Visited 9th March
The tourists are in town and we're seeing the sites; Stanley one day, Sai Kong the next - both I might add as about as far as you can get from 'good old Yuen Long'. Sai Kung's expat population means that there are plenty of alternate dinning options when you've got people too fussy for the seafood places lining the waterfront. Keeping things simple we again went for the bakery option; Ali Oli and after a drawn out battle managed to snatch an outdoor table.Ali Oli sells all the tasty goodies that it should including: fresh bread, cakes, biscuits, slices, pies, pastries and sandwiches, plus coffee and an assortment of deli items like dips, salads and homemade jam. I'm an Australian and it's something of a patriotic duty to eat pies, so for the second day running I had a meat pie for lunch; life was good. This seems to becoming something of a pie blog; but the offending item did look pretty impressive. It was filled with tasty, chunky meat, but unfortunately was ruined by sickly sweet pastry. It looked like I was sitting in a western style bakery, it looked like I was eating a western style meat pie, but oh no what I was eating was disappointment. To be fair to Ali Oli my coffee was good and the others were happy with their lunches, I was just burdened with a pie that should have been savoury and wasn't.
Ali Oli does a lot of things right; it serves a big range of tasty looking produce, the coffee's good, the prices fair and it offers a refreshingly casual environment that is not seen often enough in Hong Kong's western restaurants. OK my pie was ruined by revoltingly sweet pastry, yet
there are a couple of things that could have been better. Sundays are busy in Sai Kung, yet Ali Oli was a little too disorderly; getting a table was a battle of push and shove, while service at the counter was confusing and disorganised. Oh and another thing that really annoys me is allowing dogs at a restaurant table; keep the mutts and their stupid bandannas outside!Visit bakery website.
Posts
2 comments:
Thanks for the backlink to PiEcon the crazy pie review blog I write with my blogging friends.
I have to admit that whenever I'm back in Honkers catching up with the relies, Pies are the last thing on my mind. There's too much else I want to eat there, like roast goose. But having spent a few years working there, I can remember the joy of care packages of Aussie goodies - sent from Melbourne - arriving from time to time to cheer me up.
Hey Stickyfingers
Cheers for the comment. I really like the piEcon blog; it's the sort of thing that I know heaps of my mates could write with the same passion that you guys do. I suppose it really just reminds me of Australia.
The odd pie here is a treat, especially if it's a decent one. The 'packages' from home are a real winner, but it's interesting the things I find myself wanting. I've managed to source most things I ‘need’ in HK, so now the Australian deliveries normally contain Napsani, my favourite tea (which I can't buy in HK???) and Australian chocolate for my girlfriend (Cherry Ripes and Tim Tams).
Cheers
Andrew
Post a Comment