Air Vanuatu, Somewhere over the South Pacific

We had lunch on a plane as this journey took us on our second leg of our holiday to Vanuatu, with Air Vanuatu taking us from Nadi to Port Vila.

It is a short flight and we were on a small ATR 72-500 craft that was not full at all, unlike our trip from Hong Kong to Fiji. The seats were not that spacious but with the lack of passengers meant there was not such a claustrophobic feeling.

When we reached cruising height the friendly air crew handed out the food in a self contained plastic box, from which I proceeded to remove the lid and start eating. The contents are shown below.

My Meal

The main component of the meal was a wrap with chicken, cous cous and cheese. The wrap was fine and not dry wrapped the contents well; cous cous was filling; chicken was in edible small pieces and the cheese was a processed slice.

The citrus cake was really nice, for plane food. It was soft and not dry and had a good orangey lemony taste that was not sour.The lemon bon bon sweet was probably a bit more sour than the cake.

There were other items from the package that I did not eat, as I was full. These were the salted chips, a Red Gala apple from New Zealand and orange juice. So as not to be wasteful I took them away with me to eat later.

For drinks I decided to try the local alcoholic beverage and drank a Tusker beer, which was good. I also had a tea at the end of the meal, as well as water.

It was a slightly later departure than scheduled so we arrived into Port Vila later than expected but safely though, to continue enjoying our holiday in the South Pacific.

Scores:

Food: 3/5

Presentation: 2/5

Service: 3/5

Setting: 3/5

Overall: 11/20

Total Bill: Included in the flight ticket price.

I ate: Chicken Wrap, Citrus Cake, Lemon Bon Bon.

I drank: Vanuatu Tusker Premium Beer, Water, Tea.

I wore: Holiday shorts.

Matamanoa Island Resort, Mamanuca Islands, Fiji

We stayed on this island resort, Matamanoa, so had to eat all our meals here, including lunch.

The restaurant is by the pool and has an open frontage and tables outside, overlooking the sea. It does not have a traditional look about it nor modern feel but does use timber fixtures and fittings. There was not a queue for us to be seated so we stayed inside for some coolness.

I wanted to try something local and went for an Ika Kokoda. This was described on the menu as marinated fish with vegetables. My wife went for their club sandwich.

Bread was given after we ordered and it shown below. It was a toasted white slice with garlic butter spread on top, which was a little soggy taste-wise.

Bread

My main dish was a lot better, though. It arrived in a bowl shaped from a half coconut, which made it look authentic. There were fish cubes marinated in lemon that was in coconut milk. The fish tasted great and the citrus flavour worked well with the sweet, cool milk. The fish sat on top of a nice salad of chopped onion, pepper and tomato. There was shredded carrot placed on top for a garnish as well.

Ika Kokoda

The club sandwich was really big triple decker creation. In between the toasted bread slices were bacon, chicken, egg, tomato and lettuce. I had a small piece of this generous dish as my wife could not finish it all.

Club Sandwich

Seeing as it is the only eating option of this hotel, the food is perfectly edible. Price-wise this was not extortionate either, given its remote location. Service was very friendly, if of Fijian efficiency, but we were in no rush as we were on our holidays.

Scores:
Food: 3/5

Presentation: 3/5

Service: 3/5

Setting: 3/5

Overall: 12/20

Total Bill: 39.30FJD, about £7 a head.

We ate: Ika Kokoda, Matamanoa Club Sandwich.

We drank: Water.

I wore: Calvin Klein swimming shorts.

Air Pacific, Somewhere over the Pacific

Bula from Air Pacific. I travelled on this airline on my way from HK to Pacific island nation of Fiji as an Easter holiday with my wife.

Our flight was an afternoon departure so they served us a late lunch as we reached cruising altitude.

There were two choices on board for our meal: Chicken or Beef, from which I chose the latter.

I was given the standard tray of airline food goodness with a main course, appetiser, dessert, bread roll, biscuit and empty tea cup. As I travelled economy I was given plastic cutlery but even these ones looked cheap.

I opened the lid of the main course to reveal beef with choi sum, carrot and egg noodles, as shown below.

My Meal

The beef was nice, with decent sized, cooked slices with a good sauce. The vegetables were al dente but the boiled noodles were a bit dry. However this was countered by the sauce from the beef.

The appetiser was a mixed salad of leaves, tomato, sweetcorn and I think processed chicken pieces, which was adequate. Unfortunately most of the vinaigrette dressing had seeped to the bottom so needed to be mixed up bit for flavour.

The Coconut dessert was pannacotta-like; good, light and creamy and not overly sweet.

I did not eat the Bread Roll nor the Nestle chocolate bar as I had sufficient.

Service, was friendly in the usual South Pacific hospitable manner was not that efficient. Usually on flights the drink is served with the meal but they came down the drinks trolley a while after serving the food. Nonetheless I chose a can of Fiji Bitter. This was refreshing and had a stout taste to it, without being too heavy. I also had a tea at the end of the meal.

Fiji Bitter

The Boeing 747 plane was old and there were some faults. One was my wife's tray table was broken in that it was not level when laid down. So to rectify this she had to prop it up by wedging a pillow between her lap and the underside of the table.

'Restaurant' Exterior

Another sign of the plane's age was the entertainment system not functioning properly whereby my controls operated my wife's screen and vice versa.

Then there were the other travelling passengers. Some were fellow holidaymakers, some were Fijians returning home after seeing their side victorious in the Hong Kong sevens and most were mainland Chinese. It felt like I was on a train journey in the mainland, with the usual loudness (does one need to yawn that loudly to sound like a wolf call?), general uncouthness, lack of fashion sense and unawareness of safety announcements. If it were not for airline health and safety standards, guaranteed one of them would have lit a cigarette on board.

Sticking with people watching, I think I saw my first North Korean my with own eyes as I saw a large group a gentlemen with the same clothes (some jump suits) and they all had pin badges of Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un, or both.

Anyway, I landed safely and had a great time in Fiji!

Scores:
Food: 3/5
Presentation: 2/5
Service: 3/5
Setting: 2/5

Overall: 10/20

Total Bill: Included in the flight ticket price, which at about £900 a head, was not cheap.

I ate: Beef & noodles, salad, coconut dessert.

I drank: Fiji Bitter, Tea.

I wore: A holiday smile.

View 62, Hopewell Centre, Wanchai

The visit to this restaurant was an unplanned fine dining lunch on a Saturday about two weeks ago, after my wife had finished her weekend shift. View 62 is located on the 62nd floor of the building where she works so we only had to travel upwards.

There were lift attendants who showed us the way to the restaurant and there was a maitre'd who showed us to our seats. We managed to reserve a table but that was because it was the weekend. Weekdays are quite busy as it is mostly full of office workers doing their power lunch.

The full title of the restaurant is 'View 62 by Paco Roncero', with Mr Roncero being the head chef and creator of the menus. Lunch is a set menu where one chooses three courses, with a tea or coffee included. During the I ordered an Iced Melon Tea, which was a cool and refreshing drink.

We made our choices and bread was then given to us after ordering, which came with olive oil and vinegar. There was a variety of rolls in the basket as shown below and each were hot.

Bread Rolls

My starter was Green beans with iberico ham and potato foam. The beans were chopped into small pieces and the ham was in very thin, small slices too. Although these ingredients were small they were tasty and the foam was like a light bubbly soup that was nice too.

Starter

For the main I chose Lamb shank with vegetables. The lamb was well cooked and tender, easy to cut and tasted great. The vegetables were cooked just right, consisted of carrot, beans, broccoli and others, and were presented beautifully in their miniature form. There was a gravy as well covering the whole dish for some additional flavour and moistness.

Main Course

My dessert was called 'San Marcos'. This came in a rather fancy cocktail glass and consisted of egg yolk cream with vanilla foam and whisky jelly. As a whole I enjoyed this dessert and it tasted like a tiramisu with the alcohol content but without the sponge.

Dessert

We had tea and chose Earl Grey to round off our meal. This was accompanied with a couple of biscuits that were nothing great.

Tea and Cookies

My wife had Salad of Tuna, Potatoes and Peppers for starters, and a main of Cod, with a dessert of Chocolate Coulant, which unfortunately is not pictured.

Hopewell Centre used to be Hong Kong's tallest buildings (at 66 storeys high) so the view from here is not bad at all. Further to this, one of the features of this restaurant is that it is revolving, giving you a 360 degree perspective of the island and the southern Kowloon peninsula. Just bear in mind that you might feel a little dizzy, though.

The View (towards Happy Valley)

One building you will see from the restaurant is the Frank Gehry designed twisty, residential tower, shown below. One 600m2 unit recently sold for a whopping 4M GBP...!!!

Frank Gehry twisty building

Like the apartment block, View 62 is not a cheap place so unlikely I will come here that often to eat, but it is good. Although the portions do not look particularly generous when served in front of you, by the end of the meal I was satisfactorily fed by the quality ingredients they used. Everything is all well presented in the white tableware. The waiters were attentive and service was efficient, although the restaurant was not full. The interior design is modern and view from the restaurant is as described above and probably their chief selling point.

Scores

Food: 4/5
Presentation: 4/5

Service: 3/5

Setting: 4/5

Total: 15/20

Bill: HK$792, about GBP£35 a head.

We ate: Set Lunch.

We drank: Ice Melon Tea, English Breakfast Tea

I wore: Slightly under-dressed hiking boots.

Victoria City Restaurant, Crowne Plaza, Causeway Bay

My wife and I are doing Dim Sum again for this blog entry, after visiting 'Fu Shing..' restaurant the day before. We are still in Causeway Bay, but closer to the racecourse at the Crowne Plaza hotel, where Victoria City Restaurant is situated.

It is placed on the second floor and we were sat in a corner of one of the numerous rooms that make up the dining area. This floor may have been used for conference rooms, seeing as the rooms had names, thus giving the restaurant its odd layout.

As with the restaurant we went to the previous day the dim sum items are ordered through marking the sheet.

The first batch of dishes to arrive were Chicken's feet and Vegetable Dumpling. The former was bony with black bean sauce to give it the colour and flavour. The latter was made in aesthetically pleasing pyramidal shapes of translucent pastry with a tasty vegetarian filling.

Chicken's Feet and Vegetable Dumpling

Pan Fried Dumpling came next in a cute little bowl, which I do not think it was cooked in. There was a good pastry outer that had the slight charred look from the frying. The filling was pork meat based, which was hot and mince-meaty.

Pan Fried Dumplings

Sharks Fin Dumpling soup with another staple of Dim Sum, Siu Mai came after, as shown below. The soup broth was fine as well as the single large dumpling; there was a small strip of fin too for the product to fit the title description. The Siu Mai was a good, standard pork and prawn dumpling.

Shark Fin's Dumpling Soup & Siu Mai

Cha Siu Rice Roll arrived after and there was decent pieces of barbecued pork wrapped in rolls and draped in soy sauce for flavour .

Cha Siu Rice Roll

The last dish of our order was Spring Rolls. The variant this restaurant produces includes goose liver pâté as part of the filling, which was different and posh sounding but did not combine as well with the usual filling with the crunchy deep fried roll outer, I thought.

Spring Roll

We asked on the off chance if there were any free desserts and we actually got some dessert soups, which are shown below. The one on the left was called 'Jar Jar' (Cantonese pronunciation as I do not know the English translation', which is an assortment of different sweet soups that was palatable and on the right was a Herbal Sweet Soup that was not too my liking.

Complimentary Dessert Soup

I preferred the previous day's lunching in terms of food and value for money. Although this place is modern the room arrangement is strange, which results in it not having a restaurant feel to it. The food is of good quality, if no standout dish and service is adequate, although could be better for the price you pay.

Scores
Food: 4/5
Presentation: 3/5

Service: 3/5

Setting: 3/5

Total: 13/20

Total Bill: HK$451, about GBP£18 a head.

We ate: All of the above.

We drank: Dragon's Well Tea.

I wore: Spectacles, as I could not be bothered putting on my contact lenses.