Wing Lai Yuen - Sichuan food (Hong Kong)

Address 1: Wing Lai Yuen (Yeung's Kitchen)Shop 106-107, Site 8, Wonderful Worlds Of Whampoa, 7 Tak On Street, Hung Hum, Kowloon

Address 2:Wing Lai Yuen Sze Chuen Noodles RestaurantG/F, 15-17 Fung Tak Rd, Wong Tai Sin, Kowloon

Szechuen Szechuan Sichuan food, however you wanna spell it is known for its spice and chili!

Wing Lai Yuen in HK is best known for its Spicy Szechuan Noodles (Dan Dan Mian) mostly because of the texture of the noodles (handmade). The Szechuan noodles in Hong Kong have all be altered to less spicy and added in more wonderful flavours, the original version have often been described as blend which I have never tasted before.

I for one always love the peanut sauce used in Dan Dan Mian and the preserved pickled vegetable in it (This pickled veg tend to have more savory flavour to it rather then acidic taste and is usually slightly spicy but there are ones that go without the chili). At Wing Lai Yuen you can have this noodles in mild version (without chili), but because I love my chili so I have never tried this one before. But I admire that they would try to accommodate their customers though I do not know if they’d have to compromise with the taste in order to do so or not.

My order was as follow:

Spicy Szechuan Noodles (Dan Dan Mian 擔擔麵)

- The soup base is thicker than the usual broth you see with other Chinese noodles in soup because of the peanut sauce. Don’t let the colour frighten you, it looks hotter than it taste, the spiciness is not overwhelming at all but just enough to give you little tinkle feeling, the noodles is very thin and smooth but not soggy.

“Altered version” Spicy Szechaun Noodles ("改良版"擔擔麵)
- The only different in look is that there were more minced meat and pickled vegetable in this and there’s a layer of oil at the top. The soup here is more diluted in texture as well as in taste. I personally cannot tell any drastic difference between the two except I preferred the usual one because the soup smelt and tasted better. I was anticipating the layer of oil to give it some wonderful aroma or something but it just didn’t happen! In fact, I find the altered version does not stand out at all. I guess my price was the extra $10 to find out the differences.

Dumplings in Chili oil (紅油抄手)

- The sauce is sweetened soy sauce based with chili oil and with plenty of chopped garlic (raw). There is no particular rule with the filling of the dumpling except it’s pork based, this one have added some (Chinese) celery in it. I love the taste of the celery and thought it actually brought the whole dish alive. The only improvement I find is that the skin of the dumpling is too large, therefore the fold of the dumpling is thicker and when it’s cooked some of it goes hard. Where the sauce tasted good enough already, except I find the sweetness was just one tad too much. Also if a few drops of Chinese dark vinegar could be added to it would taste a lot better.

Sautéed Eel slice with (Chinese) Chives (韭王炒鱔糊)

- This is in fact a Shanghainese dish, so I was really curious why there are so many Shanghainese dishes served in a Szechuan restaurant. My mother told me it is really common, just like my grandmother who is not originally from Shanghai but cooks Shanghainese food really well. The look and taste of this was really right on spot and very Shanghainesy. Well it is oily enough, the sauce and flavour was strong and wonderful but not salty, the sweetness was right and certain part of the eel is slighly crispy. The only criticism I had with this dish was that the chive was a bit too old and chewy~

- I am unsure if everyone is familiar with this but in certain cities in China (mostly the southern part), we put sugar (or anything sweetly flavoured) in savoury dishes, best known example would be Sweet and Sour pork LOL.

Cucumber and thin bean starch noodles with Peanut sauce (青瓜粉皮)

- This is a cold dish but usually with shredded chicken as well as cucumber. The bean starch noodles is a bit like rice noodles (Ho Fun) but it is semi-transparent. The peanut sauce was given at a very generous portion, which you may well appreciate at the first couple of bite but it gets a bit sticky and uninteresting. But adding some sauce from the spicy dumpling really helped it and it tasted even better than before. Mind you I love mixing food and different sauces together, so it might have just been me doing my own thing there and the whole world find this completely off putting!

Steamed Soup Dumpling (小籠包)

- Have you not heard of the infamous Steamed Soup Dumpling from Shanghai? Ever been to a Din Tai Fung before? If you haven’t maybe you should! In theory, what they do is use (supposingly) thin dumpling skin to wrapped up minced pork and a frozen cube of broth then steam it. During cooking, because the meat would be steamed in the soup so it is usually softer and flavour in the soup would infuse to the meat. The dumpling is usually served with vinegar with thin ginger slices. But if you prefer you can have it on its own. The dumpling here doesn’t have as much soup as other places I’ve tried before, but the overall flavour and quality was not bad. The dumpling skin is vital key to this dish, it cannot be too thin otherwise it'd burst and lose all the juice, but if it is too thick then it'd taste chewy once it cool off slightly and takes away the flavour. The dumpling skin here was just slightly on the thick side but luckily it was not overingly dry or too chewy. I would personally prefer this dish at other places but this one is not bad.

Sautéed veggie with garlic

- Everyone needs some fibre with their meal!!

Soy Milk
- I don’t like the taste of the soy milk here, there are tons of places that do better soy milk then this. In fact, the one that are sold in the supermarket taste better.

Overall the environment is FAR from fine dinning, well the price is too! It only cost around $80 - $150 per head (with the current currency exchange would be around GBP 7 -14). On a busy day you may have to share the table with others, but I was lucky enough to get a table of my own.

It is always good to have some spicy food to spice up the rainy day, the weather have been terrible for the past few days!! So miserable~~ Nowww I better get back to work (even more miserable!) and do some research on public policy and enforcement --- Arrggh!