this was the best dim sum meal of the trip and it was very inexpensive.  I would recommend a reservation next time though.  We got lucky without one.