008- Neighborhood

Neighborhood is the last restaurant I went to before Carrie Lam put the ban for dine in after 6pm. I have no comment on Carrie Lam but I have lots of things to comment for the experience in Neighborhood. The past week I have been frustrated, I was in the transition to my new job, and the worst was I signed my contract right before Carrie Lam announced the ban for restaurant. I was celebrating that Monday but then I was deep in sorrow, I was thinking will I got to stay home again for weeks or months! Cannot hang out with friends and one of them is moving to Macau for months again. So the Neighborhood hang out night really was the last girls hang out for a while.

Ok, I mean the opening is a little bit sad but I hope this review can save some good memories for me.

So I saw a foodie that I followed in Instagram went to neighborhood the other week, and all the photo looks amazing. So I asked him how’s neighborhood and he said it was solid I should go try, and I did i immediately booked the dinner in neighborhood the week follow. I did not really look up the information about neighborhood, cause I trusted that foodie if he said is solid I believe him!

The location of the restaurant is a little bit hard to find, the restaurant is in up hill central inside a very narrow street. Is dark outside so is not easily to be seen, oh by the way neighborhood only do two sitting first start at 6:30pm the second start at 8:30pm. I booked the 8:30 sitting, when I got in the last table has just left. Is a cozy restaurant I love their lighting enough light to take good picture, but not too bright to hurt my eyes and shown tireless on my face.

I did not tune the light in this photo!

They have a drop light above each table, so even in a darker area you can take a good food photo.

So the environment of the restaurant is likable, the only thing that I did not like is the portion size of the food. I think neighborhood is more like a tapas style restaurant, all the dishes is like bite size. I went with three of my friends and almost every item that we ordered we can only have a bite, one bite for each item. There are few items you need to pre order like that famous salt baked chicken, the seafood paella and the bone in loin, these items are in larger portion. So if you go without knowing the menu you did not pre order some food, I think you will leave the restaurant in hunger. I am not kidding we ordered a pasta and we can only get a bite of it, like a tablespoon of pasta for each of us. Before we have the chicken we were discussing where should we go afterwards to get more food.

Four of us have ordered the salted baked chicken, the smoked fish, blood sausage, the warm salad, caviar bone marrow, a pasta , a special sea squirt sashimi and a French toast dessert to end the dining experience. We also ordered a bottle of Rose to share, so we have ordered eight item in total. For your information we are all girls so I guess if you are guys you might want to pre order at least two item.

I am not going to talk about each food item individually, the food that I like the most is their blood sausage. Their blood sausage is very special is nothing I ever had before! Firstly, I really like Korea blood sausage never have blood pudding before but I think they are very similar in taste and in texture. Secondly, I love eating pork blood, duck blood actually any bloody food. So I was expecting something like a traditional blood sausage, but with some garnish twist on it. But this sausage was not what I expecting it was better than what I though! Normally blood sausage and blood pudding have a chewing texture, cooked liver texture it is crumbly not meaty at all, many people cannot handle the taste and the texture of a blood sausage. I think they could try this one instead, the blood sausage got the bloody taste and enhanced with a over easy pan fried egg little bit spicy from the chili powder. And the sausage were just like pull pork so is more acceptable with majority people.

It so small I cannot have another bite of it

Damn you Neighborhood, Next time I will order one for myself only*

I did like their smoked fish too, very smoky and they used local fresh catch fish. Most of the items were pretty solid not outstanding. Their caviar bone marrow was so viral in Instagram, it really looked so nice in the picture taste is a little bit heavy as expected, was like eating beef tender jello. I just hope it could be hotter so was less greasy, more beefy. I don't like salad in general but this warm salad casserole was fresh yet delightful, maybe because they added black truffle make it more savory than grassy.

The bread in neighborhood is horrible, freaking hard. My mouth hurt, my jaw hurt and my teeth hurt. It was so dry, if you drop the bread on the plate you can hear a brisk knock. And l am wondering where the hell was my bread, the whole basket is full of edges of the bread, and the bread crust.

Can

someone tell me where did my bread go, who stole it?

Just all the crust, and is hard like rocks.

One more terrible experience was trying out the sea squirt, it was told this seafood taste like a hybrid of oyster and sea urchin. Sea urchin your head! The texture does taste like oyster but the taste… horrible. This is the most fishy thing I ever tasted in my life, I eat a lot of sashimi love my seafood serve raw. But this was stinky so freaking fishy I once though it was not fresh or they did not handle it right or the sea squirt was dead. But this was the first time I ever eat it so I am not sure does it really taste like that naturally. Very unpleasant experience of sea squirt, now you become a seafood that I will avoid.

It does look like a yellow

oyster!

But you stink, for a wonderful kissing experience I will pass you for my entire life

Let’s talk about their famous salt baked chicken, 120 days local “ping yuen” chicken. An adolescent chicken juicy yet tender bake in salt serve with creamy rice. Sound delicious right. When the lady came to my table and show me the chicken, I was so excited, but I can already see the chicken was on the dry slide. They baked it without wrapping the chicken with paper will result a drier chicken. I will give the chicken 65 points not very juicy not tender, the chicken is like a exercise grown adult than a 16 years old adolescent. Some part of the chicken skin is very salty other part is quite mild, I cannot tell it was a salt baked chicken. But the rice is amazing, cook with the salt baked chicken juice with some morel mushroom and inner organs. That’s is a good rice, slightly saltier it will be prefect. We are feeling a little bit extra so we added fresh black truffle to our rice, oh shroomy!

When we are digging through the rice we found 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 pieces of chicken testicle. We are like can it be possible one chicken can have so many testicle, is it why hen can laid eggs every single day? And male chicken won’t die easily because they have a good storage of sperm!!!(hahaha, 精盡人亡) So we ask the lady why our chicken have so many testicle, she said they add extra for us lol!!!!!!!!!

All the extra testicle is for us ladies!

French toast with vanilla ice cream and truffle to end tonight.

Still a bite size for each of us…

Overall I would come again since they always change their menu I would like some new idea of food in neighborhood and I also want to try their paella, the lady who serve us was really funny she got all my joke! A solid restaurant just like the foodie said. Carrie Lam please close the fucking gate so we can get over from this virus crisis, I would love to see my friend again in a save environment.

Neighborhood: 61-63 Hollywood road, Central, Hong Kong